Class Act
- Автор: Вудс Стюарт
- Серия: Stone Barrington #58
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-593-33166-8
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Class Act». Краткое содержание книги:
As Stone sets out to unravel a tangled web of crime and secrets, his mission becomes even more complicated when he makes an irresistible new acquaintance. In both the underbelly and upper echelons of New York, everyone has something to hide — and if Stone has learned anything, it’s that history has a way of repeating itself...
“Yeah.”
“Great, here’s an offshore account number.” He read out a series of numbers. “Offshore to Offshore, that’s secure. I can get it done tonight. I’ve got the goods in stock.”
“Don’t call me in the middle of the night,” Jack said.
“Switch your ringer off. I’ll leave a message saying the flight took off on time. Then you wire the rest.”
“As soon as the bank opens,” Jack said. “Good luck.”
“If I do my job right, I won’t need luck.”
Jack called a number in the Bahamas and gave some wiring instructions.
Solly spent a little more than an hour at his workbench. All he needed was some duct tape, a couple of brackets for backup, some wire, and a throwaway. Most of the time was spent setting up the phone to operate as planned.
Around one in the morning he drove through half-deserted surface streets to Hialeah and found his way to the wrong side of the parking lot fence. He immediately saw something he hadn’t counted on. There was a light burning in the trailer. Somebody working late? Solly didn’t like killing people, and he didn’t take jobs where that was a serious possibility.
He shut down the engine, took a pair of track binoculars, 10x50s, and sighted through a trailer window. He could see half of a lamp burning, probably on a table or desk. He watched for a full five minutes and never saw a person or a moving shadow. He’d need a closer look.
Solly decided to cut through the fence there, behind a bush planted on the other side. He used his bolt cutters, and the work went quickly. He took his toolbox, already packed, from the trunk of the car, pressed down on the flap he had created, and stepped through the fence into the bush. Getting through the plant was harder than he had planned.
Then something happened. A second light went on inside the trailer. Solly crouched down into the plant, becoming one with it. Then came a sort of sucking noise, and the second light went out, then the first, then Solly heard the metallic sound of a door opening and closing, then silence.
Solly bulled his way through the fence, picked up his toolbox and his bolt cutters, and ran for his car. He got in, started the engine, but did not turn on the headlights. He was pointed toward the trailer, but he didn’t see anything. He opened the car door, stood outside, and looked around. The trailer had disappeared.
20
Jack Coulter was wakened from a deep sleep by a muffled ringing sound. He located it in his bottom bedside drawer and struggled out of bed while trying to find the right button. He staggered into his bathroom and closed the heavy door behind him and, finally, found the button. “What?”
“It’s me,” Solly said.
“I told you not to call me in the middle of the night. It’s after three.”
“I’m sorry, but something has gone wrong.”
“What has gone wrong?”
“The trailer has disappeared.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, I installed the fixture and programmed the phone. Then I was getting back through the fence and heard a swooshing sound and saw the lights in the trailer go off. Then I got back to my car and when I turned around, the trailer was gone.”
“It sounds like somebody was using the toilet in the trailer and then drove off,” Jack said. “What do you have to do to get the thing to work?”
“I just call the number. When it answers, I press number one, then set a time, like two minutes, and it goes off two minutes later.”
“Good. Do that.”
“I can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know where the trailer is. There might be people nearby wherever it is.”
“There is hardly going to be a crowd gathering anywhere at three in the morning. Do it!”
“I can’t!”
“How about locating the phone electronically? Can you do that?”
“Well, I’ve got that ‘Find My Phone’ app. Maybe that would work.”
“We’ll never know until you try it.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“No! Don’t call me back. Text me.”
“Oh, right.” Solly hung up.
Jack sucked in deep breaths to get his heart rate down. “Jesus Christ,” he said, to nobody in particular.
Solly opened the app and pressed the find button. The little wheel went round and round for a minute or so, then a map filled the screen with a red dot in the middle. He zoomed out far enough to see the racetrack on the map and figure the red dot was in another parking lot. Somebody who worked for Manny was just relocating it. He pressed the call button for the phone, then chose two minutes, then stared off into the distance toward the track. Two minutes later a fireball appeared off to the right of the track, and a second later, he felt a puff of wind and heard the explosion. Solly hoped like hell that the trailer had not been parked outside someplace where people lived.
He texted a message to Johnny’s throwaway. The flight took off a few minutes late, but it’s gone.
Jack had just gotten back to sleep when he was wakened by a dull chime. He opened the bottom drawer, retrieved and read Solly’s confirmation message. Now he could relax. Except he couldn’t get back to sleep.
Manny Fiore was lifted about six inches off his bed by a siren. It took him a moment to remember that the siren was the ringtone on his cell. He found his pants on the floor and groped for the phone. “Who the hell is this!” he screamed.
“It’s me, boss. Sammy.”
“Why the hell are you calling me at” — he checked the bedside clock — “three-thirty in the morning?”
“I thought you ought to know, boss. The trailer’s gone.”
“Gone? Somebody stole my trailer?”
“No, boss, I hooked up my truck to it and unhooked the wires, like you said, and I drove it over to lot five. I had just hooked it up and was driving away when the whole thing went up in smoke.”
“The trailer caught fire?”
“No, boss, it exploded.”
“Exploded? Why the fuck would it do that? What did you do to it?”
“All I did was unhook the cables, hook it up to my truck, drive it over to lot five, hook up the power and stuff, and drive away.”
“Did you do anything else to it?”
“Oh, yeah, I used the toilet. You might want to get it serviced. Oh, never mind doing that now, it’s gone.”
“My whole trailer is gone.”
“Now you got it, boss.”
“No, I don’t got it. Did the propane tank explode?”
“Well, that was kind of the second explosion, after the first big one. It even made a mushroom cloud, and money was raining out of the cloud.”
“Did you find the safe?”
“Not yet, boss. Everything’s kind of spread out around the parking lot. One good thing, though.”
“Tell me something good, please.”
“My truck’s okay. I got away just in time.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a big, fat, fucking relief!”
“I’m glad you feel that way, too, boss. Is there anything else you want me to do?”
“Yeah, stick around there and see if you can find the safes. There are two of them. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Right, boss. I’ll conduct a search for the safe.”
“Safes. Two of them.”
“Both of them.”
Manny hung up and got into his pants. He was halfway to the site of the ex-trailer when he remembered. Then he called Vinnie.
“Hello?”
“You sound sleepy.”
“Is that you, Manny?”
“Yeah, why are you asleep when my trailer is gone?”
“Your trailer? The Airstream?”
“That’s the only trailer I got.”
“It was stolen?”