“Manny, I won it fair and square,” Howard protested.

“I know you did, Howard, and I’m going to replace your money with other money that won’t get you killed.”

“What do you mean, get me killed?”

Manny put a finger to Howard’s head, pulled an imaginary trigger, and said, “Bang. Like that, killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me explain it to you. A long time ago some money was stolen. In hundred-dollar bills.” He picked one from the stack and held it up. “Like this one. See the red stamp?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t put that on hundreds anymore. They look different nowadays.”

Howard picked up the note and held it up to the light. “Looks okay to me.”

“Well, Howard, I know it doesn’t have the word ‘stolen’ stamped on it, but believe me, it is. Empty your pockets, Howard. All of them.”

Howard began pulling a handkerchief, a comb, some car keys, and a wallet from his pockets, then he produced a money clip holding a thick wad of hundreds.

“Is that all of it, Howard?”

Howard nodded.

“None of it at home?”

Howard shook his head.

“Did you deposit any of it in your bank account?”

“Of course not, my wife sees the statements.”

“I want to know every single place you left one of these hundreds,” Manny said, shoving a legal pad from the table in front of him toward Howard and placing his pen on it. “Start from where the nice man gave you the twenty grand, and go from there.” Manny picked up the bound wad of hundreds and began expertly counting them. His fingers were a blur.

Howard began to make a list.

“Write how many hundreds you left in each place,” Manny said, pulling the stack from Howard’s money clip and counting that.

“There,” Howard said, shoving the legal pad toward Manny.

Manny looked at the list. “Howard, no normal human being could read this handwriting. Take me through it, slowly.”

Howard took the pad back. “Okay, I picked up the money from the man out in the trailer, then I left and came up to the clubhouse, to the bar, and I bought everybody there a round. That came to five hundred and change, so six hundreds.”

Manny wrote down six. Howard continued with his day—lunch, more drinks, then a series of bets at the hundred-dollar window. “I didn’t lose it all,” he said. “I won some back.”

“I’m not interested in what you won back, Howard, just the hundreds with the little red stamp on them.”

Howard worked his way through the list. He had bought a couple of suits at a Lauderdale shop that Manny knew; he had given a hundred to a beggar on the street because he liked the beggar’s dog. Manny knew the beggar; Manny knew the dog. He had sent some flowers to his girlfriend, as distinguished from his wife. Manny knew the flower shop. This continued to the end of the list.

Manny toted up a total. “Okay, you spread around about three grand on the street, and another five hundred in the clubhouse. You bet another four grand. We got a total of twelve thousand, one hundred dollars on the table here.” Manny went through his pockets and produced wads of cash, much of it in hundreds. He counted out the money, then made Howard count it again, then gave him newer hundreds and took all the old ones and stuffed them into his pockets.

“Now listen, Howard,” Manny said. “I’ve made you whole, right?”

“Right.”

“And I’ve saved you from going to prison or getting a hole in your head, if you keep your mouth shut. You going to keep your mouth shut, Howard?”

“Yes, Manny, I certainly am. And I very much appreciate your help in all this.”

“Not a word to another soul, Howard, or people will come after you. If anybody asks you about a hundred with a red stamp, you don’t know nothing, you never heard of such a thing, got it?”

“Got it.”

Manny walked Howard back into the club, then he took the elevator down to the parking lot and walked a hundred yards, where he came to a parked Cadillac with an Airstream trailer attached to it. He hammered a code knock on the door, which was opened by the bookkeeper.

“I got twelve thousand, one hundred bucks in hundred-dollar bills,” he said. “You shipping today?”

“I ship every day,” the bookkeeper said.

“Give me eleven thousand one hundred from your shipment and replace it with this.”

The man counted out the money and accepted the stack from Manny. “What’s this about, Manny?”

“Accounting,” Manny said. “Now send your shipment, and we never had this conversation.”

The man nodded, and Manny left the trailer and went back to the clubhouse.

Meanwhile there were seventy-nine series 1966 hundred-dollar bills in the wind in and around Lauderdale and points north, south, east, and west, for all he knew. Since they weren’t bundled, there was a good chance they’d just disappear, until some scanner in some bank somewhere picked them up. It was pretty near untraceable, and it was the best he could do. He put it out of his mind and went back to handicapping.

25

Stone’s day was closing, and he called Holly Barker.

“Yes?”

“It’s Stone. Dinner tonight?”

“You poor dear, did last weekend make you think I was available for a social life again?”

“It gave me hope.”

“Stone, I had a little break in work, and I was randy, just like you.”

“You certainly know how to sweet-talk a guy.”

“I am once again submerged in work, and there’s no time for sweet talk. I’ll call you if I can ever breathe again, all right?”

“All right.”

“I do love you, baby, but my country needs me more than you do right now.”

“Okay.” They both hung up. That had been a little depressing, but that was the way Holly was. In the meantime, he had no plans for the evening, and Dino wasn’t pretty enough. It occurred to him that he had not called Hank Cromwell, who had drawn such a nice portrait of him. He did so.

“Well, I wasn’t sure you would call,” she said.

“O ye of little faith.”

“You didn’t say you would.”

“That was implicit in my request for your phone number.”

“I guess it was, at that.”

“I know it’s late to call, but would you like to have dinner tonight?”

“I would,” she replied. “Where and what time?”

“Where do you live?”

“Murray Hill.”

“In that case, may we meet at Patroon at eight?” He gave her the address.

“Sounds good. I don’t know the restaurant. How dressy is it?”

“I’ll wear a necktie.”

“Ooookay. See you then.”

Stone hung up, and Joan came to the door. “Anything else? I thought I’d get out of here at a decent hour.”

“Good idea. I just have to sort out what’s on my desk, so I’ll remember tomorrow what I was doing today, then I’m out of here, too.”

“Good night, then.” She vanished.

Five minutes later, the phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Emma. How are you, darling?”

“Just thinking I would never hear from you again. And you?”

“Feeling guilty for not having called since you gave me the name of that sweet DCI Throckmorton.”

“Sweet? Are we talking about the same grizzled curmudgeon?”

“Oh, his mustache and eyebrows could use a trim, and he’s a little grouchy, but he responds well to gentle treatment and a smile.”

“I’m relieved to hear that. I thought he was some sort of android invented by the Metropolitan Police.”

“Well, he knows what he’s doing, I’ll give him that. It took him three days to sort out my problem.”

“And how did he do that?”

“He began questioning everybody with access to my designs, and he can be a very intimidating questioner. He just asks and sits there like he’s daring them to lie to him. Very effective.”

“I must remember that technique.”

“Anyway, it was the art director on our account at our ad agency. He started asking questions in that way of his, and she crumbled like a biscuit. She’d been color faxing somebody in Paris every design of ours that crossed her desk, which was about ten percent of our output, just the things we were using in our advertising.”