Hot Mahogany

by Stuart Woods

  Barton led them through the mudroom into the butler’s pantry, then through the kitchen and into the dining room.

  “Hey, some table,” Stone said, as they walked through.

  “Sheraton. It seats sixteen,” Barton said. “I authenticated the chairs for him.”

  They continued into the living room. Practically everything was covered in painters’ drop cloths. The pictures had been removed from the walls, stacked along one side of the room and covered. Barton was looking under drop cloths, identifying furniture.

  “There’s nothing big enough in here to be the secretary,” Stone said, looking around.

  “It’s in two pieces,” Barton said, “desk and bookcase, which rests on top of the desk. It will look smaller under a cloth.”

  The three of them spread out in the very large living room and began looking under drop cloths.

  “Not here,” Barton said finally. “Let’s try the study.” He led the way into the next room. It was completely dark outside now, but a rising moon offered some light. Holly gave him one of the little flashlights.

  They repeated the process from the previous room. “Not here,” Barton said.

  “But look at that,” Stone said, pointing.

  “What?” Holly said. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. It’s an empty space in a room otherwise stuffed with furniture. What goes there?”

  “The secretary,” Holly said.

  “It’s the right size and the right place in the room for it,” Barton said. “It’s where I’d put it.”

  Then, from the back of the house, they heard a noise.

  “Back door,” Holly said.

  They froze in their tracks, then a few seconds later tiny lights began to flash around the corners of the ceiling, and a steady beeping, every second, started. They heard the back door slam.

  “The security system is booting up,” Holly said. “We’ve got maybe thirty seconds to get out of the house. Let’s go!!”

  She ran out of the study, through the living room and into the dining room. More tiny lights were flashing. “Cameras and motion detectors,” she said. “Hurry!”

  They made it to the mudroom and Holly tried the back door. Locked. She reached into her tool kit and began fiddling with the door.

  “The thirty seconds has to be up,” Stone said.

  “If we’re lucky, it’s set for sixty instead,” Holly replied.

  The door came open, they all stepped outside and Holly closed the door behind them. “Run!” she said.

  The three of them sprinted back along the path they had come, and as they ducked behind the stone wall, spotlights came on around the eaves of the house, and there were three short sharp blasts from a loud horn.

  They huddled behind the wall, panting.

  “That noise means the system is now fully armed,” Holly said. “Another second and the exterior motion detectors would have caught us.”

  “Why didn’t you disarm the system as soon as we were inside?” Stone asked, panting.

  “How could I know the caretaker is a fast eater?” she replied.

  “Anyway, it’s lucky I didn’t, or he would have found the system inop and called the cops.”

  “Well,” Barton said, “that’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Stone, lead the way to the car,” Holly said, handing him a flashlight. “And don’t use that any more than you have to.”

  Half an hour later they were back on the main highway, headed for Barton’s house.

  “He doesn’t have the secretary,” Barton said. “It’s not in the house.”

  “Maybe it’s upstairs in a bedroom,” Stone said.

  “No, he’d never put it there; he’d want it on display, for all to see.”

  “Well,” Holly said, “he’s made a space for it. My guess is it’ll be here as soon as the painting’s done.”

  “It could still be in New York,” Stone said.

  “Probably is,” Barton agreed. “There’s nowhere around here he could store it without causing comment.”

  “Barton,” Stone said, “we could just wait for his paint to dry, wait for him to move it up here, then report it stolen, get a search warrant and go get the thing.”

  “No,” Barton said. “If the police get into this and it makes the press – and it will – then everything will be ruined.”

  Stone wondered what he meant by everything.

  20

  Stone and Holly went to the Mayflower Inn the following morning for Sunday brunch and lingered over their food.

  “Stone, where would Abner Kramer hide the secretary in New York?”

  “Kramer strikes me as the type who would be very well prepared,” Stone replied. “He may have rented storage space for it.”

  “Or it could be in his house or apartment.”

  “That’s a possibility, too.”

  “So, let’s go to New York and break into his place.”

  “Well,” Stone said, “I now have a fairly complete set of burglar tools. It would be a shame not to put them to use.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m kidding. I’ve had enough of housebreaking; I don’t have the innate sneakiness required for the work.”

  “Are you saying I’m sneaky?”

  “Let me be clear: You are sneaky. Isn’t that one of the prime requisites for working at the CIA? I’ll bet you aced the Sneaky 101 final at the Farm.”

  Holly giggled. “You know me too well.”

  “Are you going to stick around here for a few more days?”

  “Well, it’s a paid vacation, isn’t it? And I’ve got a free house. I miss Daisy, but she’s staying with my housemate.”

  “You have a housemate? I’m jealous.”

  “It’s a female-type person. The place had a spare bedroom, so I cut my rent in half.”

  “Sounds sensible.” Stone waved for a check. “I’m going to have to go back to the city.”

  “Why don’t you just hang out here with me?” Holly asked.

  “Well, I do have a law practice that requires my attention from time to time if I want to earn a living, and I have to look into the other guy from Barton’s Marine outfit… What’s his name?”

  “Charles Crow.”

  “Right. From the Bronx.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Watch your ass, Stone.”

  “You mean more than usual?”

  “Remember, Crow is the operator, according to Barton. Sounds like a guy with few, if any, scruples.”

  “Okay. I’ll watch my ass.”

  Stone got back to the city late in the afternoon, went through his mail and checked his phone messages. Alarmingly little business activity, he thought. He was going to have to make some money pretty soon.

  Dino was already at Elaine’s when Stone got there.

  “How was the country?” Dino asked.

  “Gorgeous. The leaves have started to turn.”

  “Not here, yet.”

  “Soon. Trust me.”

  “What did you find out up there?”

  Stone gave him a rundown of his activities in Connecticut, including their housebreaking adventure.

  “You’re not sneaky enough to be a burglar, Stone.”

  “Exactly what I told Holly.”

  “If you don’t watch it, I’m going to be bailing you out of some country jail.”

  “I hope not. Have you spread the word about the secretary among your colleagues in blue?”

  “I have, discreetly.”

  “And a photo?”

  “Yes. Otherwise they wouldn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. They’re cops, not readers of antiques magazines.”

  “Granted. I’ve got to look into the other member of Barton’s outfit who seems a candidate for all this. Can you do a search on arrests and convictions for a Charles Crow?”

  “The real estate guy?”

  “There’s a real estate guy named Charles Crow?”

  �
�You don’t ever read the papers, do you?”

  “Every day.”

  “Not the Times, the Daily News and the Post.”

  “Dino, I know you consider those rags newspapers, but there’s nothing in them that I need to know.”

  “If you read them, you’d know about Charlie Crow.”

  “What would I know?”

  “Crow is this hotshot real estate… speculator, I guess you’d say. Made a bunch of money, got himself a trophy third wife and a publicist to get him on Page Six. You know what Page Six is?”

  “Of course, Dino.” Page Six was the Post’s gossip page.

  “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Crow make an appearance there at least once a week, every day during the trial.”

  “Trial?”

  “Yeah, he got caught in some sort of property swindle, but he got off. Cost him a couple of million in legal fees, though.”

  “That could put a dent in a fellow’s wallet, couldn’t it? Especially if he has a trophy wife and a publicist to support.”

  “I guess so. Charlie Crow was in Barton’s outfit?”

  “Yeah, and Barton says he was a wheeler-dealer even then.”

  “Are you sure it’s the same Charlie Crow?”

  “No, I’m not,” Stone said. “That was your contention. Is he from the Bronx?”

  “Yeah, and you can take the boy out of the Bronx, but…”

  “I get the picture,” Stone said. “Charlie is still a little rough around the edges, then?”

  “Correct picture.”

  “I’d like to know if he has a sheet for anything besides his real estate scam.”

  Dino unsheathed his cell phone and made the call. “They’ll get back to me,” he said, putting the phone away.

  “Who’s Charlie’s publicist?” Stone asked.

  “Ask the guy behind you.”

  Stone turned and found Bobby Zarem, ace publicist, at the next table. “Hey, Bobby,” he said.

  “Hey, Stone.”

  “You ever heard of a guy named Charlie Crow?”

  “Hasn’t everybody?”

  “You don’t, by any chance, represent him, do you?”

  “Too sleazy for my taste,” Zarem said. “He’s one of Irv Kaplan’s clients. They’re well suited to each other.”

  “Thanks, Bobby.” Stone turned back to Dino. “You hear that?”

  Dino held up a hand while he opened his cell phone. “Bacchetti. Yeah? Yeah. Read it to me. Thanks.” Dino hung up. “Charlie had a juvey record, small time stuff: joyriding in other people’s cars, petty theft. Nothing after that. Maybe the Marines straightened him out.”

  “From what Barton says, they just made him a better criminal.”

  “Barton should talk.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you about the gold double eagle.” Stone told him the story.

  “So, when Barton gets a little short, he can always stamp out another twenty-dollar gold piece and sell it for a few million?”

  “He’s admitted to doing that twice but not recently.”

  “Our Barton is quite the card, isn’t he?”

  “He certainly is,” Stone agreed. “Did I mention that the die for the gold coin was in a drawer of the secretary when it was stolen?”

  “You did not mention that, but I guess it makes Barton more anxious than ever to get the furniture back.”

  “Yes, it certainly must,” Stone said.

  “Well, let’s hope whoever has the thing doesn’t go through the drawers; he might recognize it. What does a die look like, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure, but I once had a tour through a factory that makes class rings, and they had this good-sized machine that stamped them out. They’d put a blank piece of gold, already cut to shape, into the thing, and bang, the thing stamped the design onto it. The die part was pretty small, though, not a lot bigger than the ring it stamped out.”

  “So you could put the die in your pocket?”

  “Or in a small drawer in a large piece of furniture.”

  “Having the die would be like having a license to print money, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would be like not having a license to print money, just a printing press.”

  “That would do me,” Dino said.

  21

  Stone was at his desk at the crack of ten. Joan had left a list of the bills needing to be paid, and it turned out to be a rather depressing list, since there was not enough cash in his bank account to meet them.

  Joan came to his office door. “Good afternoon,” she said archly.

  “Don’t start, Joan.”

  “You saw what we owe?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what we have in the bank?”

  “Yes. Use your own judgment as to which and how many to pay.”

  “Is there any oil in the pipeline?” she asked.

  “There is oil in the ground, and as soon as I locate it, there will be an abundance in the pipeline.”

  “So much for geology,” she said, then returned to her office.

  Stone called Bob Cantor.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Bob, you sound a little down.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t go into it.”

  “Let me ask you a question: Was the guy you saw at Clarke’s Charlie Crow?”

  There was a dead silence.

  “Bob?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “The information came my way in connection with some work I’m doing for a client.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Bob, how else would I be able to guess that? And it was a guess.”

  “I only saw him for a minute.”

  “And he saw you.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Why didn’t he speak to you?”

  “Look, we made a pact a long time ago not to contact each other.”

  “Do you think his presence at Clarke’s was just a coincidence?”

  “It’s a popular place; a lot of people drink there.”

  “Do you think it was a coincidence?”

  Cantor sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just didn’t expect him to pop up on my radar.”

  “Another of your former Marine buddies has popped up, this time on my radar.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ab Kramer.”

  “Holy shit. How’d you run into him?”

  “I was having dinner at a restaurant in Litchfield, Connecticut, with Barton Cabot, and he stopped by our table to say hello, then stayed for a drink.”

  “Why were you having dinner with the Colonel?”

  “At his invitation. I’m trying to help him recover the property he lost when he was, well, mugged, shall we say?”

  “How is he?”

  “He seems to have recovered himself, except that he can’t remember anything about being beaten up.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t think he would conceal anything from me that would help find his property.”

  “The Colonel is a complicated man,” Cantor said.

  “You mean he lies a lot?”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. Let’s just say that he plays his cards very close to his vest. Always.”

  “You know that Kramer has done well on Wall Street?”

  “I read the business pages.”

  “What do you know about Charlie Crow’s business life?”

  “I read Page Six in the Post, too.”

  “So you know that Charlie seems to have an unscrupulous side to his nature?”

  “Charlie Crow was born with an unscrupulous side to his nature. When we were in ’Nam, if there were two ways to get something done, he would always choose the crooked way, and he’d always make a profit doing it.”

  “Would you say that Charlie has a tendency to hold a grudge?”

  “Forever,” Cantor replied.

  “So, you think he mi
ght still be just a tiny bit peeved about the split in your caper with the gold coins?”

  “How’d you know about the gold coins?”

  “The Colonel told me.”

  “Oh. One of the many reasons I was glad to agree never to contact any of the others again was that I would never again have to listen to Charlie Crow bitch about his cut. If he walked in here right now, the first thing he’d say to me would be ‘Y’know, I got screwed on that deal with the Colonel.’ ”

  “Did Charlie have violent tendencies?”

  “Shit, we were in a jungle war; we all had violent tendencies. That’s why we’re still alive.”

  “Would Charlie have trouble letting go of that after reentering civilian life?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. If an argument got heated, Charlie always threw the first punch. Or, more likely, the first kick in the balls.”

  “A street fighter, then?”

  “He wouldn’t need a street; he was ready to go anytime, anywhere.”

  “What about Ab Kramer?”

  “Ab was smarter than Charlie and cooler, too. He’d pick his moment to take a swing at somebody, but he’d get around to it, if he was mad enough. He knew how to stay mad but not show it.”

  “Did either of them ever kill anybody who wasn’t wearing black pajamas and carrying a Kalashnikov?”

  “Let’s not get into that.”

  “Let me put it another way: Would Charlie hesitate to kill somebody who made him mad enough?”

  “He might; maybe he grew up some over the years.”

  “Would Ab?”

  “Ab was too smart for that. If he wanted to do more than just throw a punch, he’d find a way to do it so that the other guy never forgot it. I saw him maneuver a guy right into the stockade once. The guy did a year, and when he got out, Ab walked up to him in a bar in Saigon and asked him how he enjoyed his stay. Ab was fearless.”

  “Which one of them would be more likely to have stolen the Colonel’s piece of antique furniture?”

  “Stone, Charlie Crow might take a broken bottle to somebody who’d crossed him, but he wouldn’t know his ass from antique furniture.”

  “Thanks, Bob. I think I get the picture.”

  22

  Joan buzzed Stone. “Bill Eggers is on line one, and he’s whispering.”