“Any bar hangouts?”
“Not when he was with me, but he gave you the impression of knowing every place in town. He liked to stay up very late, later than I did, anyway. I had the feeling that when he left me he usually went someplace else, but I never knew where.”
“When you were at his place did he ever get phone calls?”
“Often.”
“Did you ever know from who?”
“No, but most of them were probably women. He never called anybody by name on the phone. I only ever saw him make one phone call – it was long distance, but I don’t know to whom. Is this helping at all?”
“You’ve told me a lot, but nothing that would help me find him.”
“Now that he’s gone, why would you want to find him?”
“It’s possible that he might be involved in this DIRT business. Would that surprise you?”
“Nothing about Jonathan would surprise me. If you told me he was a Russian spy I wouldn’t be bowled over.”
“Anything else you can remember about him?”
“He wasn’t the kind to be very forthcoming; if anything, he always seemed to have something to hide.”
The phone rang, and Stone picked it up.
“Hi, it’s Cantor.”
“Hi.”
“I checked out things at the Spirit cologne office. Turns out Dryer wasn’t hired through a modeling agency. A girl who works there met him at a party and thought he looked right; she got her boss to hire him as a one-shot thing.”
“Can you find out how they paid him? I’d love to have a Social Security number.”
“He insisted on cash. The phone number she had for him was the East Ninety-first apartment.”
“Does she know anybody else who knows him”
“Not a soul; it’s a dead end.”
“What’s happening on your tape stakeout?”
“What’s happening is, she comes home at night, fixes dinner, and cries. He hasn’t called again.”
“Sounds like she’s been dumped; you can pull the plug on that one.”
“Will do. What else can I do for you?”
“Why don’t you drop by here in, say, an hour; we’ll see where we are.”
“See you then.”
Stone hung up.
“We’ve only got an hour?” she asked with mock sadness.
“Let’s use it well,” he replied, rolling toward her. Then the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dino. I want you to come over here and go over some stuff with me.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Around eleven?”
“That’s good; you can buy me lunch.”
“Can I bring Cantor?”
“Why not? Maybe he’ll have some sort of a take on this.”
“On what?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” Dino hung up.
Stone hung up and rolled toward Arrington again. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“Don’t let it happen again,” she said.
He reached over and took the phone off the hook.
“Good boy,” she said, reaching for him.
Chapter 40
Stone and Bob Cantor arrived at the 19th Precinct on time and were sent to Dino’s office right away. Both men still knew detectives working there, and they said a few hellos along the way. Stone hadn’t often been back to the 19th since he’d taken retirement, and he’d never been really close to anybody there but Dino, so his reception was on the cool side. Once they were in Dino’s office, the reception got hostile.
“You remember Ernie Martinez, Stone,” Dino said.
“Sure. Hi, Ernie.”
Martinez nodded. He was a portly detective of Puerto Rican extraction who didn’t like anybody who wasn’t Puerto Rican. He didn’t like Dino much, and he certainly didn’t like Stone.
“Ernie’s the lead detective on the burglaries.”
Stone and Cantor took chairs, and Dino moved a stack of files to the middle of his desk, not a high stack, because each of them was thin, containing only a sheet or two of paper.
“Stone,” Dino said, “three of the eight burglary victims made the Dryer guy. Turns out they all met him at the same party, which took place in one of the burgled residences.”
Stone nodded; he wasn’t surprised.
Dino continued. “He was with Arrington Carter on that occasion; she introduced him around.”
“Were any of the other victims at the same party?”
“No. But we’re going to have to talk to Arrington. You want to bring her in?”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Stone said.
Martinez sat up, bristling. “You don’t think it’ll be necessary! Since when does anybody give a shit what you think is necessary, Barrington?”
“Shut the fuck up, Ernie,” Dino said. “For starters, I care what he thinks. I’ll get to you in a minute.” He turned to Stone. “Talk to me about Arrington.”
“I talked to her at length this morning about Dryer, so right now I know what she knows; that’s why it won’t be necessary to get her in here.”
“So what does she know?”
“Not a whole lot; this Dryer character is real good at not letting anybody know anything about him that counts. Arrington did take him to some parties, though; several of them.”
“Could you ask her which parties, in which apartments?”
“I’ll get a list, and we can compare them to the files. My hunch is they’ll match up.”
“Okay, I want you and Bob to take a look at each of these files, and I will, too.” Dino passed out the files, and they all read each of them, which didn’t take long, since each consisted of a burglary report and a list of stolen items.
“Money and men’s jewelry,” Cantor said. “Three watches out of eight hits.”
“Arrington says he likes watches, that he had three or four,” Stone said.
“He could be wearing yours on his charm bracelet right now,” Martinez said.
“Probably not,” Stone said. “It had my name engraved on the back, so he’s probably tossed it. He’s too smart to get caught with that. Same thing with Arnie’s watch; he didn’t take that either.”
“Arnie’s watch?” Martinez asked.
“That’s another case,” Dino said. “Don’t you worry about it; stick to burglary.”
“All the entries were through the front door,” Cantor said, “and alarms didn’t stop him, so the guy’s a mechanic.”
“Not much doubt about that,” Martinez said.
“Did you dust anything, Ernie?” Stone asked.
Martinez grimaced. “You know we don’t have time for fingerprinting at small-time jobs like this.”
“One of them wasn’t so small time,” Stone said. “He lifted thirty-five thousand dollars in cash from a wall safe.”
“That, I dusted,” Martinez said. “Nothing there but the owner’s prints.”
“The watches were all Cartiers,” Cantor said. “Two Tank models and a Panther. The guy’s got taste.”
Dino spoke up. “Anything else to ask Ernie, Stone? Bob?”
“Not right now,” Stone said.
Cantor shook his head.
“That’s all for now, Ernie; I’ll get back to you.” Dino waited until Martinez left, then he turned to Stone. “What’s this about Arnie?”
Stone nodded. “There’s something I’d like Ernie to ask the victims about, but I think it’s better if the suggestion comes from you.”
“Right,” Dino agreed. “What is it?”
“I’d like to know if any of the victims lost a twenty-five automatic in the burglaries.”
Dino nodded slowly.
Cantor spoke up. “There’s nothing in any of the reports about a stolen gun.”
Stone shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t happen, but if the gun was unregistered, the victim would be reluctant to mention it; it wouldn’t be a big loss. If Ernie could let each of them know he’s not interested in pursuing the lack of registration, somebody might admit to it.”
“Good point,” Cantor said.
“In fact, Dino, I think it might be best if you called each of these people. Ernie just might not be the kind of guy these people would feel comfortable talking to about this. Rank would impress them.”