“How the hell should I know?” Billy Bob responded.
“You don’t know who your enemies are?”
“I don’t have no enemies, to speak of.”
“What about the ones not to speak of?”
“Well, you know, you do business, you piss off a few people along the way.”
“You do much business in New York?”
“Now and again.”
“You do business with anybody of a criminal nature?”
“Well, you never know what folks do in their spare time.”
“You know anybody with connections to organized crime?”
“I do business with businesspeople, that’s all,” Billy Bob said, sounding defensive.
“You piss off anybody in New York?”
“Not that I know of,” Billy Bob said.
Stone was having trouble speaking, now, since he was sitting next to the blown-out window and the icy air was blowing in his face at thirty miles an hour, and his lips didn’t want to move. He put his gloved hands over his face and waited for the car to reach its destination.
THE CAR PULLED UP in front of Stone’s town house in Turtle Bay, and everybody got out. The driver went to the trunk and began unloading luggage, while Stone, in amazement, counted. Eight pieces of black alligator luggage with brass corners were disgorged. Stone reckoned there was fifty thousand dollars’ worth of reptilian baggage there. It took all three of them to get it up the front steps of the house and into the entrance hall.
“Pick me up at nine o’clock in the morning,” Billy Bob said to the driver, “and get me a car with a back window.”
“I’d advise you to travel in something less conspicuous,” Stone said, “since people are shooting at you. Try a black Lincoln, like the shooter; there are thousands of them in the city.”
“Okay,” Billy Bob said to the driver, “something shorter and blacker.” He tipped the man and sent him on his way.
Stone and Billy Bob humped the luggage into the elevator, and Stone pushed the button for the third floor. “Left out of the elevator, first door on your right,” he said. “I’ll walk up; we wouldn’t want to break the cable.”
“What time do you get up?” Billy Bob asked. “I fix a mean breakfast.”
“Not early,” Stone said. “Kitchen’s on the ground floor; help yourself.” He let the elevator door close and headed for his own room, thinking only of how to get the man out of his house at the earliest possible moment the following morning.
4
STONE WAS WAKENED by the smell of seared meat. He rolled over and checked the bedside clock: 8:30 A.M. He had overslept. He struggled out of bed, got into a robe and walked downstairs to the kitchen.
Billy Bob Barnstormer was standing before the Viking range, turning over a thick strip steak on the integral gas grill, while stirring something in a saucepan on an adjacent burner. He looked over at Stone. “Hey! G’mornin’! I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“You did. What are you doing?” Stone looked at the steaks; he had bought them at Grace’s Marketplace, at hideous expense, with the idea of cooking them in the company of a woman he knew.
“Why, I’m just rustlin’ up some grub for us,” Billy Bob said. “I had to go with what I could find in the icebox, ’cept for the grits. I brought those with me.”
“You travel with grits?” Stone asked.
“Only when I go north,” Billy Bob
explained. “You cain’t get ’em up here. How you like your beef cooked?”
“Medium to medium rare,” Stone said, annoyed with himself for cooperating in this endeavor. “I’m not sure I can eat a steak at this hour of the day.”