“With what?”
“I know you keep a secret cache for emergencies.”
“It’s not an emergency yet.”
“Then don’t pay anybody until they send somebody around to break your legs.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Stone called Dino.
“Lieutenant Bacchetti.”
“It’s me. I need a Mob expert; you got a guy over there?”
“Wait a minute. Is this for Herbie’s thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you involved in that?”
“Eggers was hung over this morning, but not enough to forget to weasel out of doing it himself.”
“So he made you do it?”
“Can you think of any other reason why I’d be involved?”
“Joe Giraldi,” Dino said. “He’s one of my guys, and I lent him to the Mob task force. He could do a family tree. He hates those guys, and it makes him good at his work. Here’s his number.”
Stone wrote it down. “Then I bet he would enjoy testifying against them.”
“He might, at that. I hope you don’t think I’m going to testify.”
“You sure as hell are. You’re my only eyewitness; you saw everything.” He paused. “Didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You’ll have Herbie Fisher’s undying gratitude.”
“I’d rather have his dying gratitude.”
“Me, too, but I haven’t figured out how to make that happen, yet.”
“Oh, just pursue this case; it’ll happen. Maybe you’ll happen, too.”
“I’m going to try and avoid that.”
“Good idea. Maybe you better go see Eduardo.”
Eduardo Bianchi was Dino’s former father-in-law. He was Stone’s former father-in-law, too, but that was complicated. “I hate to bug him with something this trivial.”
“He likes you; he’ll give you a good lunch.”
“Maybe.”