“You told me not to.”
“He’s gonna fuck us over,” Stone went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “You know damn well he will—he’s gonna take the first chance he gets and fuck us over.”
“Bailey, you got this guy by the balls,” Wallace said. “He don’t come through for you, we scrag that girlfriend.”
“And where is she, Garrett?” Stone demanded. “Tell me that one. Where did that girl get to? Huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t know, either,” Stone said. “Hasn’t been in her apartment for weeks, nobody’s seen her—where’d she get to, Garrett?”
“She’ll turn up, Bailey,” Garrett said soothingly.
“Yeah, well, you just better hope she does,” Stone said, scowling. He chugged the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down on the side table. “God-damn it! We shoulda heard something by now.”
“Come on, now, Bailey,” Wallace said. “The man’s stealin’ a damn wall. That’s gotta take some time, right?”
Stone stood abruptly and threw his empty glass into the fireplace. It shattered. Stone glared at the fragments for a minute. Then he sat back down.
“Feel a little better now?” Wallace asked him.
“Yes, I do,” Stone admitted. “But god-damn it, Garrett.”
“I know,” Wallace said. He got up and poured a fresh glassful, handed it to Stone. “Just got to wait a bit longer, Bailey. You can do that.”
Stone snorted and took the glass. “You know damn well I can’t,” he said. “Never could just set on my ass and do nothing, waiting.”
“Just a little bit longer,” Wallace said soothingly.
Stone sighed and sipped. “Yeah, all right,” he said. He brightened. “But then we gon’ kick some ass, god-damn it!”
“Yes, we will, Bailey,” Wallace said. “Abso-fuckin’-lutely kick some ass.”
* * *
—
He took out the cameras in the room,” Benny said. “So’s we can’t see what he’s doin’ in there? But we know whatever it is, he’s doin’ it.”
“How do we know this?” Patrick Boniface asked. He sat behind his desk, and Bernadette stood behind him and to one side.
Benny turned one hand palm up. “We got people in there,” he said. “The room is closed, sealed off right now, but our people all say he’s in there. And we know he took delivery of that plastic stuff, and it’s in there with him? So most likely thing, he’s putting it onto the fresco, just like he said. And he has this helper, which is—it’s some German girl? A black German girl?”
Boniface nodded. “That would be Monique, of course.”
“Yeah, has to be,” Benny said.
“Why would he want her there with him?” Boniface asked.
“Keep an eye on her?” Benny said tentatively. Boniface frowned. “And anyways,” Benny added, “she knows all the technical stuff, about painting and all that?”
“I suppose so,” Boniface said.
“You think he’s up to somethin’?” Benny asked.
Boniface shook his head. “No, Benny. I know he is,” Boniface said. “He is most definitely up to something—but I need to know what.”
Benny nodded and waited, while Boniface frowned at nothing, then stood up, walked over to the bookshelf, and pulled out an old and worn book. Benny had seen him take out this same book a few times before, generally when he was lost in thought about some difficult problem. As he had done the other times, Boniface flipped through the book slowly, stopped at one page, and looked at it for several minutes.