“Is what he’s doing more important than the lives of cops on the street?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why haven’t you turned him in to the NYPD?”
“We only need another day or two to wrap up this whole thing, then they can have him, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’d better hope to God the newspapers don’t get wind of this,” Holly said.
“Oh? Are you going to tell them?”
“I hadn’t planned to, but . . .”
“That’s what I thought. If you blow this case, Holly, I’ll . . .”
“You’ll what?”
“Hey, hey,” Stone said. “Let’s hold it down, all right? People are staring at us.”
Grant threw his napkin on the table and stood up. “If you screw up this case, I’ll have you for obstruction of justice, and I may throw in that money thing, too.”
“Oh? What money thing is that?”
“Your five million dollars.”
“What five million dollars?”
“Just remember what I said,” Grant said, and stalked out of the restaurant.
Stone thought the other customers looked relieved. “Now why did you want to go and piss him off?” he asked.
“I enjoy pissing him off,” Holly said.
A waiter brought three lunches and went away.
“Holly, speaking as your sometime lawyer, he has a point about interfering with a federal investigation.”
“Oh, sure. You think he’s going to arrest me and let it get out that the FBI has been harboring a cop killer?”
“Well, probably not.”
“That was just a lot of bluster. Grant blusters a lot.”
“Especially where you’re concerned, I’ll bet. And he knows about the money?”
“He’s known about it almost from the day I put it in the tree.”
“Does he know which tree?”
“He has no idea where it is. He can’t even prove that it exists, and even if he could, he’d have a hard time explaining why he’s known about it for months and didn’t report it. Don’t worry, Grant isn’t going to cause any trouble for himself.”
“Holly, I’ve been thinking about this, and I think you should leave the money in that tree.”
“And wait for the putative lumberjack to discover it?”
“If somebody finds it, then you can confiscate it as the fruit of a crime.”
“Anybody who found it would be a fool to tell anybody.”