“I’ve sent Milton and Reuben up to Atlantic City to do a recon on Bagger.”
“You did what?” she screamed into the phone. “Are you insane!”
“Now there’s the Annabelle I’ve come to know and admire.”
“That’s suicide, sending them to Bagger’s turf.”
“They know how to take care of themselves.”
“Oliver, I left town so you wouldn’t get involved.”
“Then come back, because we are involved.”
“I can’t come back. I won’t come back.”
“Then just answer one question for me.”
“What?” she said warily.
“What did Jerry Bagger do to you to make you rip him off for millions?”
“I ripped him off because that’s what I do. I’m a con.”
“If you keep lying to me I’m going to get really upset.”
“Why do you care?”
“You helped us, now it’s our turn to help you.”
“I helped myself. You guys were just in the way.”
“So be it, but you still need us. And we’re wasting time. If Bagger’s as good as you say he is, you may not have much time left.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence.”
“I’m just being practical. Where are you?”
“Forget it.”
“Then let me guess. But if I guess correctly you have to tell me where you are. Deal?”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“I said deal?”
“Fine. Deal.”
“Okay, you’ve taken my advice and you’re trying to pin something on Bagger. And what you’re trying to pin on him is the reason you ripped him off. And that’s where you are right now, at a place where he did something so bad to you or yours that you had to come back at him. And do it damn hard. Am I right?”
Annabelle was dead silent.
He said, “Now, since I won the bet you have to tell me where you are.”
“You didn’t give me a specific location.”
“I didn’t say I’d give you a specific location. In fact, what I told you was far more than just naming a town. But if you want to welch on a bet.”
“I never go back on a bet.”
“Then tell me.”
There was a very long pause. “I’m in Maine.”
“Where in Maine?”
“A little south of Kennebunk on the coast.”
“Is that where it happened?”
Stone waited through another long pause.
“Yes.”
“And what was it that did happen?”
“It’s my business,” she snapped.
“I think I’ve proved that you can trust me.”
“I’m not sure anyone can prove that to me.”
“Okay, have it your way. I’ll head up to Atlantic City and have a go at old Jerry myself.”
“Oliver, you can’t do that. He will kill you. Don’t you understand that?”
“Then my blood will be on your hands,” he said in a joking tone.
“Don’t screw with me. I don’t need this shit right now.”
“Exactly,” Stone said in a tight voice. “You don’t need stupid wisecracks from me; you need a plan to get you out of Bagger’s gunsights. And then you need to execute on that plan.”
“And you think you can do that?”
“I used to do it for a living. And I’m sure Jerry Bagger is one bad SOB, but my old playground wasn’t exactly Disneyland.” There was silence on the phone. Stone thought she had hung up.
“Annabelle?”
“He killed my mother. There, now you know.”
“What’d your mother do to Bagger?”
“Nothing. It was my father, Paddy. He ripped Jerry off for ten thousand bucks and it cost my mother her life.”
“Did he kill your father too?”
“No, somehow my old man slipped away and forgot to tell my mother that homicidal Bagger was coming to town.”
Stone let out a long breath. “That’s a lot of baggage to have to carry around. I’m sorry, Annabelle.”
“I don’t need sympathy, Oliver. I just need a way to take this animal down once and for all, because, to tell the truth, stealing forty million bucks from him didn’t even come close to squaring things with that bastard.”
“Tell me exactly where you are. I can be there tonight.”
“How are you going to get here? Fly?”
“I don’t have the money to fly.”
“I can get you the plane ticket.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any ID, and without that I can’t get on an aircraft.”
“I wish you’d told me, I could get you stuff so good the FBI couldn’t spot it as fake, much less TSA grunts.”
“I may take you up on that one day. For now, I’m driving.”
She told him where she was. “You’re sure about this? You can still walk, no questions asked. I’m used to going it alone.”
“No friend of the Camel Club goes it alone. I’ll see you in Maine, Annabelle.”
CHAPTER 24
MILTON WAS STANDING behind some players at a blackjack table watching the action, his gaze roving like a laser beam over the cards coming out of the chute.
Reuben appeared beside him. “How’s it going?”
Milton smiled. “This looks like fun.”
“Well, it’s our job to blend in, so play a few hands. Just don’t lose your shirt. We need gas money to get back home.”
Reuben strolled along, his gaze wandering here and there, looking for anything or anyone that might be useful. After being in combat in Vietnam he had toiled for years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, the military equivalent of CIA. Though he’d been out of the game for a long time now, it wasn’t hard to remember how to do it well. And for Reuben, that meant heading to a bar for a drink.
He parked his butt on a stool and ordered a gin and tonic, checked his watch and ran his gaze over the bartender, an attractive middle-aged woman but with the pasty, beaten-down look of someone who’d spent too many years on the casino clock and under casino lights.
“So what action looks good these days?” he asked her as he munched on peanuts and idly sipped his cocktail.
She wiped the bar with a rag and said, “Depends on what you’re looking for.”
“Something besides slots and dice and other things that cost money.”