Swimming to Catalina

by Stuart Woods

  “What other bits and pieces did he tell you?”

  “He told me he was having problems with Ippolito and Sturmack, and that I was to be very solicitous of them on the phone and if they came to the studio. He was anxious that they not think he was being rude to them.”

  “What else?”

  “He told me that Arrington wouldn’t be back for a while, but to go on telling anyone who asked that she was visiting family in Virginia. He told me that he wanted to be a little more accessible to the press, which was unusual. Normally he doesn’t speak to anyone from the press. He doesn’t do interviews, he doesn’t do the Tonight Show, he’s never even done Barbara Walters. It’s part of the Calder mystique, that he’s so inaccessible. I think he changed the policy, however slightly, so that he wouldn’t seem to be covering up anything. That’s why he had me invite that woman to the dinner party.”

  “So Vance was setting things up to protect himself.”

  “And Arrington. He was very worried that something would appear in the press that would jeopardize her.”

  “When did you learn that Arrington wasn’t in Virginia?”

  “Right before you got here. Vance told me that she hadn’t gone home, that they had had an argument and that she had just run off somewhere. That made his attitude about the press more understandable. If someone called to ask if they were apart he could deny it instead of just stonewalling and, by doing so, exciting more interest.”

  “Makes sense. When did you learn that Arrington had been kidnapped?”

  “I think I learned that from you.”

  “But I didn’t know.”

  “But you knew something was wrong, and I didn’t, at first. Part of it was your coming out here. I didn’t think Vance would want you here just to settle a domestic dispute.”

  “Good guess.”

  “So finally I went to Vance and said that it was obvious to me that something was very wrong and that I wanted to help. He actually broke down and cried, something I’d never thought I’d see him do. He said that Arrington was in danger and that I had to be very careful not to do or say anything that might make it worse. He was handling it, he said. He actually used the word ‘negotiating,’ so I thought she was being held for ransom. It occurred to me that the price of her release might be the Centurion shares, but that didn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t, not in a kidnapping. If Ippolito and Sturmack have Arrington, then they obviously want a lot from Vance, probably more than the shares.”

  “That makes sense to me,” Betty said. “I think that if Arrington’s safety depended on his surrendering the stock, he’d do it and try to get the stock back later.”

  “Exactly. Now, what else does Vance have that Ippolito and Sturmack could want?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just can’t imagine what it could be.”

  Stone thought about that. “Does Vance have a contract with Centurion, a long-term contract?”

  “Not in the sense that the old studios had stars under exclusive contract. Vance’s deal with Centurion is as an independent producer; he brings projects to the studio—films that he doesn’t always star in—and they have the right of first refusal. If they don’t buy the project, he can take it elsewhere, as he has done in the past.”

  “Maybe that’s not enough for Ippolito and Sturmack.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe they want more than the studio; maybe they want Vance.”

  “They could never own Vance; he’s too big for that.”

  “Maybe. Tell me, do you know where Ippolito keeps his yacht?”

  “He has several yachts, I think.”

  “I mean the big one, Contessa.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve been aboard her, as recently as last week, in fact.”

  “To a dinner party that Vance was invited to but didn’t go?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was invited, too, but I didn’t make it.”

  “That was when they tried to…”

  “Yes, but back to the boat; where is it kept?”

  “I know he has a berth at Marina Del Rey, but I think she spends most of the time on a mooring at Catalina. That’s where she was for the dinner party.”

  “Who was at the party?”

  “A lot of the same people who were at Vance’s party, the one you came to. And a lot of others, too.”

  “How many in all?”

  “Nearly a hundred, I should think. It’s a big yacht.”

  “I wonder if Arrington’s aboard that yacht?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t think he would hide Arrington on the yacht, then invite a hundred people aboard, would you?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Why are you so interested in the yacht, then?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Stone said.

  45

  Stone didn’t make it back to his hotel suite until the following morning, the reunion with Betty having kept him at her place all night. When he arrived the message light was blinking on his telephone, and he called for his voice mail.

  “Stone, it’s Hank Cable; you might want to call me.”

  Stone returned the call immediately. “Sorry I wasn’t in when you called. What’s up?”

  “We got the tap into Barone Financial, and it’s paying off already.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “A lot of the phone conversations are conducted in a kind of code, which, of course, makes us even more suspicious. Our people say a lot of the conversations are to do with deliveries, maybe drugs.”

  “You don’t need forty telephone lines to arrange drug deliveries,” Stone said.

  “Good point.”

  “I think it’s money.”

  “There is some wire transferring going on, but not at such a heavy rate to be suspicious.”

  “Then maybe they’re not transferring it by wire. Maybe they’re shipping cash.”

  “Money laundries, when they ship cash, ship it out of the country. Our people think the shipments are coming this way. Why would they ship money into the States?”

  “To buy things,” Stone ventured.

  “Well, of course, but what could they do with raw, unlaundered cash?”

  “Launder it.”

  “Obviously, but we’re talking about major quantities, is my guess.”

  “So they’re buying big things, like businesses; big businesses.”

  “You don’t understand, Stone; you can’t go buy a business with, say, a hundred million dollars and bring cash to the closing. The money has to be laundered, to appear legitimate, to appear to be after-taxes. It has to be in a bank and then wire transferred to another bank, or be put into a negotiable instrument, like a cashier’s check.”

  “Ippolito has a bank at his disposal, doesn’t he?”

  “He does, but I’ve checked with Treasury and the state examiners, and Safe Harbor has always been squeaky clean.”

  “Then he must be using it in some way we don’t know about. I think people like Ippolito are too greedy to be happy with the income from a legitimate business; they want more. They want it all, too; they don’t want to share it with stockholders or the IRS.”

  “Well, it’s early days; I expect we’ll come up with more as time passes.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Stone said.

  “Are we talking about the kidnapping again? I can have fifty agents on that in an hour.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not until what? Until the abductee is dead? It gets a lot harder after that.”

  “Hank, if I knew where she was I’d welcome fifty agents on it, but I don’t know.”

  “So it’s a she.”

  “Yes, and that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

  “Suit yourself, buddy; I just hope it doesn’t blow up in your face. We take a dim view of people trying to deal with kidnappers. It’s like this with ransom: you can pay the ransom and get the abductee back, or you can not pay the ransom and get the
abductee back. Or—and this is the tough part—you can pay the ransom and lose the abductee, or you can not pay the ransom and lose the abductee. It’s a crapshoot.”

  “You really think that? You really think that even if these people get what they want, they could still kill her?”

  “Stone, it’s likely that the decision, one way or another, was made before they grabbed her. She could already be dead.”

  “I don’t think so; a family member talks to her every day.”

  “That’s good news, but it doesn’t mean it will last.”

  “You’re depressing to talk to, you know that?”

  “It’s part of my job to bring a ray of darkness into other people’s lives.”

  Stone laughed ruefully. “Well, you’re good at your work.”

  “I’ll call you if anything worth reporting comes up, and I’ll tell my people to listen for any talk on Barone’s lines about your abductee.”

  “Thanks, Hank.” Stone said goodbye and hung up.

  Stone found a little printing shop with a sign in the window: 100 BUSINESS CARDS PRINTED WHILE YOU WAIT—$19.95. He drew a little sketch for the printer, and, while he waited, bought a cheap plastic briefcase, some file folders, and paper. When the cards were finished, he left the shop and dumped all but a dozen into the nearest trash bin, then drove to Marina Del Rey and found the marina office.

  He asked for the dockmaster and handed him a card that read REED HAWTHORNE, ADJUSTOR, CHUBB MARINE INSURANCE. He didn’t know if Chubb even wrote marine insurance, but at least it was a recognizable name. “I’m here about the sinking of a sports fisherman called Maria,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know about that,” the dockmaster replied.

  “We raised her a couple of days ago. She was a mess.”

  “Can you show me where she’s berthed?”

  “Sure, come with me.”

  Stone followed the man down to Maria’s berth, unconcerned that he might be recognized, since both the people associated with the boat who knew him were dead.

  “You want to go aboard?” the dockmaster asked. “I’ve got a key.”

  “No, I’m primarily concerned with security for the future, since she was obviously maliciously sunk. What kind of security do you provide here?”

  “We’ve got a night watchman who has a walkie-talkie for contacting the night man at the office. We don’t have a lot of trouble here.”

  Stone nodded sagely, opened his briefcase, and consulted several blank sheets of paper in a file.

  “We’re insuring two other vessels here as well—one called Paloma and one called Contessa. Can you show me those two?”

  “Sure. Paloma is this way.”

  Stone followed him to the deserted motor yacht. “How many passes a night does the watchman make past this berth?”

  “He’s by here about once an hour.”

  “Okay, where’s Contessa berthed?”

  >“Down near the breakwater, with the other big yachts,” the dockmaster said. “This way.”

  Stone followed the man down a series of pontoons until larger boats began to appear.

  “You’re lucky she’s in here today,” he said. “She spends a lot of time over at Catalina.”

  “At a marina there?”

  “No, on a mooring. They put down a special heavy one for her.”

  They approached the big yacht from the rear; she was lying alongside, rather than being moored stem to. The dockmaster waved at a man on deck. “Hey, Reno! How you doing?” He turned to Stone. “I’ll introduce you to the skipper.”

  “Thanks,” Stone replied.

  Reno came down the gangplank, smartly dressed in whites with shoulder boards and a peaked cap.

  “Reno,” the dockmaster said, “this is Reed Hawthorne, from your insurance company.”

  “Hello,” the skipper said, looking at the card Stone handed him. “You’re with Chubb? Marine Associates are our insurers, and we’ve only got liability, not hull insurance.”

  “I know,” Stone lied, “but after the sinking of Maria they’re apparently getting nervous. I was asked to take a look at your yacht to assess her general condition.”

  “Okay,” the skipper said, “come aboard.”

  Stone smiled inside. Now he had a free pass to check out from stem to stern.

  46

  Stone followed the captain up to the yacht’s bridge, where a technician had pulled out some of the electronic gear to work on it.

  “We’ve got everything,” Reno said, waving a hand. “The latest color, chart-display GPS, satphone, the works. That’s why we’re at Marina Del Rey now instead of Catalina, where the owner likes to keep the boat. We came over here for some adjustments.”

  “Do you have a lot of electronic problems?”

  “Not really; this is new gear, and we’re still getting the bugs out.”

  Stone took a file folder and some blank paper and started scribbling fake notes. A cell phone mounted on the instrument panel rang, and the captain picked it up.

  “Hey,” he purred into the phone.

  A woman, Stone thought. He waved at the skipper, who covered the phone with his hand. “Look, I don’t really need a guided tour; I’ll look around on my own, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure, help yourself,” the skipper said.

  Stone thanked the dockmaster for his help and went below. Might as well make it stem to stem, he thought. He quickly toured the large saloon, the dining room, and the galley, then headed below to where he figured the crew’s quarters must be, up forward. He saw half a dozen small cabins and a larger one for the skipper, then he moved aft.

  The size and quality of the cabins increased as he walked toward the yacht’s stem. Each was individually decorated, with expensive hardwoods and fabrics, and the owner’s cabin was huge, rivaling Stone’s hotel suite in style and comfort.

  He went down another deck and looked into the cabins on either side of the hallway. These were smaller than the ones on the deck above, but still beautifully furnished. Something caught his eye in the aftermost of the small cabins. A U-bolt mounted in a plate had been welded to a bulkhead under a porthole. It seemed odd, out of place, but he had more yacht to cover, so he moved on. He checked every door and hatch on the yacht, no matter how small.

  Finally, he came to the engine room, three decks below the bridge, and it was very impressive. Two huge diesel engines occupied half the space, and a large generator was bolted to the deck on either side of the engines. Stone began looking for seacocks.

  “How you doing?” a voice said.

  Stone jumped, then turned to find the captain standing in the doorway. “Sorry, you startled me,” Stone said. “I’m doing fine; just about finished. Tell me, how are the engines cooled?”

  “There’s a heat exchanger mounted to each engine,” the skipper replied, pointing to the equipment, “with a mixture of fresh water and coolant; that cools the top end. Then there’s a raw-water flow to the bottom end of each engine.”

  “Where does the raw water come from?” Stone asked. It was what he most wanted to know.

  “A seacock on each side of the engine room,” the skipper replied, indicating a large valve operated by a wheel.

  Stone had been looking for the sort of lever found on smaller boats; he was glad to have the big valve pointed out to him. This time there was no rubber hose, but a steel pipe running to the engine. “Got it,” Stone said. Then he saw something he didn’t recognize. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a six-inch pipe that rose from the bilges to about two feet above the deck plating. Attached to it were half a dozen smaller pipes, each with its own seacock. There were two of them, a few feet apart, and he had never seen anything like them.

  “Those are called seaboxes,” the skipper said. “They bring in raw water for all sorts of uses—air conditioning, toilets, everything.”

  Stone nodded. “Well, I guess that just about does it for me.”

  “I’ll show you the way up,” Reno said.


  Stone continued to pump the man as they climbed toward the upper decks. “How often does the owner use the yacht?”

  “Practically every weekend, and sometimes he’ll spend a night aboard during the week.”

  Stone continued making notes. “How many guests at a time?”

  “We’ve got a dozen guest staterooms, sleeping twenty-four, plus the owner’s cabin.”

  “How many crew?”

  “We go light on crew; there’s a cook, a steward, two maids, a mate, and me. When there are dinner parties, the caterers furnish the help.”

  “So that’s six living aboard?”

  “At the weekends, yes, and whenever the owner is aboard. During the week we usually manage a lot of time off. I can run the boat with the help of one crew between here and Catalina, and when we’re on our mooring out there, there will often be just one man aboard.”

  “Any worries about security problems?”

  “Nah. Some big boats have armed guards, but our owner doesn’t believe in intrusive security—makes the guests wonder what they’re being protected from. Anonymity is the best security, we reckon.”

  “Makes sense,” Stone said. They had reached the main deck now. “Well, thanks for the tour; I’ve got all I need to make my report.”

  “We’re changing insurance companies, then?”

  “It’s by no means certain; we’ll make our proposal and see what happens.”

  “Who are you dealing with at our end?”

  “Not your owner; one of his people, I think. I don’t have any direct contact with clients; I’m just the technical guy.” Stone shook the man’s hand, then went ashore. One thing he was sure of: He had checked every part of the yacht, and Arrington was not aboard Contessa.

  He gave some thought to going back to Maria and sinking the sports fisherman again. It was a quiet day at the marina, and he could probably get away with it. Maybe he could sink Paloma as well. It would be fun to drive Ippolito even crazier.

  Finally he decided against it. The police investigation would turn up the fact that somebody from an insurance company had visited the boats, and the simplest sort of check would reveal that he was bogus. The police would have a description of him, and he didn’t want that.