“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he’s been spying for Barrington ever since he came to work for St. Clair?”
“It’s possible,” Jake said. “There’s no way of knowing, unless I get a chance to beat it out of him, and I’d welcome that opportunity.” His knee still hurt.
“All right, stake out Barrington’s house and snatch Fox at the first opportunity. Take him to that place you have where you do that sort of thing, and don’t stop until you’re satisfied you have every answer to your every question.”
“Perhaps he should disappear permanently? He’s already left the forwarding address of a law firm in Georgia.”
“I think that might be the most convenient thing to do, but not until you know you’ve got everything.”
“This will be my pleasure,” Herman said.
Stone Barrington sat and read both of the wills that Charley had found on St. Clair’s computer, then he buzzed Joan.
She came in. “Yessir?”
Stone handed her a thumb drive and gave her the two file names. “I want you to find a Kinko’s or something like it, maybe on the West Side, not in this neighborhood, and print out half a dozen copies of these two wills. It’s important that we don’t print or copy it on any of our machines.”
“Righto,” Joan said, and left.
“Those could come in handy,” Charley said from across his desk. Charley’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Stone, then went and sat on the sofa. “Hello?”
“Mr. Fox?”
“Yes?”
“This is Hilda at the Lombardy. You checked out with me yesterday.”
“Hi, Hilda, what’s up?”
“I thought you should know that a man came in this morning and inquired about your forwarding address, said he owed you some money and wanted to send it to you. And then he went and talked to the bellman who brought your bags down. He also sat down in our lobby for a few minutes and made some phone calls on his cell.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“Maybe fifty, over six feet, heavy, looked like an ex — football player.”
“Hilda, thank you so much for letting me know. I want to send you a bottle of something. What do you drink?”
“Champagne,” Hilda replied.
“It’s on its way.” He hung up and called the liquor store he dealt with in the Lombardy’s neighborhood and had a bottle of Dom Pérignon sent to her, then he went back and sat down across from Stone. “Looks like I’ve underestimated Macher,” he said.
“How so?” Stone asked.
“His personal thug, Jake Herman, turned up at the Lombardy this morning and got my forwarding address, a law firm in my hometown. They would have told him they hadn’t heard from me in years, and his next move would have been to find out where the cab took me, which was here. Clearly I wasn’t careful enough.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“I think I’d give you three to one that he’s got people outside right now, watching the house.”
Stone picked up the phone and called Mike Freeman.
“Yes, Stone?”
“Charley Fox has been made by Macher’s henchman, Jake Herman, when he came to my house, and Charley thinks he might have people outside right now.”
“You want me to remove them?”
“For the moment, just photograph them and e-mail me the shots. Later, we might want them removed. You’re going to need to put a couple of men on Charley, too, for the present. We don’t want them following him to your building.”
“Consider it done,” Mike said, and they both hung up.
“Mike’s on it,” Stone said to Charley. “If you want to leave the house, go out of your apartment into the garden, and there’s a wrought-iron gate that opens onto Second Avenue. Come back the same way, call Joan, and she will buzz you in until we get can you a key.”
“I’m sorry to be all this trouble,” Charley said. “I guess my tradecraft is a little rusty.”
“Don’t worry about it, just keep safe,” Stone said.
26
Jake Herman went online to the New York City Department of Buildings website and searched for building permits at Stone Barrington’s house. He was astonished at what he found.
Under the banner of the General Services Administration, a federal agency, he found detailed plans for improvements several years before, and the authorizing agency was the Central Intelligence Agency. For some reason they had seen fit to make Barrington’s house extremely secure. The brick veneer at the front and rear of the house had been removed and half-inch steel sheathing had been applied, then the bricks replaced, and the same with the roof; the windows had been replaced with replicas conforming to the New-York Historical Society’s rules with steel frames and inch-thick armored glass, and the electrical and utility wiring to the house had been reinforced and encased in stainless-steel pipes.
The goddamned place was a fortress. Clearly the Agency had some sort of relationship with Barrington. That made him wonder if Charles Fox had a connection with the Agency, but he didn’t have the skills to crack their computers. He searched his mind for past acquaintances who had served there and came up with a woman about Fox’s age, Kaley Weiss, whom he had interviewed for a job at Macher’s security company a couple of years ago. He called the number he had for her.
“Hello?”
“Kaley Weiss?”
“Who’s calling?”
“This is Jake Herman at St. Clair Enterprises. We met a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, yes, the interview.”
“We have an opening. Would you like to come by and talk about it?”
“Thank you, Mr. Herman, but I’m very well situated in a new job, and I’m not interested in moving.”
“Oh? Where are you? I’ll notate your record for the future.”
“I’m afraid they insist on confidentiality from their employees.”
“Of course. Oh, by way, when you were at the Agency, did you know a guy named Charles Fox?”
“Yes, but not well. We were in a class together during training.”
“Have you heard from him since? There’s something here that might interest him, and I don’t have a number for him.”
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Thanks for thinking of me.” She hung up and made a call of her own.
Charley Fox’s cell rang and he checked the number before answering. “Kaley?”
“Yes, Charley, how are you?”
“I’m very well, thanks, and you?”
“I’m doing great, thanks.”
“Are you still with our former employer?”
“No, I left a couple of years ago. Now I’m with a security company called Strategic Services.”
“I know them,” Charley said. “What are you doing there?”
“Working for a woman named Vivian Bacchetti, who’s chief of operations here. Listen, when I left our previous employer I had an interview with a guy at St. Clair Enterprises named Jake Herman, ex-FBI, thoroughly unsavory character.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and I just got a call from him asking about you.”
“Aha. What did you tell him?”
“He asked if I knew you at the Agency, and I said we’d had a class together.”
That was less than a full answer, Charley thought, since they had been sleeping together most of the time they were at the Farm. “Did you tell him anything else?”
“He wanted your number, but I got uncomfortable and didn’t give it to him, just brushed him off.”
“That’s good,” Charley said. “I worked at St. Clair for less than a month, then Christian St. Clair bought the farm, and I just got out of there.”
“Well, Herman doesn’t know anything he didn’t know before. Where are you living?”
“I’m staying with a friend between residences. You want to have dinner one night soon?”