A Safe House

58

Stone was awakened by the sound of his doorbell ringing. He checked his bedside clock: eight o’clock. Joan wouldn’t be in yet. He pressed the intercom button, which turned on a camera, too. “Yes?”

“FedEx delivery,” a voice said. Stone could see, from slightly above, a baseball cap that had the FedEx logo on it. “You need a signature?”

“No, but I can’t leave it on the doorstep, either.”

“I’ll buzz you in. Just leave it inside the door, on the table.”

“Right.”

Stone pressed the correct button to open the door. When he checked the camera again, the FedEx guy was gone. Stone was too sleepy to go downstairs and open the package. He rolled over and went back to sleep. Jenna slept soundly beside him.

Slade and Quince were inside the door before closing it, and so was Slade’s suitcase. They opened it and began assembling weapons.

Quince held up a cane. “I like it,” he said. “I can rap somebody with the hand grip and hit ’em hard with the weighted tip. Where to?”

“He sounded sleepy to me, so I’m going to leave him in peace upstairs. Let’s go to the office. I want to deal with that secretary when she comes to work.” They found their way to Stone’s office and made themselves comfortable there. Each of them had a silenced 9mm handgun that had been loaded and wiped clean, inside and out. Each wore latex gloves.

“How do you want to do this?” Harley asked.

“One at a time,” Wallace replied. “We’ll take the secretary and the butler guy down here, then go upstairs and take Barrington and my bitch. If we get lucky, I’d like to take them while they’re fucking.”

Harley laughed. “And what shall I do?”

“Watch my back. Use your cane freely.”

Joan made a deposit at the bank as soon as it opened, then started for Stone’s house, less than two blocks away.

“What’s the holdup?” Quince asked. “It’s a little after nine o’clock.”

“Relax. Maybe she made a stop on the way to work.”

“Whatever you say.”

“What about the butler?”

“I saw him leave the house right before you got here. He got a cab somewhere.”

Joan turned the corner. As she did, she saw something in the block that shouldn’t have been there. All the cars normally parked on the downtown side of the street should have moved, for the sake of alternate-side parking, which the residents adhered to for street cleaning. But today there was a single car parked there, where it shouldn’t be: a Lincoln Town Car, one she didn’t know. She reached into her handbag.

Upstairs, Stone got out of the shower and put on a terry-cloth robe. Then from downstairs came a loud noise, like the slamming of a heavy door. Stone stopped in his tracks: nobody in his household slammed doors. He went to his dressing room and removed his Colt Government .380 from the shoulder holster that hung on a hook with his trousers. He checked the weapon, worked the action, set the safety, then stuck a spare magazine into the left pocket of the robe and walked, barefoot, to the head of the stairs, where he stopped and listened. He heard a loud crash, one he had heard before and recently: glass breaking. The new glass for his coffee table had been delivered the afternoon before, and someone had broken it already. He started down the stairs at a trot, his hand in his robe pocket, on the .380.

At the foot of the stairs, he stopped and listened again. Dead silence. This was crazy; loud noises followed by silence. Made no sense. He tiptoed toward his office door, pistol out, safety off. He reached for the knob and turned it slowly. He had a full grip on the knob when the door was snatched open, taking him with it. He had time to see Joan sprawled on the office floor before he was struck on the back of the neck with a heavy object. The last thing he heard was a high-pitched laugh from a male.

Stone came to slowly, and his hands were secured behind his back. He could see shards of broken glass on the floor in front of him, but he couldn’t see anything else.

“Wakey, wakey,” a deep voice said. “Damn, Harley, that cane of yours is a magic wand.”

“Ain’t it?” a higher-pitched voice replied.

Someone sat Stone up and leaned him against a leather club chair. He could see Joan now, sprawled on her back, her .45 a few feet away, cocked. She had fired a round before Harley could shoot at her, he thought. If she had followed his instructions and aimed for the head, somebody must be dead, but who?

“Who’s dead?” Stone asked.

“You in just a minute,” Wallace said. “All the guests for our party haven’t arrived yet. Go upstairs and get her, Harley.”

Harley left the room, using a black, metallic cane to make his way.

Wallace Slade picked up Joan’s .45, then sat down in the other club chair, facing the door. “Man, it’s nice to be in control of things again,” he said, chuckling.

Stone watched as Joan began to move, and after a moment, she sat up, looking around her.

“I’ve got it,” Wallace said, showing her the .45.

“You’re a lucky guy,” Joan replied. “Lucky I don’t have it.”

“I’d shoot you with your own gun,” Wallace said, “but it’s too noisy. The neighbors might complain.” He held up his silenced 9mm. “This is the right tool,” he said. “You always should use the right tool for any job.”

“I don’t think you want to do that, Wallace,” Stone said.

“Why not?” he asked. Then there was a muffled popping noise, and a red splash appeared on his forehead.

“That’s why,” Stone said.

Jenna came into the room, holding the little silenced CIA pistol ahead of her. “Joan,” she said, “I shot him in the head.”

“And a very nice job it was, Jenna,” Joan replied. “But where’s Harley?”

“I shot him in the head, too.”