Стюарт Вудс - Standup Guy

“Hey, there,” Hank said. “You doing okay?” She came over and ripped the tape off his face.

Stone took some deep breaths. “Yeah.”

“You want some Chinese?”

“Not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” She went back to the desk, and they made room for the food, then served themselves and opened a couple of beers.

Stone watched them and tried to relax.

They finished and Hank resealed the cartons. “In case you want some later,” she said to Stone.

“Okay,” Parese said, “it’s six-fifteen. I want to be done and out of here by seven. We’ll be out of the state by eight-thirty.”

“Then let’s do it.” They resumed their stacking, counting, and sorting, and the last suitcase began to fill up. Stone watched them helplessly. Promptly at seven, Parese closed the last suitcase. “You wheel this to the van, and I’ll get the machine. Who knows, somebody might want a recount when we do the swap.”

“Okay.” She wheeled the suitcase out of the office, and Parese picked up the machine, which looked heavy.

“Need a hand with that?” Stone asked.

Parese set down the machine and laughed. “You’re something, Stone. Hank told me you was a card.”

“A laugh a minute,” Stone replied.

Parese picked up the machine again. “I’ll be back in a minute to say goodbye.” He staggered out of the office with his load. Three minutes later, they were back.

Parese got into his coat.

“We’ll get out of your way,” Hank said, putting on her coat.

But then Parese had a Glock in his hand. “Time to say bye-bye,” he said to Stone.

Hank put her hand on the gun and pushed the barrel down. “No. I said no, Marty, and I meant it. We’re leaving no corpses behind. Nobody will see him until Tuesday morning, and if he could get out of that tape he would have while we were gone.”

“Sorry, babe, but there will be no witnesses.” He racked the slide on the Glock.

Stone looked around desperately for help, but there was none. Then the phone rang. Parese turned and looked at it, and on the third ring the voice mail kicked in.

“Hi, Stone, it’s Kate Lee. Will and I are going to be in New York over the weekend. Can you have dinner with us at the Carlyle on Sunday night? Call me on the private cell number, don’t go through the White House switchboard. Hope to see you Sunday!” She hung up.

Parese was still staring at the phone. “Was that who I think it was?”

“Now are you getting the picture?” Hank asked. “The feds will be after us, too!”

“This is a mistake,” Parese said, but he shoved the gun back into its holster on his waist. “All right, let’s go.”

“You first,” Hank said.

He started for the door.

Hank ran across the room, took Stone by the chin, and kissed him on the lips. “Bye-bye, darlin’,” she said. “It’s been more fun than I can tell you.”

“A word of advice, Hank,” Stone said.

“What’s that, darlin’?”

“You’d better kill Parese before he can kill you.”

“That crossed my mind,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me, and thanks for all that money!” She turned and ran out of the office. A moment later, Stone heard the racing of a motor, then the vehicle drove away.

He started with the tape again, thrashing around with all his strength, and finally he was able to slide under the tape to the floor: a triumph! Except that he was still handcuffed and his feet taped together. He returned to a sitting position, then stood up and hopped toward his desk, flopping down in his chair. There were two things he wanted: the handcuff key in one of his desk drawers and Joan’s .45, which lived in the middle drawer of her desk, always loaded. In case they came back. He decided to find the key first. That would make everything else easier.

He swiveled to his left in the chair and reached as far sideways as the handcuffs would allow, then got his desk drawer open. He rummaged among the drawer’s contents with his nose and chin, checking every cranny, but he found no key.

He started with the left-hand top drawer and repeated the process. It had to be here somewhere. Half an hour later, he still had two drawers to go, and he was exhausted. Then he heard the door open: they were coming back. He laid his head on the cool desktop and waited for Parese and his Glock.

54

“What the fuck?” a man’s voice said. He walked across the room, took hold of Stone’s shoulder, and sat him up in his chair.

Stone looked up at the man with bleary eyes. “Dino?”

“You’re some kind of host, you know that? We let ourselves in, as usual, and went to the study—no lights on. We went upstairs hollering for you, and then we come down here and find that you’re playing some sort of sex game. Where’s Hank? Gone out for lubricant?”

“Dino, please uncuff me.”

“Won’t that spoil things for Hank?”

“Dino, please.”

Dino rummaged in his pocket for his keys, came up with a ring, selected the smallest key, and unlocked the cuffs. “There you go. You want me to leave your feet taped?”

Stone shook his head wearily, rested his elbows on the desk, and put his face in his hands. Dino took a box cutter from a coffee mug on Stone’s desk, emblazoned with the legend NEW YORK CITY MORGUE, and cut through the duct tape binding Stone’s feet.

Viv came through the door. “What’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Dino said. “Stone and Hank have been playing games. He was wearing the cuffs.” He held them up.

“Oh, stop it, Dino. Stone, what’s happened?”

“I hardly know where to begin,” Stone said. He reached across the desk, grabbed a Chinese takeout carton and a pair of chopsticks, and shoveled some fried rice into his mouth. “Starved,” he mumbled. “Nothing since breakfast.”

Dino went to Stone’s office bar, filled three glasses with ice, poured them all a drink, and brought them back to the desk. He took away the fried-rice carton and handed Stone a Knob Creek. “Wash it down with this, and tell us what the fuck happened.” He and Viv took chairs and sipped their drinks, waiting for Stone to swallow.

“Okay,” Stone said finally, after taking a big breath and a big swallow of bourbon. “Hank and her boyfriend, Marty Parese, just stole five million dollars from me.”

“What five million dollars is that?” Dino inquired.

“The five million I was going to use to ransom Hank from Bats Buono—or to pretend to ransom, until I got a shot at him.”

“You said Marty Parese—we’re looking for him already. He blew when the chop shop got raided.”

“Hank and I had dinner last night, came home, went to bed, as usual. This morning Eggers called and asked me to fax him a document. I got dressed and came down here and somebody—make that Parese—hit me with something and knocked me out cold. When I woke up, Parese and Hank were using a counting and sorting machine to put the five million in order. My bank had scrambled it, and they wouldn’t take it back until it was sorted.”

“When did they leave?”

“Just after seven. You were due here at seven, weren’t you? Where the hell were you? You might have grabbed them.”

“The vagaries of being a public servant,” Dino said. “I worked a little late.”

“They sorted and banded the money—it was in two large leaf bags—and packed it into five or six suitcases on wheels. They took the machine with them, too. Parese wanted to kill me, but Hank stopped him.”

“I guess she’s just a sentimental softy,” Dino said. “Except for the part about stealing your money. Any idea where they went with it?”

“I figure they can’t take a plane, the bags might get X-rayed. They were in a van.”