Contraband

9

The party was festive: forty people drinking Krug and feasting on shrimp gumbo or Lobster Newberg, their choice.

A jazz trio provided the music, while the saloon, the fan deck, and the upper deck provided room for schmoozing and dancing.

At half past nine a tender carrying a team of Secret Service agents pulled alongside. They searched the yacht carefully for terrorists, bombs, and anything else that didn’t belong. Names of the guests and crew were checked against a list with photographs.

At a little after ten PM, a motor cruiser pulled alongside the boarding stairs, and a woman climbed to the main deck and began greeting the guests one by one and by name. Stone was last.

Holly gave him a bigger hug and kiss than anyone else. “I wish we were alone,” she whispered into his ear.

“Give me an hour, and I’ll get rid of them all,” he whispered back.

“And we’d make the morning papers,” she said. “Can’t have that.”

“When, then?”

“After the inauguration, if I win,” she replied. “Sooner than that, if I lose.”

“A difficult choice,” Stone replied, then allowed her to mingle without him. He joined Dino and Viv at a table.

“Feeling better?” Dino asked.

“Not really,” Stone replied.

“It’s a shame Max couldn’t be here,” Dino said. “The two of them would have gotten along like a house on fire. And I mean that literally.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Holly came and sat with them for a few minutes before the party ended.

“I want to pick your brain,” Stone said. “As a former cop and a former intelligence officer.”

“Shoot.”

He told her about the airplane at Fort Jefferson.

“Okay,” she said, “what’s your question?”

“What was in the suitcases?”

“Well, I expect you’ve eliminated drugs and cash, or you wouldn’t be asking me.”

“That’s right.”

“Gold?”

“The load would have been too heavy for the airplane to take off.”

“Diamonds or emeralds?”

“There aren’t twelve suitcases full of those in the Western Hemisphere.”

“A whole lot of something small and light.”

“That’s gotta be it,” Stone said wryly.

“Okay, I’m stumped,” she said. “What’s the answer?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Good luck with that,” she said.

Ten minutes later she was back aboard her launch, then she and her Secret Service detail vanished into the Miami night.

After a leisurely breakfast the following morning, they were driven to Tamiami airport and flown back to Teterboro. By mid-afternoon, Dino’s police detail had dropped Stone at his house, and Stone was back in his office.

“How was your trip?” his secretary, Joan Robertson, asked.

“Fine,” Stone said. “Now, let me ask you about something.” He brought her up to date on the airplane and its cargo.

“Okay, what’s your question?”

“What was in the suitcases? And we’ve already ruled out drugs, cash, gold, diamonds, and emeralds.”

“Perfume,” Joan replied. “It’s compact, and you could get thousands of bottles into those cases.”

“That’s creative thinking,” Stone said, “but I don’t think there’s a market in stolen perfume.”

“Speak for yourself,” she replied. “Let me know when you’ve figured it out. I’ll ask Elise what she thinks.” Elise was Joan’s new assistant. Joan went back to her office. A moment later, she buzzed Stone on the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Elise’s guess is couture lingerie.”

“Thank Elise for her effort. Now, both of you, get back to work,” Stone said. He hung up and called Max.

“Hey, there.”

“Hey. Did you check your schedule?”

“I did. How about tomorrow?”

“Give me a time and a flight number, and I’ll have you met.”

“Will do.”

“I’ve run your problem by a lot of people, including Holly Barker, and not one of them has come up with a plausible answer as to what was in the suitcases on the airplane.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The best advice I got was from Dino: let Dix’s brain settle for a day or two, then hook him up to a polygraph.”

“I like that,” she said. “We’ll have to borrow one and an operator from the FBI, though. We don’t have one on a shelf in our storage closet.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble,” he said.

“That, and a lot of expense. They’ll probably have to send a guy down from Miami, and we’ll have to put him up at the Casa Marini and wine and dine him.”

“Ah.”

“I think I’ll go over to the hospital now and have another shot at him, sans polygraph.”

“Good idea. Call me with your flight information.”

“Will do.” They both hung up.

Max had to wait for Tommy to come out of the men’s room, discard his magazine, and get back into his jacket. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go beat it out of him.”

“You bring the rubber hose,” she said.

They drove out to the hospital, flashed their badges at a nurse who tried to stop them, and went upstairs to Dixie’s room. The bed was empty. Tommy rapped on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, Dixie, you in there?”

Nothing. Tommy tried the door; empty. “What do we do now?”

“They must be making him walk around,” Max said. “They do that sometimes.”

A nurse walked into the room and looked around. “Is my patient in the john?” she asked.

“Nope,” Tommy replied. “I checked.”

“Then where is he?”

“That’s the sort of thing we hoped you would know,” Max replied.

The nurse picked up the bedside phone and called her supervisor. After ten minutes of waiting and talking, she hung up.

“He’s not in the hospital,” she said.

“Swell,” Tommy replied.