Stuart Woods - Fast and Loose

“Yes, sir.”

Charley took the elevator down and asked the woman at the desk for his final bill.

“Leaving us, Mr. Fox?”

“Yes, I have to head down to Georgia to tend to a family matter.”

“Will you be returning to us soon?”

“Probably not for several months. I’ll give you a forwarding address.” He gave her his credit card, and she handed him a form. He filled it out, giving the address of the law firm that his family had dealt with, and signed the credit card slip. “Thanks for everything,” he said.

“Come back to see us.”

He gave the bellman a fifty, got into a cab, and as the driver pulled away, said, “Never mind the airport, I’ve another stop to make.” He gave the man the address, then got out his cell phone.

“Stone Barrington.”

“Stone, it’s Charley Fox.”

“Good morning, Charley.”

“Things came to a head with Macher this morning, and I’m out of that place and the hotel. May I come there now?”

“Of course. Come in through my office entrance.”

Stone buzzed for Fred, then got up when Charley came in. Bob got up from near Stone’s feet and greeted him.

“This is Bob,” Stone said. “He’s frisking you for food.”

“Hi, Bob,” Charley said, scratching his ears.

“Everything okay?”

“It is now.” Charley gave him an account of his morning.

“It’s just as well,” Stone said. “Fred will take you next door and get you settled and show you how to work the security system. I’ll call Mike Freeman and tell him you’ll need your office space this afternoon.”

“Thanks, Stone, I appreciate that.”

Jake Herman limped into Macher’s office. “I called his hotel,” he said. “He’s checked out, gave a forwarding address in Georgia, and took a cab to JFK.”

Macher waved a letter. “Turns out he was resigning anyway. He’d already written this.”

Herman looked at it. “Good riddance.”

“I never knew what he did here, anyway,” Macher said. “Still, I want you to keep tabs on where he is and what he’s doing.”

“Even in Georgia?”

“Anywhere he goes.”

The following morning Jake Herman went to the Lombardy Hotel.

“May I help you, sir?” the desk clerk asked.

“Yes, I’ve been trying to reach a friend of mine, Charles Fox, who lives here, but the operator said he had checked out.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Fox checked out yesterday.”

“Do you have a forwarding address? I want to repay some money I owe him.”

She went to a file drawer and came back with a form, and he copied the address. A law firm. He found a seat in the lobby, called the number in Delano, Georgia. He was told that they had not seen or heard of Mr. Fox for more than two years and weren’t expecting to.

Herman found the bell captain and inquired about Fox’s departure the day before. The man called in the bellman who covered Fox’s floor. “Did you put Mr. Fox into a cab yesterday?”

“Yep. He was going to JFK.”

“Do you remember what cab company the car was from?” Herman asked.

“Yeah, it was the Ace Cab Company. We get a lot of their cabs waiting outside.”

“Did you know the driver?”

“Name is Casey. I don’t know if that’s a first or a last name.”

“What time did Mr. Fox leave?”

“About nine-thirty, nine forty-five.”

Jake gave him a twenty and thanked him. He resumed his seat in the lobby, called the Ace Cab Company and asked for the dispatcher.

“Dispatch.”

“This is Special Agent Jacobs with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“What can I do you for?”

“Yesterday around nine-thirty, nine forty-five, a driver of yours named Casey picked up a fare at the Lombardy Hotel on East Fifty-sixth Street. Can you tell me his final destination?”

“Hang on, let me pull up his trip sheet. Here we go, went to JFK — no, he changed his destination.” The man gave it to him.

“That’s in Turtle Bay Gardens, isn’t it?”

“If you say so. Gotta run.” The man hung up.

Jake Herman knew who lived at that address. He went back to St. Clair and downstairs to Fox’s office, then searched it thoroughly. “As clean as a hound’s tooth,” he said aloud to himself, then he switched on Fox’s computer.

That done, he went upstairs and knocked on Macher’s door.

“Come!”

Jake went in and sat down. “Charles Fox didn’t go to Georgia yesterday,” he said. “He went to Stone Barrington’s house.”

“That little shit!”

“His office is empty, the cleaners have already emptied his wastebasket, and his computer’s hard drive has been reformatted, so there’s nothing on it.”

“How the hell does he know Stone Barrington?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’s been spying for Barrington ever since he came to work for St. Clair?”

“It’s possible,” Jake said. “There’s no way of knowing, unless I get a chance to beat it out of him, and I’d welcome that opportunity.” His knee still hurt.

“All right, stake out Barrington’s house and snatch Fox at the first opportunity. Take him to that place you have where you do that sort of thing, and don’t stop until you’re satisfied you have every answer to your every question.”

“Perhaps he should disappear permanently? He’s already left the forwarding address of a law firm in Georgia.”

“I think that might be the most convenient thing to do, but not until you know you’ve got everything.”

“This will be my pleasure,” Herman said.

Stone Barrington sat and read both of the wills that Charley had found on St. Clair’s computer, then he buzzed Joan.

She came in. “Yessir?”

Stone handed her a thumb drive and gave her the two file names. “I want you to find a Kinko’s or something like it, maybe on the West Side, not in this neighborhood, and print out half a dozen copies of these two wills. It’s important that we don’t print or copy it on any of our machines.”

“Righto,” Joan said, and left.

“Those could come in handy,” Charley said from across his desk. Charley’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Stone, then went and sat on the sofa. “Hello?”

“Mr. Fox?”

“Yes?”

“This is Hilda at the Lombardy. You checked out with me yesterday.”

“Hi, Hilda, what’s up?”

“I thought you should know that a man came in this morning and inquired about your forwarding address, said he owed you some money and wanted to send it to you. And then he went and talked to the bellman who brought your bags down. He also sat down in our lobby for a few minutes and made some phone calls on his cell.”

“What did the guy look like?”

“Maybe fifty, over six feet, heavy, looked like an ex — football player.”

“Hilda, thank you so much for letting me know. I want to send you a bottle of something. What do you drink?”

“Champagne,” Hilda replied.

“It’s on its way.” He hung up and called the liquor store he dealt with in the Lombardy’s neighborhood and had a bottle of Dom Pérignon sent to her, then he went back and sat down across from Stone. “Looks like I’ve underestimated Macher,” he said.

“How so?” Stone asked.

“His personal thug, Jake Herman, turned up at the Lombardy this morning and got my forwarding address, a law firm in my hometown. They would have told him they hadn’t heard from me in years, and his next move would have been to find out where the cab took me, which was here. Clearly I wasn’t careful enough.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“I think I’d give you three to one that he’s got people outside right now, watching the house.”