Two-Dollar Bill

22

WHEN STONE ARRIVED at Elaine's the following night, Lance was already seated, and Dino was next to him. "Evening, all," Stone said. "And I thought it was just you and me, Lance, tête à tête."

"Oh, we have no secrets from Dino, Stone; you know that."

"I wish I had some secrets from him," Stone replied, as a waiter set a Knob Creek on the rocks before him.

"Never happen, pal," Dino said. "You'll always be an open book to me."

"Isn't it nice to have good friends?" Lance observed.

"It is, when they're not trying to hang a murder charge on you."

"Dino would never do that."

"He's done it twice in the last week."

Dino shrugged. "All I do is follow the evidence, wherever it leads. It's just more fun when it leads to Stone."

"This is just great," Stone said, raising his glass, "Lance is following me wherever I go, and my best friend is trying to send me to prison for the rest of my life. Who needs enemies?"

Elaine sat down. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Only if you're willing to defend me."

"Against what?"

"Whatever these two come up with."

"I'm staying out of this one," she replied.

"I'm hungry," Stone said. "Let's order."

"Well, that makes a nice change," Elaine said, then she got up and moved to another table.

The three of them ordered.

"So," Stone said, when the waiter had left, "did you two come to an understanding on… let's see, it's Whitney Stanford, this time, isn't it?"

"We did," Lance said.

"In spite of the ballistics test," Dino said. "The slug from your forty-four was a perfect match."

"I told you, it's not my forty-four."

"Well, if Lance is going to take Billy Bob off my hands, you're all I've got left."

"Lance," Stone said, ignoring Dino, "come on, give us the real poop on your Whitney Stanford guy."

"I told you, he's trying to sell some new hand grenades to bad people."

"What new hand grenades?"

"That's top secret, I'm afraid."

"Dino and I already have that clearance, and anyway, if Billy Bob knows about them, why can't we?"

"The army has developed a new, rifle-launched grenade that's about ten times as powerful as their current ordnance."

"Sounds dangerous," Stone said.

"That's why it's rifle launched. It can't be activated by hand; it's activated by the rifle, when it's fired, and it has a range of up to three hundred yards."

"Sounds more like a mortar," Dino said.

"In many ways it is. You can imagine what terrorists could do with it in a crowded city. From the top of a building they could lob the things in all directions at, say, a street demonstration or a parade."

"Or in Times Square," Dino observed.

"I shudder to think," Lance said.

"How did Billy Bob get ahold of them?"

"Stolen from an army proving ground in New Mexico; probably an inside job. An investigation is under way."

"How many did he get?"

"Thirty-six."

Stone rolled his eyes. "I can see why you want him so badly."

"And before he sells them," Lance said. "It exacerbates the situation that they're small and can be carried in a couple of briefcases."

Their dinner arrived.

"He has an airplane, you know," Stone said.

"Who?"

"Billy Bob."

"What kind of an airplane?"

"A GIV. That has a range of, what, forty-five hundred miles?"

"How do you know this?" Lance asked.

"Actually, I don't know it. The first time Dino and I met him, he said he'd just arrived at Teterboro and an engine had eaten a bird and had to be replaced. For all I know, the airplane may just be another of Billy Bob's lies. God knows, everything else he's told me has been a lie."

"Not everything," Lance said. "He told you the truth about being in Hawaii."

"You found him?"

"We found out he'd been there, but he had checked out of a cottage at the Hana Ranch on Maui by the time we got there. We're checking on yachts now. I wish I'd known about the GIV earlier; he may already be gone, and he could go just about anywhere in that thing. I'll phone it in when I've finished this steak. I don't suppose you have a tail number?"

"Nope. You think he's already moved the grenades?"

"Maybe not; he's missing one thing."

"What?"

"The modification to the standard rifle launcher that arms the grenade when it's fired. All the ones in New Mexico are accounted for, and if he sold it to these people without the arming mechanism, he'd get a bullet in the brain, or worse."

"The grenades can't be fired any other way?"

"Nope. You could dribble one like a basketball, and it wouldn't explode. The mechanism does everything-launches it and arms it, with a single pull of the trigger."

"You know," Stone said, "every time we invent some new method of killing, the bad guys get it. That's been true from the slingshot to the atomic bomb, and now the administration wants to spend a lot of money developing tiny nuclear weapons. Don't they ever learn?"

"If they did, I'd be out of work," Lance said.