20
Dirty Joe and Jungle Jane arrived at Gino Bellini’s apartment building and were sent up to the twenty-ninth floor in the elevator. A uniformed maid met them at the door and ushered them into the living room.
“Wow,” Joe said, “what a view!”
“Nice, isn’t it?” Gino replied. “Coffee?” There was a silver service on the table before the sofa.
“Thank you, both black,” Joe replied. They took a seat.
“I assume you’ve tracked Miss Meg to the house.”
“We have.”
“Whose house is it?”
“There’s a brass plaque on the street-level door that says ‘The Barrington Practice,’ followed by ‘Woodman & Weld.’”
“Is the house owner’s name Barrington?”
“That’s our assumption.”
“Have you been to the house this morning?”
“We were there at eight o’clock,” Joe replied, “for an hour and a half. Nobody left.”
“Then they must have left very early,” Gino said, “because they’re not there anymore.”
“Then where are they?”
Gino set an iPad on the coffee table. “They’re in Maine,” he said.
“Maine?”
Gino pointed at the blue circle on the Maine map. “On an island called Islesboro, in a town called Dark Harbor.”
“How’d they get there so fast?”
“We had them at Teterboro Airport for most of an hour, so either her host has an airplane or they’ve chartered something. You’re a pilot, Joe.”
“That’s right—Jane and I both fly a Beech Baron.”
“Did you fly your airplane to New York?”
“No, we flew commercial—that’s why I sent the tools to you.”
“So, rent an airplane and fly up there.”
“How do we find them?” Joe asked.
“It’s a very small town, a village, really. Ask around.”
Joe shook his head. “Can’t do that. When we get the job done, people will remember we were asking.”
Gino zoomed in on the map. “The house is next door to the yacht club,” he said, pointing. “You got an iPhone?”
“Yes.”
“Then use that to find the house—should be easy.”
“We’ll need to book a room somewhere.”
“Now, that’s a problem. There used to be an inn on the island, but it’s closed. I checked.”
“Then we’ll have to be in and out on the same day.”
“There’s an airfield there.”
Joe got out his phone and Googled the island. “Short strip—twenty-four hundred feet. That’s good for light aircraft.”
“Where can you rent an airplane?”
Joe did some more Googling. “There’s a Bonanza available at Teterboro,” he said, “but how are we going to get from the airfield to the house?”
“Rent a car.”
Joe shook his head. “If there’s no inn on the island, I doubt if there’ll be a car rental agency, either.” He did some more Googling. “No, there isn’t.”
“I recall that you’ve had some experience with stealing cars,” Gino said.
“You have a good memory. Let’s hope we can find something near the airport, then.”
Jane spoke up. “This is all too insecure,” she said. “We don’t know who, if anyone, will be at the airfield. We don’t know where the nearest car is to steal. In a small village we stand too good a chance of being spotted and remembered. What we need to do is to spend a day or two on the island, get the lay of the land, find out where the fuck we’re going and how we’re going to get back to the airfield after the job’s done. We need to know if there are cops in the village, and if so how many and how many cars.”
Gino stood up, walked to the window, and gazed at the view for a moment. “You could rent a house or a cottage,” he said. “How about that?”
“Not a good idea. We’d have to land on the mainland, rent a car, take a ferry, and meet a rental agent. We’d be seen by too many people, coming and going.”
“How about this?” Jane said. “We do all that, then we leave the island without doing the job.”
“That kind of misses the point, doesn’t it?” Gino asked.
“Then we rent a boat and go back to the island. You said the house is next to the yacht club, so it’s on the water, right?”
“Smart girl,” Joe said, “but why rent a house when we can just rent a boat, one we can sleep on, if necessary.”
“Where are you going to rent a boat?” Gino asked.
“It’s Penobscot Bay, for Christ’s sake,” Joe said. “The whole area is lousy with boats—we’ll research it.”
“We should buy a rifle with a scope,” Jane said. “It’s Maine, people hunt, so it shouldn’t be a problem. We don’t want to just walk up to the front door and shoot whoever opens it.”
“She’s right,” Joe said. “The boat idea will work, but this is going to be a three- or four-day project, and it’s going to be expensive.”
“I can afford it,” Gino said. He placed a stack of hundreds on the table. “Get it done.”
STONE PICKED UP the phone and dialed a local number.
A gruff voice said, “Who the fuck is this?”
“Hello, Ed,” Stone said. “It’s Stone Barrington. You free for dinner tonight?”
“Where?”
“My house.”
“Are you having lobster?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sick of fucking lobster. I’ll bring my own steak.”
“Not necessary, we possess a steak.”
“Just you and me? Is that the best you can do?”
“Just you and me, and a pretty girl.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Seven o’clock, if you want a drink first.”
“Better your liquor than mine,” Rawls said, then hung up.
“Who’s coming to dinner?” Meg asked.
“Friend of mine named Ed Rawls, lives on the island.”
“What does he do here?”
“Whatever he likes. He retired from the CIA some years back, then moved here. There used to be a little group of ex-Agency guys here, called themselves the Old Farts, but one by one they died off. Ed is the only one left.”
“What’s he like?” she asked.
“Indescribable,” Stone replied.