“Goddamn it, Stone,” Lance said, unusually profane, “you’re meddling in something that’s not your business!”
“Oh, really? A man, an employee of the federal government, leaves the island of my summer home, and boards or is dragged forcibly onto the local ferry, where he is beaten by likely two, probably three, men and forced to drink an entire bottle of vodka, then knocked unconscious and shot twice in the head. His body is abandoned there, later to be brought to and stored in my garage. Subsequently, I am able to discover, by the simple device of reading, that he is carrying a large sum of cash and has a seven-figure balance in an offshore bank and likely connections to the Russian mob. Please tell me how this is not everybody’s business.”
“Yeah,” Dino said. “I want to hear this.”
The waiter came and set Lance’s steak before him.
“Hey!” Dino yelled. “We ordered half an hour ago! Where are our steaks?”
“We’re felling an ox now,” the waiter shouted back over his shoulder, then disappeared into the kitchen.
“He knows I’m in a hurry,” Lance said, sawing a chunk off his steak.
“Answer my question,” Stone said to Lance.
“Yeah,” Dino echoed. “Why isn’t it everybody’s business?”
Lance poured himself a glass of wine. “Because I decide whose business it is, and I have decided that it is not yours.”
“Then why did you ask me to chair an investigation into the circumstances of his death?”
“I didn’t ask you to chair, just advise,” Lance said, making a large portion of a baked potato disappear. “And I realize that was a mistake because you chose that moment to be unhelpful.”
“You chose the moment. And you didn’t want the matter investigated, just buried.”
“Are you now, belatedly, offering to chair the investigation?”
“No. Once again, I am declining to be associated with a CIA cover-up.”
“You make it sound as if my province is cover-ups,” Lance said hotly.
“It is when you want to cover up something, and you clearly want the Collins matter covered up. Besides, I’ve already given you a full explanation of what happened to Collins. I just want to know why.”
“What is your reason?”
“Because Collins’s widow is my client, and she wants to know.”
“So you want to haul an innocent woman into this, just to satisfy your own curiosity?”
“That’s a good enough reason, though not the only one.”
“Children, children,” Dino sang out. “Please! You’re disturbing the other diners. Now they want to know what’s going on!”
“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” Lance said, but he did lower his voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dino announced to the room, “the director...”
Lance stabbed at Dino’s hand with a fork, barely missing, but it had the effect of interrupting his announcement.
“Dino,” Lance said, “you came within an ace of violating federal law by divulging classified information. If I hadn’t stopped you, you would now be on your way to a federal detention center.”
“So now you’re threating the poor, innocent police commissioner with arrest and imprisonment,” Stone said.
“Would you like me to include you?” Lance asked.
The maître d’ strolled over. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said soothingly. “If you keep this up, Mr. Cabot is going to have to arrest the whole dining room, and that would be bad for business. Cool it, please!”
Lance carved a chunk of steak. Stone stabbed it and stuffed it into his mouth. “I’m starved,” he explained, then stood up. “I will seek out dining companions elsewhere,” he said, and stalked out of the dining room.
“His check is yours,” Dino said.
17
The following morning, Stone called Ed Rawls at his home on Islesboro.
“Yes?”
“It’s Stone, Ed. How are you?”
“I’m all right. I take it you’re not, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of this Collins thing,” Stone said, “and I keep running up against Lance Cabot.”
“And that surprises you?”
“It does. Have you seen the Maine ME’s report?”
“No.”
Stone told him what it contained and why he thought the things he did.
“That’s all logical, I guess. What doesn’t Lance like about logical?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. He sat down with Dino and me at Clarke’s last evening and harangued us for half an hour.”
“On what subject?”
“That we should keep our noses out of the Collins affair. What I can’t figure out is why Lance doesn’t want to know what happened to the man.”
“Well, obviously, Lance has a proprietary interest in Collins.”
“As you say, obviously, but why doesn’t he want to know more?”
“Maybe he already knows more, but he doesn’t want you and Dino to.”
“I can’t figure out why.”
“Look, Lance has a lot more stuff crossing his desk than just Collins, and maybe some of it relates. For instance, why did he place an officer in the Penobscot Bay area? That’s a bit far afield, even for Lance.”
“I know. And what are Russians doing up there? Have you seen anything that says ‘Russians’ to you?”
“You can bet your ass that if there are Russians up here, they’ve taken great pains to appear not to be.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that.”
“And maybe, by sitting at P. J. Clarke’s and shouting at Lance about it, you’re causing an atmospheric disturbance.”
“How do you know that Lance and I were shouting at each other at Clarke’s?”
“Everybody who’s anybody knows it by now. I’m not psychic, you know, but I know how you and Lance interact when you’re not in agreement.”
“ ‘Everybody who’s anybody’? Are you speaking of the Russians?”
“No, but you were, and it is a public place. Suppose they were tailing you? Now they know what you know and what you told Lance.”
“There was nobody in the dining room who looked in the least Russian.”
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it, when your surveilling somebody? Should they wear name tags in Cyrillic?”
“Well...”
“It’s a pity you didn’t take the whole course at the Farm, or you’d know better how to conduct yourself in a place like Clarke’s.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Whisper and don’t move your lips, at the very least. Reschedule to a comfortable park bench somewhere, for another. You’re a blunderer, Stone. Acquire some subtlety.”
Stone sighed. “That makes more sense than I’m comfortable admitting.”
“My advice to you is to stop obsessing about Collins for a while, at least until the wrong people stop noticing.”
“That’s decent advice.”
“It’s better than that. How long since you had your house and phones swept?”
“Too long.”
“That’s what I thought. Are you representing the widow Collins?”
“How’d you know that?”
“That’s a stupid question. Maybe she’s working for the Russians. Maybe she is Russian.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You wouldn’t. Lance would. And he has the wherewithal to find out for sure, so let him do the hard work.”
“I know now why I called you,” Stone said. “I’m not getting enough abuse.”
“I’m happy to oblige,” Ed said. “Anything else?”
“Let me know if you spot any Russians on the island.”
“Who, me? I’m not that smart.” Ed hung up, and Stone’s ears were burning.