“Is the million bucks starting to sound any better, Sam?” Stone asked.
“No,” Sam replied, and he reached around behind him as if to draw a weapon from the small of his back.
Stone looked at his .380; the magazine was lying beside it, and he didn’t carry with one in the chamber. The cosh, however, was there, too. As Sam was halfway to his feet, Stone grabbed the cosh and swung it as hard as he could at Sam’s head. It connected at the temple with a loud thud, and Sam collapsed into a heap, a short-barreled .38 revolver lying beside him.
Stone tried to get up, but his feet were still taped to the chair at the ankles. He saw a coffee mug on the desk with assorted implements in it, including a box cutter. He grabbed it and sawed his feet loose, then got up and kicked the .38 aside, grabbed his .380 from the desk, shoved the magazine into it, worked the slide, and pointed the weapon at the head of the inert Sam Spain. He prodded at the man with his toe. “Get up,” he said.
Sam did a convincing job of playing the corpse.
Stone was feeling Spain’s neck for a pulse when he heard the front door of the bar crash open, followed by the splintering of the rear outside door. A uniformed officer stepped through the rear door, followed by another through the door from the bar. Each held a pistol in front of him.
“Drop it!” both of them shouted in unison.
Stone set his .380 on the desk and stepped away from it, his hands up.
“What’s the matter with him?” one of the cops said to Stone, indicating Sam Spain.
“I hit him in the head with the cosh on the desk,” Stone replied. “He was about to shoot me with the .38 over there.” He pointed at the gun on the floor.
“Who are you?” the cop asked.
“Barrington.”
“You got some ID?”
Stone reached for his wallet.
“Careful,” the cop said; his gun was still pointed at Stone.
Stone held his jacket open. “The only weapon I have is on the desk.” Gingerly, he fished out his wallet and handed the man his driver’s license.
“It’s okay,” the cop said to his partner, and they put away their weapons. Sounds of others entering the bar drifted in.
Stone knelt by Sam Spain and held two fingers to the artery in his neck. “Weak and thready,” he said to the cop. “You’d better call an ambulance.”
“Who is he?”
“That’s Sam Spain,” the other cop said. “Do like the man says.”
Stone didn’t wait for him to move. He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed 911, then handed the cop the phone. The man called for an ambulance, then hung up.
“We’re supposed to tell you that the commissioner is on his way,” the cop said.
The ambulance pulled into the alley, and two EMTs took charge of Sam Spain. “What happened to him?” one of them asked nobody in particular.
“Blow to the head, left temple,” Stone said.
“Blow with what?”
The cop picked up the cosh and struck the desktop with it.
“Gotcha,” the EMT said. He slipped an oxygen mask onto Sam Spain, then stripped off his jacket, pushed up a sleeve, and started an IV.
“Is he going to make it?” Stone asked. He wanted Sam to make it because he wanted to know to whom the picture was being delivered, and because he didn’t want to answer a lot of questions if Sam died.
? ? ?
DINO CAME INTO THE OFFICE from the bar as Sam was being hauled out on a stretcher; he was followed closely by Art Masi.
“Jesus, Stone, what did you do to the guy?”
“I hit him with the same cosh the other guy hit me with,” Stone said. He picked up the ice bag from the floor and pressed it to his head.
“You want an ambulance?”
“No, but I want to be there when Sam Spain wakes up.”
“If he wakes up,” Dino said. “You want a lawyer?”
“I am a lawyer, Dino, remember?”
“Okay, consider that your rights have been read to you. Now, what the fuck happened?”
“I made Sam Spain an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he refused it. He wanted five million. I got Arthur Steele on the phone, and he declined, rather rudely, to pay it. Sam put the picture in a laundry bag and gave it to his guy and told him to deliver it. The guy left, and Sam reached for that .38 over there on the floor. I grabbed the cosh from the desk and hit him.”
“How hard?”
“As hard as I could—he had the .38 in his hand.”
“Okay,” Dino said, “I buy that. Get your money, and let’s go to the hospital.”
“Stone,” Art Masi said, “where is the picture being delivered?”
“I have no idea,” Stone replied, “and I don’t know who the guy delivering it is, either. We’ll have to ask Sam Spain, if he wakes up.”
37
STONE RODE WITH DINO, in silence; his head wasn’t too clear, and he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Can you believe they took him all the way downtown to Bellevue?” Dino complained from the front seat.
Stone still said nothing.
“Are you all right back there?” Dino asked.
“Sure,” Stone muttered. Using the siren, they got downtown remarkably fast and pulled up at the ER entrance.
Stone got out of the backseat, leaned against a wall, and vomited, then he sagged to his knees.
Dino snagged a gurney from just inside the door and he and his driver got Stone aboard.
? ? ?
STONE STIRRED AND OPENED his eyes a little, then wider. The blinds in the room were drawn, and only thin rays of daylight penetrated. He quickly discovered that he was wearing an oxygen mask and a hospital gown, and an IV was plugged into his arm. He felt around for the buzzer and couldn’t find it; he tried to reach for the phone and failed, nearly falling out of bed, then he passed out again. The only sound he heard was a faint beeping, which seemed to be in rhythm with his heart.
? ? ?
THE NEXT TIME he stirred, a nurse was wiping his face with a damp cloth, and Dino was sitting in a chair in the corner.
“Is he alive?” Dino asked.
“More or less,” the nurse replied, “but I don’t think he’s enjoying it very much.”
Dino got up, walked to the bedside, and peered closely into Stone’s eyes.
“Kiss me, darling,” Stone managed to say.
The nurse broke up.
“In your dreams,” Dino said.
“Is Sam Spain talking?”
“He’s barely breathing, but he looks better than you.”
Stone drew a deep breath and let it out. “There, is that better?”
“Only compared to how you were before you passed out.”
“Make this thing sit up,” Stone said, and the nurse came and put his finger on the button. “That feels better,” Stone said from a half-sitting position. “What happened?”
“You came within an ace of puking in my car,” Dino said, “in which case I would have shot you.”
Stone looked around the room; his was one of four beds, and one of the other three contained a lump. “Who’s that?”
“The presidential suite was unavailable, so you have to share.” Dino pointed. “That’s Sam Spain.”
“You both have the same concussion,” the nurse said, “and apparently, from the same weapon. You must have hit Mr. Spain pretty hard.”
“I did the best I could,” Stone replied. “I’m thirsty.”
“Water or orange juice?”
“Orange juice. I think my blood sugar is low.”
She put a glass straw in his mouth and he sucked up most of the juice. “Better,” he said.
“I’ve got to see some other patients,” the nurse said. “Don’t die on me.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Dino pulled his chair up to the bedside. “The guy who coshed you is Sol Fineman,” he said, “a well-seasoned gangster.”
“Where is he?”
“God only knows.”
“Where’s my briefcase?”
“In my car, I think.”
“There’s an eight-by-ten transparency of the picture in there. Scan it and circulate it in the art world as fast as you can. Let’s make it as hard as possible for him to move it.”
“Hang on,” Dino said. He went to the door and let Art Masi in.
“Circulate the transparency in my briefcase, Art.”
“That was done when the painting first disappeared.”
“Then do it again,” Dino said. “Memories fade. The transparency is in Stone’s briefcase in the backseat of my car. Don’t steal the money.”