Quick & Dirty

28

Stone met Bob Cantor at 740 Park at ten the following morning. A doorman wearing a name tag with the name “Gino Poluci” greeted him at the reception desk. “Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” Gino said. “Ralph called me last night and said you’d like to get into the storage area for 15A?”

“That’s correct, Gino,” Stone replied. “This is my associate, Bob Cantor.”

“Oh, yes, we’ve met before, haven’t we? You’ve done some security system work here.” The two men shook hands.

Gino got the key and led them down to the storage unit. Stone found it apparently undisturbed from the day before. “Back here, Bob,” he said, leading him to the three pieces of office furniture.

Cantor knelt and produced a key ring containing a couple of dozen similar keys, and he began working his way through them, inserting them into a filing cabinet lock. “If we get one that works, chances are it’ll be keyed to all three pieces,” he said. “If not, then I’ll have to do some picking.” Nothing he had worked.

Stone watched as Bob took a small zippered case from his shirt pocket and chose two of a number of lock picks.

“I made these myself,” Cantor said, “cut and ground from hacksaw blades.” He started on a filing cabinet, and after a minute or two, he opened the drawer.

“Go ahead and finish all three,” Stone said, standing back and giving him more room.

Cantor had all three done very quickly.

Stone knelt and began going through the file drawers, first looking for the painting itself, then glancing at the names of files. This drawer was mostly old tax returns. He went through the second drawer in the cabinet, then did the same with the second filing cabinet. All that remained was the larger storage cabinet. He swung the door back to reveal a stack of reams of printer paper. On top rested a FedEx box. Stone picked it up gingerly, by the corners: it was addressed to Mark Tillman. It was empty. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go back upstairs.”

“Find what you’re looking for, Mr. Barrington?”

“I found the FedEx box, but not the contents.”

They went back up the stairs. As they arrived at the desk a man in a FedEx uniform placed an envelope on the desk and gave Gino an electronic box on which to sign. Stone watched as the doorman scrawled his name: only the G and the P were legible; the rest was a scrawl.

Stone thanked Poluci and he and Bob Cantor left. Outside, Stone stopped and handed the FedEx box to Cantor, his hand inside it. “Bob, I know this is a long shot, because a lot of people may have handled it, but I’d like for you to go over this box very, very carefully, see if you can find any legible prints, and if you do, run them against every database you’ve got.”

“Okay, I’ll go back to the office and start on it now,” Cantor said. “I’ll try to have something for you late this afternoon.”

The two men shook hands, and Stone sent Cantor on his way. He decided to walk back to Turtle Bay; it was thirty blocks or so, but the exercise wouldn’t kill him. He began thinking his way through the steps of assembling and sending a FedEx package. You had to put stuff inside, then you had to fill out a waybill or print one from your computer. You’d seal it, then it would begin its journey through the system. Finally, it would be received at the front desk of the building and delivered to the recipient. Except this one wasn’t delivered, because the recipient was dead. It apparently didn’t get to Morgan or her housekeeper, either. It was emptied and the box placed in a locked storage cabinet in a locked apartment storage unit.

The last thing to happen would be for the FedEx box to be discarded, but that hadn’t happened. Someone had opened two locks in order to place it in a steel cabinet, to save it as if it were important. Why? It couldn’t be reused, and it didn’t make any sense to save it.

By the time he got home his feet were hurting, and so was his head.

Stone said to Joan as he passed her desk, “Hold my calls, will you, please?” He took off his jacket, stretched out on the leather sofa in his office, and dozed.

Somebody took hold of Stone’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Bob Cantor’s on the phone,” Joan said. “He said you’d want to hear from him.”

Stone sat up and reached for the phone on the coffee table. “Bob?”

“Hey. I got your package done.”

“What did you find?”

“I got four legible prints off it — two of them were FedEx employees, who would have handled it in the course of business. One was a Margaretta Fernandez, who, according to her Social Security records, is employed as a housemaid for one Mark Tillman. The other is Pio Farina. This one had a juvie record of being a suspect in several burglaries, but no charges were brought. That’s it.”

“Thank you, Bob, that’s very helpful. Send me your bill.”

“Okay. Call when you need me.”

Stone hung up the phone. Pio’s print made perfect sense: he would have handled it on the way to the FedEx store to send it. The maid? She might have received it from one of the doormen. Not Gino, because someone else had signed his name; probably not Ralph, because he had had a chance to pick up $10,000 and didn’t. Certainly it was someone who had a key, not just to the storage units, but to the steel file cabinets, as well. Morgan? She fit the bill. So did the maid, who might have known where the key would be kept in the household.

Stone picked up the phone and called Morgan.

“Hello, there,” she said. “It’s been forever.”

“It was the day before yesterday.”

“In my book, it’s forever. What can we do about that?”

“Let’s have dinner tonight,” Stone said.

“I am agreeable to that. Why don’t I cook something for us?”

“I was not aware that you possessed that skill set.”

“My dear, I am a certificated graduate of Cordon Bleu — London, not Paris. I was sent to the forty-day bride’s course, created for young women of good family who are unacquainted with the concept of boiling water.”

“And how did you do?”

“Top of my class,” she said.

“Then I’ll risk it. What time?”

“Say, seven o’clock?”

“You’re on.”

“Please wear tearaway clothing,” she said. “Cooking makes me amorous.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”