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“Aw, jumping Jesus, please, come on out,” he said.
“First,” I said, “who is ‘him,’ why am I here, and in general, what the fuck is going on?”
He swallowed. He blinked. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Okay, I’ll stay here,” I said. “Could you please close that door? You’re letting out the air-conditioning.”
He swallowed again, and then he stood up. He said something I couldn’t hear to one of the guards. The guard nodded and hurried through the mahogany door and into the house. And I took a big breath and relaxed a little. Because I was pretty sure now that I had at least one foot out of the cesspool. If I was here to be killed or roughed up, the move would have been for a couple of the guards to grab me and drag me out of the car and smack me around, then pull me into the house by the hair.
That didn’t happen. That meant that, whatever the reason I was here, somebody didn’t want me roughed up. At least, not yet. So far, that was the most encouraging thing that had happened to me since I stepped onto Arvid’s boat in St. Petersburg.
So I sat and waited. There wasn’t much to go on, but I tried to figure the angle anyway. Somebody had grabbed me. Whoever they were, they had picked me up at Boniface’s plane. So the odds were very good that the reason I was here was connected to my delightful holiday on Boniface’s little Eden. But since good old Patrick was my new best friend, it had to be without his knowledge, or he would have said something. And that probably meant that they did not enjoy a really close friendship with Boniface.
Of course, a man like Boniface didn’t have very many friends. They were a weakness, a luxury that added too many elements of risk and too few of reward. What he did have was a long list of clients, business associates—and enemies. Someone doing business with Boniface would know the cost of crossing him. They’d stay away from anything he had an interest in. That left enemies.
An enemy who was really worth his salt would know that taking me hostage would not give him any leverage with Boniface. I mean, “Do what I say or Riley Wolfe is dead” would be a total shrug for Boniface. Like, “Okay, sure, kill him, sorry, Riley—Bernadette, who’s the next-best thief in the world?” So that was out.
But one thing I might provide
is information. I had been to the Fortress of Solitude. So the most likely flavor of enemy would be somebody looking to find out about any weakness the place might have. Nobody would care about that unless they wanted in. The only reason anybody would want in to Cabbage Island was to get Boniface. I mean, unless they wanted the recipe for the Green Slime. Not likely; so it had to mean a rival, probably another arms dealer. The huge fenced-off estate, the big house, the armed guards, and the brass balls of just grabbing me in public all went with that profile.
As it happens, I knew a little about most of the big dealers. Not that I bought large quantities of military-grade weapons. It’s just that they swam in the same murky waters I lived in. And one or two of them got the collecting bug, like Boniface, and became customers.
So I knew the names. As far as I knew, there was only one living in Australia.
His name was Bailey Stone. He’d started life as an American Southern redneck—trailer trash, just like me. But he’d gone into the gun trade and clawed his way up the heap until he was close to the top. Close—he wasn’t in the same league as Patrick Boniface; nobody was. But Stone would just naturally want to be top dog. If you have what it takes to go into that line of work, you also have to have something eating at you, pushing you to be the kingpin. Boniface was, and Stone wasn’t. He was just a wannabe. Anybody in that position would naturally find some way to keep tabs on whatever the current number one guy, Boniface, was up to. Stone would have a source, human intel. It could be one of the mercenaries on Île des Choux, or somebody at the airport, or even Bernadette the Impaler. I didn’t think it was her, but the point is, it was somebody. Stone had to have a set of eyes on Boniface. And whoever that was, he or she had seen me when I showed up on the radar screen, reported the new blip to Stone—and he’d grabbed me.
Why? Curiosity? Probably something more. I mean, he’d want to know what Boniface wanted from me, but that would be secondary. He had seen that there might be a way to use me to get a leg up on Boniface. If it turned out to be no more than a few tips on the defenses at Île des Choux, fine. Stone was still one move further ahead than he had been. And it might be a hell of a lot more than that. No way to know without asking Riley a few friendly questions.
The one thing that really twisted my nuts was that he knew me now. I work my ass off to keep my looks a secret. Boniface had obviously put in a shitload of time and money to track me down. It sucked that he’d been successful, but with his kind of power it was kind of inevitable.
But this guy, Stone—assuming it was him—he knew what I looked like, too. And that sucked way more.
The huge front door of the house swung open, and the same guard who had run in doubled back out. He said a few words to the driver, and the driver opened the door and bent inside.
“Never mind,” I said before he could speak. “Tell Mr. Stone I’ll be glad to answer a few questions.”
The look on the driver’s face was almost worth getting kidnapped a second time. He hung there, bent over, with his mouth open, blinking like I’d thrown itching powder into his eyes. If I’d had my phone, I would have snapped a picture and stuck it in “Favorites.” And aside from being a true hoot, it told me I was right. I was here to see Bailey Stone.
Good to know. I mean, I was still neck-deep in a pool of flaming shit, but at least I knew who owned it.
9
Bailey Stone was waiting for me in a room he probably called the Library. He had it fitted out like that, like it was a room in an old-fashioned Southern gentleman’s estate. The back wall was floor-to-ceiling books on lacquered teak shelving. The books were all leather-bound classics and I’d bet anybody five bucks he hadn’t read even one of them. The other walls, a dark green, were hung with British hunting prints. You know the kind I mean—guys in red coats on horseback, hounds prancing around, some asshole blowing a horn; that kind of ugly dumb-ass pointless crap. The best picture of the whole bunch would probably bring $250 at auction. If they could find somebody drunk or stupid enough to bid.
Bailey himself was pretty much what you’d expect from seeing the room. Stocky, forties, medium-length sandy hair parted on the left. He wore olive-green wool pants and a tan shooting shirt—the kind with a leather patch on the shoulder where you’d rest the stock of your Beretta over-and-under shotgun. He sat in a large, overstuffed chair beside a fireplace. No fire in it—I mean, it was kind of warm outside. Beside him, on an antique end table, was a silver platter holding a decanter and a couple of glasses. And beside the decanter was a photograph in a silver frame. It was a very nice photo, obviously taken candidly. The woman in the picture was smiling at something off to one side. I knew the woman, too.
It was Monique.
I don’t have friends, and I’ve never had a partner. Friends just get in the way, a partner slows everything down, and they are both avoidable risks. The closer to you somebody is, the more likely they are to turn on you. Sooner or later they get jealous, or possessive, or start to resent something you said or did. And then they flip you to the cops, or stick a knife in your head, or arrange for a job to go bad on you. Always. Every time.
So I work alone, and I live alone. But the closest I have ever come to somebody who was a partner and a friend at the same time is Monique. She was probably the best art forger in the world, and she had a flair for costumes—she helped dress the characters I turned into when I was working. I used her forgeries and her tips on disguise on nearly all my jobs. And I had to admit that was partly because I would take just about any excuse to hang around with her.
I mean, she was totally the best at what she did, no doubt about that. But more than that, there was something about her that made me want to paw the ground and snort every time I saw her. I have known plenty of women who were just as good-looking, or maybe even better, but Monique had that something special that just plain set me on fire. I wanted to rub my fingertips across her skin, bury my nose in her neck, nibble her earlobes—you know, all the standard shit for when you have the all-out hots for a woman. What made it worse was that we’d actually spent time doing all those things together.
Once. No matter how hard I tried, Monique wouldn’t go for a repeat.
I stuck around her anyway. Because against all my instincts and hard-won smarts—against at least three of Riley’s Laws, too—I cared about Monique. I mean, aside from knowing that I’d never find an art forger half as good. I had feelings for her, and I thought the world was a better place with her in it.
