Carnal Curiosity - Stuart Woods Page 0,65
Berta hung up. “Bill?”
“I’m here, baby.”
“Are you on a jail phone?”
“Nope, I’m in the office, sitting at the desk.”
“Take down this number,” she said. She gave him her throwaway cell number. “Now, go buy a throwaway, then call me back.”
Murphy let himself out of the shop and found a RadioShack on Sixth Avenue, then he went home and called the number.
“Bill?”
“It’s me.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Beth Cutter cut a deal, and I got sprung. So did you.”
“Me? I’m not in jail.”
“They yanked the APB as part of the deal. I’m free on bail, and you’re just plain free.”
Anita took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “Wow! I thought I’d be on the run forever.”
“We’re going to walk away clean, don’t worry about it.”
“And who do we have to kill to pull that off?”
“It’s not as hard as it sounds. Jerry Kowalski is going to call me about a big job that’s coming off soon. All I have to do is tell the cops where, when, and who and testify. No more charges! And I think I’ll get all the money back, too. They let me use a hundred grand of it to make bail and gave me another ten of it to live on. I had to give Beth three grand.”
“Cheap at the price. What do we do now?”
“Come on home, and we’ll live as usual, except we can’t pull any jobs, and we can’t sell any of the stuff still in the shop. It’s been inventoried and tagged, so we can’t sneak anything out.”
“Bill, this sounds almost too good to be true. Are you sure it’s real?”
“I’m out, aren’t I? Come on home.”
“I’ll stay the night and come home in the morning. I don’t want to have to deal with rush hour traffic.”
“Oh, I got my bike back. It’s still in the van. We can sell it if we need cash.”
“I’ve got the thirteen grand that that guy Jim paid me for the two pictures, so we’re afloat for a while.”
“Yeah, after we get clear of this thing, we’ll relocate and start over.”
“Where do you think?”
“Somewhere out of the tristate area, I guess. L.A.? San Francisco?”
“That sounds inviting. How long do you think it will take to get clear?”
“The bust will be real soon. I’ll have to testify, of course, but if they bag the big guy, they won’t need me. We could be out of here before the end of the month, and with our money!”
“Okay, baby, I’ll be there by noon tomorrow. Berta sends love and kisses.”
“Yeah, sure!” They both hung up.
Murphy went to the van and drove around the corner to their garage. He parked it, then unloaded his motorcycle.
“Hey, Murphy!”
He turned around and saw another bike owner coming.
“Yeah?”
“Something funny happened. Suddenly, my license place is gone and my bike is wearing your girlfriend’s plate. She must be wearing mine!”
“I’m sorry, we had a little thing, and she must have panicked. She’ll be home midday tomorrow, and I’ll see that the plates are switched back.”
“Do that, or I’ll call the cops on her.”
“Don’t worry.”
Murphy went back to the shop and began to go through the inventory, looking for something that didn’t have a tag on it. He found three pretty good pieces that could bring a buck at the weekend flea market and set them aside.
San Francisco, he was thinking. Maybe even Carmel or Santa Barbara. That would be rich pickings, and they could sell the stuff in Frisco!
53
Stone, Dino, and Mike Freeman sat in Stone’s study and sipped their drinks.
“Okay, Mike,” Dino said, “tell us what the setup is for your jewelry show.”
Mike unrolled a set of plans for the floor where the show would be held, spread them on the coffee table, and began pointing out things. “Sellers are in the suites around the exterior of the building. They wanted privacy to make their sales, instead of a large showroom. There’s a central lounge on the north side of the building, where there’s a bar set up. That takes up about a third of the floor. The rest are suites. We’ll have a plainclothes guard in each suite, and there’ll also be a uniformed policeman with body armor and a shotgun concealed in the entryway closet. There’ll be guards downstairs at the elevator banks and upstairs outside the elevator. To secure the roof and helicopter pad we’ll have twelve men with full body armor and shotguns, hidden in the building on the roof, here, that houses the heating, air-conditioning, and telephone