Cold Paradise (Stone Barrington 7)

“Yeah, I sure am.”

“And if I know you, you’re getting paid for it.”

“Right again.”

“Why didn’t I go to law school?”

“Listen, I want to run something by you.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I’m trying to identify a guy down here who isn’t who he says he is. You remember our friend Paul Manning that you arrested for me?”

“Sure, he’s dead.”

“Nope.” Stone took Dino through what he knew about Manning/Bartlett thus far. “Then last night, I got his prints off a glass, and the local cop shop ran them for me.”

“And he turns out to be the Lindbergh baby?”

“Nope. At least, I don’t think so. But something weird happened: We’re logged on to the FBI print database, and when we transmit the print, we get a message saying access is denied without approval from the director level, and it mentions something called ‘protocol ten-oh-two.’ What it sounds like to me is some sort of national security thing, like maybe he has a CIA connection.”

“Nah,” Dino said. “I’ll tell you what I think it is, and I’ll give you five-to-one odds I’m right. The guy is in the witness protection program.”

This stopped Stone in his tracks. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Manning’s background is not that of somebody the government would want to protect. In fact, he doesn’t even exist, in a legal sense.”

“Maybe he testified against somebody in a criminal trial somewhere.”

“I suppose it’s possible, but I would think that Manning would do everything he could to avoid putting himself in such a position. Also, Bob Berman checked out Bartlett, and he says the man’s identity is thin, that he has no financial background to speak of. Even his driver’s license is recent. That doesn’t sound like the kind of identity the Department of Justice would create for somebody in the program.”

“No, it doesn’t, but there’s another possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s say that Manning or Bartlett, or whoever whatever the fuck his name is, gets involved in some criminal deal, and he gets busted and rats out his partners in return for immunity and the program.”

“Possible, but it seems unlikely.”

“Go with me, here, Stone. Anyway, they put him in the program and he finds himself stuck in Peoria or someplace, running a Burger King, and he doesn’t like it. So he bails out of the program—happens all the time. Once the government gets these people in the program, the feds run their lives, and they’ve got fuck-all to say about it. Lots of them go overboard.”

“True enough.”

“So our guy is on the street, now. Maybe he sells the business and the house the government bought him, so he’s got a few bucks. He finds someplace he likes, in this case, Minneapolis, though God knows why anybody would want to be stuck there in the winter, but he can’t use his old name because whoever he ratted on still wants to cut his heart out and eat it for dinner. So he has to make up his own new identity, and he doesn’t do the greatest job in the world. After all, he’s not Justice; he can’t call up the State Department and tell them to issue him a new passport, so he does the best he can. He gets a local driver’s license, picks up a credit card and finds a business partner who’s real and who can deal with the banks.”

“Makes sense.”

“Then he meets the rich widow, and pretty soon he’s living in a much nicer house, and he doesn’t need the business anymore, or, for that matter, the wife, so he sells one and does away with the other, and he gets away with it. Now he’s rich, footloose and fancy fucking free, and he’s house-hunting in Palm Beach and shopping for a Bentley.”

“Okay, I buy it.”

“I don’t,” Dino said. “I don’t buy it for a minute.”

“What? Why not? You just convinced me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a pushover for a good story, Stone. You always were.”

“What are you talking about, Dino? Have I missed something?”

“You usually do, pal, and this time it’s this: If Bartlett is Manning, why would he hunt down his ex—well, his previous wife and start harassing her? He risks bringing himself to the attention of the local police, which he has already done, and exposing himself—in the fully clothed sense of the expression. Why would he want to do that?”