“I’d like to meet with both of you, today, at the earliest possible moment.”
“If you’ll hang on a minute, Stone, I’ll see if I can get him on another line.”
“Sure.” Stone waited for a couple of minutes.
“You still there?”
“Yep.”
“How about lunch? You’re buying.”
Stone gave him his suite number at the Bel-Air. “In an hour?”
“See you then.”
Stone hung up and called Rick Grant. “Rick, I’m having lunch with Hank Cable and the IRS; will you join us in my suite?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I think there may be something good for you in all this, but I warn you, the feds are going to take the biggest helpings.”
“So what else is new?”
“Can you be here in an hour?”
“Sure, but can you fill me in a little before we meet the feds?”
“It wouldn’t do any good right now. What I hope you’ll do is just listen and back me up when I ask for it.”
“I’ll listen, and I’ll back you up if I can, but if we’re getting official here, I have my department’s interests to protect.”
“If it’s any consolation, your department is going to get more than the feds would ever give you if I weren’t in the middle of this. At least I have something they want; I just have to see how bad they want it.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you.”
“See you in an hour.” Stone hung up, walked down to the manager’s office, and borrowed a computer. They were happy to help.
“By the way, Mr. Barrington, there have been a couple of calls for you, but I denied all knowledge, as you requested,” the desk woman said.
“Any body leave a name?”
“No, sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” Stone sat down at the computer, quickly wrote a document and printed out several copies, then went back to his suite. Vance was up now.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’ve got some people coming here for lunch, and I’d like you to stay out of sight until I need you. Why don’t you order some lunch and have it in your suite?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t go out. Somebody has been calling hotel looking for me, and I think we can both guess who it might be.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay put.”
“Vance, if I call you into this meeting, that will mean that it’s time for you to tell everything to these people, do you understand?”
“Yes, I suppose so; I’ll depend on you to protect me.”