Стюарт Вудс - Contraband

“When, then?”

“After the inauguration, if I win,” she replied. “Sooner than that, if I lose.”

“A difficult choice,” Stone replied, then allowed her to mingle without him. He joined Dino and Viv at a table.

“Feeling better?” Dino asked.

“Not really,” Stone replied.

“It’s a shame Max couldn’t be here,” Dino said. “The two of them would have gotten along like a house on fire. And I mean that literally.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Holly came and sat with them for a few minutes before the party ended.

“I want to pick your brain,” Stone said. “As a former cop and a former intelligence officer.”

“Shoot.”

He told her about the airplane at Fort Jefferson.

“Okay,” she said, “what’s your question?”

“What was in the suitcases?”

“Well, I expect you’ve eliminated drugs and cash, or you wouldn’t be asking me.”

“That’s right.”

“Gold?”

“The load would have been too heavy for the airplane to take off.”

“Diamonds or emeralds?”

“There aren’t twelve suitcases full of those in the Western Hemisphere.”

“A whole lot of something small and light.”

“That’s gotta be it,” Stone said wryly.

“Okay, I’m stumped,” she said. “What’s the answer?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Good luck with that,” she said.

Ten minutes later she was back aboard her launch, then she and her Secret Service detail vanished into the Miami night.

After a leisurely breakfast the following morning, they were driven to Tamiami airport and flown back to Teterboro. By mid-afternoon, Dino’s police detail had dropped Stone at his house, and Stone was back in his office.

“How was your trip?” his secretary, Joan Robertson, asked.

“Fine,” Stone said. “Now, let me ask you about something.” He brought her up to date on the airplane and its cargo.

“Okay, what’s your question?”

“What was in the suitcases? And we’ve already ruled out drugs, cash, gold, diamonds, and emeralds.”

“Perfume,” Joan replied. “It’s compact, and you could get thousands of bottles into those cases.”

“That’s creative thinking,” Stone said, “but I don’t think there’s a market in stolen perfume.”

“Speak for yourself,” she replied. “Let me know when you’ve figured it out. I’ll ask Elise what she thinks.” Elise was Joan’s new assistant. Joan went back to her office. A moment later, she buzzed Stone on the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Elise’s guess is couture lingerie.”

“Thank Elise for her effort. Now, both of you, get back to work,” Stone said. He hung up and called Max.

“Hey, there.”

“Hey. Did you check your schedule?”

“I did. How about tomorrow?”

“Give me a time and a flight number, and I’ll have you met.”

“Will do.”

“I’ve run your problem by a lot of people, including Holly Barker, and not one of them has come up with a plausible answer as to what was in the suitcases on the airplane.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The best advice I got was from Dino: let Dix’s brain settle for a day or two, then hook him up to a polygraph.”

“I like that,” she said. “We’ll have to borrow one and an operator from the FBI, though. We don’t have one on a shelf in our storage closet.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble,” he said.

“That, and a lot of expense. They’ll probably have to send a guy down from Miami, and we’ll have to put him up at the Casa Marini and wine and dine him.”

“Ah.”

“I think I’ll go over to the hospital now and have another shot at him, sans polygraph.”

“Good idea. Call me with your flight information.”

“Will do.” They both hung up.

Max had to wait for Tommy to come out of the men’s room, discard his magazine, and get back into his jacket. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go beat it out of him.”

“You bring the rubber hose,” she said.

They drove out to the hospital, flashed their badges at a nurse who tried to stop them, and went upstairs to Dixie’s room. The bed was empty. Tommy rapped on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, Dixie, you in there?”

Nothing. Tommy tried the door; empty. “What do we do now?”

“They must be making him walk around,” Max said. “They do that sometimes.”

A nurse walked into the room and looked around. “Is my patient in the john?” she asked.

“Nope,” Tommy replied. “I checked.”

“Then where is he?”

“That’s the sort of thing we hoped you would know,” Max replied.

The nurse picked up the bedside phone and called her supervisor. After ten minutes of waiting and talking, she hung up.

“He’s not in the hospital,” she said.

“Swell,” Tommy replied.

Max and Tommy got back into the car. “Where do we start?” she asked.

“The Lame Duck,” Tommy replied. “Where else we got?”

The Lame Duck was getting crowded that time of day. They had to push into the bar server’s station to get at the bartender.

“We need to speak to you, Danny,” Max said.

“Are you kidding me? I’m working on four piña coladas right now,” Danny replied. He was a blur of motion.

“You can talk while you do that,” Tommy said, “or we can talk outside — or even at the station.”

“Whaddya want?” Danny demanded.

“Has Dixie been in today?” Max asked.

“No!”

“Where does Dixie live?”

“Beats me.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

His hands full, Danny nodded across the room at a waitress. “Try her. She’s Mayzie. The one with the big bazooms.”

Tommy elbowed his way across the crowded bar, with Max in his wake. “Mayzie?” he said.

“Who wants to know?”

“We got some questions,” Tommy said. “You want them official or unofficial?”

“Ask fast,” she said, scribbling a drinks order on her pad.

“Does Al Dix live with you?”

“Sometimes, if you can call it living.”

“What’s your address?”

She gave him a street address in Old Town. “Number six,” she added.

“Is Dixie there?”

“He’s in the fucking hospital. Don’t you guys know anything?”

“Not anymore.” Max handed her a card. “If you hear from him, we need to know. He’s running around with three broken ribs, and that could kill him.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mayzie replied, then headed for the bar.

Max and Tommy went outside and got into the car.

“I don’t even know where that address is,” Tommy said, consulting his notebook, “and I’ve lived here for twenty years.”

Max checked the address. “It’s a little alley off Truman Avenue.”

“Don’t tell me, show me,” Tommy replied.

Apartment six was three flights up; it was ninety outside, with the humidity crowding one hundred percent, and even worse inside. They trudged up the stairs and knocked loudly on the door. “Dixie!” Tommy yelled. “Open the goddamned door!”

A woman in a housedress stuck her head out the door of the apartment next door; a puff of chilly air came with her. “You looking for Al Dix?”

“That’s right,” Max said.

“He’s in the hospital.”

“Used to be,” Max replied, handing her a card. “If you see him, tell him to call me. It could save his life.”

“Is he contagious? Is he a carrier?”

“Of what?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know: smallpox, TB, whaddya got?”

“None of the above,” Tommy said.

They ran back down the stairs. Max checked the mailbox for number six, while Tommy got the car and the air-conditioning going.