“Right. People come up to look at the view from the ridge some nights, but not often.”
“Can they see your place from there?” Stone asked.
“Not at all.”
“Good. In two days, at six in the morning, you will receive a call there,” Stone said. “You will be asked to drive somewhere, pick something up, and return to your cabin. You will wait there until you are told to drive somewhere else. When that is finished, your work is finished.”
“That’s it?” Richmond said.
“More or less. For you.” Stone looked at Mandor. “You will be needed in San Diego. You’ll be working security detail. You won’t need to do anything except sit, most of the time.”
“That is still pretty vague, Mr. Stone,” Mandor remarked.
“We’ve only just met.”
“So all we get is a good night kiss,” Richmond joked.
“Yeah,” Mandor laughed. “I’m assuming it’s outside the law, this thing we’ll be doing.”
“Laws are sometimes inadequate to deal with reality,” Stone said.
“They still put your ass in jail for breaking them,” Mandor said. “Mr. Stone, twenty-five grand apiece is real good money, I’ll give you that. And I appreciate careful security measures. But secrecy bothers me. A lot.”
“Then you have the option of walking away,” Stone said.
“Both of us?” Richmond asked. “Because I’m okay with trusting you.”
“This is a two-hander, a job for men who are experienced and cool under pressure,” Stone said. “I’ve checked both of you out, Mr. Richmond. But if you have someone else in mind—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mandor said. “I’m in.” A man did not make money by being cautious. If Richmond was comfortable with this, Mandor could live with it.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Stone said. “And don’t worry, gentlemen. As you said, Mr. Mandor, the money is good. Beyond that, however, I must tell you — the upside is truly exceptional.”
“Are you saying there will be more work?” Richmond asked.
“That’s only a small part of what I’m talking about,” Stone assured him. “You can’t appreciate, yet, how significant your contribution will be. When you do, you will be justifiably pleased.”
“It may sound shallow to you, but being well compensated is all the pleasing I need,” Mandor said.
“That isn’t shallow at all, Mr. Mandor,” Stone said. “It’s one of the reasons this nation was founded. So that men would be free to pursue financial achievement.”
Mandor liked the sound of that. Greed as patriotism.
The meeting wrapped quickly after that. Richmond and Mandor chatted briefly as they walked toward the elevator. Richmond had taken the envelope and put it in his shirt pocket.
“Kind of a toady, don’t you think?” Mandor asked.
“Completely,” Richmond said. “Which is why he must be sitting next to some pretty serious power. That’s the only way a toady gets to swagger like he did.”
“I’m with you on that.”
“Let’s go down separately,” Richmond said. “We can meet at the van he’s giving us.”
“Why? You think this is a setup?”
“I think it’s legit,” Richmond said. “But we still don’t know who he is, or if there are other guys watching him. If there are, they may want to grab us, see what he said. If that happens, one of us needs to be a floater.”
A floater was a roughneck term for a jack-of-all-trades who hovered around a group on a rig. He only pitched in when necessary, usually when someone got hurt or a piece of equipment failed.
Richmond had a good point, so he went down first. Mandor followed a few minutes later. They met by the charcoal gray van.
“How does it look?” Mandor asked.
“As advertised,” Richmond said. “The floor is raised slightly in back. There’s a big hollow space under there.”
“What do you think it’s for?” Mandor asked. “Drugs? Illegals?”
Richmond shrugged. “Does it matter? I’ve gone through the border checkpoint on I-15. No one ever stopped me.”
Mandor leaned close to his partner. “What about a whack?” he asked in a loud whisper.
Richmond was silent for a moment. “Okay. What about it?”
“This is hit-level money. We’ve never gone there. Do we want to start?”
Richmond looked at his friend. “We get caught for some of the other stuff we do, it’s ten to twenty years. At our age, there ain’t much difference between that and a life sentence. I don’t have enough to retire. Do you?”
“No.”
“Then I say what the hell, we do this. We just watch every step and be a little extra cautious along the way.”
Mandor pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. Richmond was right. What did it matter? Mandor asked himself. Every job has its risk. He had faced danger every day on the rig, from fires to pump room explosions to metal fatigue that could have resulted in the breakup of the platform. If he were a factory worker, he would face accidents or being laid off. Every day, every breath carried risks. Very few of them offered these kinds of rewards.
“I’ll tell you what,” Richmond said after thinking for a moment. “Let’s have a look at the cash. That will make you feel better.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll leave the van here for a day,” Richmond said. “I don’t want our friend to think we’re careless or predictable. You can come back for it later.”
Mandor agreed. They went to their own cars, left the parking structure, and drove to Flamingo. Mandor fired up a second cigarette while he made his way through the thin, early-morning traffic.
There was no logical reason not to go ahead. Pete Farmer had effectively vouched for Stone. The guy was trusting them with a lot of cash. All they had to do for the rest — and more to come, apparently — was to follow instructions. It sounded easy, like connect the dots. There was just one thing that bothered Mandor. It bothered him more than the other jobs they had taken over the years. Mandor had liked and trusted those other people, the bookies who sent them to collect overdue debts, the mobsters who needed bagmen. He understood them. Eric Stone was a mystery.
But as Richmond had said, they would move one step at a time. In the end, they had one advantage over Stone.
If things went south, they could always put him in that special storage compartment.
NINE
It was one of those days. A day when Darrell McCaskey was working for everyone but his employer.
When McCaskey worked for the FBI, the agents and field directors called things like this tactical exchange activities. TEA time was when operatives for one law enforcement agency or intelligence group were loaned to another organization. Sometimes it was an official and open-ended seconding, such as General Rodgers being assigned to Op-Center. More often than not, it was unofficial, for a day or two, such as Darrell giving a hand to the postal police.
Or being asked just a few hours later to help Scotland Yard investigate the sudden death of William Wilson. Detective Superintendent George Daily, of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division, had been asked by the assistant commissioner to rule out the possibility of any “mischief.” McCaskey and the fifty-seven-year-old Daily had worked together ten years before on an international investigation of the abduction of Chinese-American and Hong Kong women. They were being taken to China to help populate a generation that had been gutted by strict birth control policies. Beijing began to worry that there would not be enough children to staff the military and workforce in the twenty-first century. The ring was broken, though the government officials were never punished.