Swimming to Catalina (Stone Barrington 4)

“Good. Did you get a personal warrant on Vinnie?”

“Yeah; it’s too much to hope we’ll catch him on the premises.”

“If I were you, I’d have a tail on him before the raid. If he gets a call, he could run.”

“I agree.”

“Hang on,” Cable said, “what’s this about a raid on a bookie joint? How does that tie in?”

“Vincent Mancuso, the owner of the deli where the bookie joint is running, works for Ippolito,” Grant said.

“Directly?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you get a good bust on the bookmaking charge, maybe you can use it to turn Mancuso.”

“I doubt it,” Grant said. “He’ll plead it down and do some time, and Ippolito will take care of him.”

Stone spoke up. “How about if you add attempted murder to the mix? Mancuso and his pal tried to kill me.”

“I thought you wanted to stay dead.”

“Tell him you’ve got a witness to the attempt, and you traced the boat to him. That’s not an outright lie.”

“It might work; who knows? I’d like to have something really heavy to hit him with, though. Pity the murder didn’t take; then we could use the threat of the death penalty to get him talking.”

Stone laughed. “That’s more than I’m willing to give for the cause.” Then he thought of something. “Wait a minute; Mancuso doesn’t know the murder didn’t take; charge him with murder.”

“I can’t do that, Stone; I know you’re alive.”

“Okay, then don’t charge him, but tell him you’re going to in interrogation.”

“It’s worth a try, but he’s going to lawyer up the minute we get him to a station.”

“Then ride him around a little; talk to him in the car. Tell him that if he hands you Manny and Ippolito for the murder and tells you what he knows about Ippolito’s operations, he’ll walk on both charges.”

“Come on, Stone, that’s not going to work. We can’t charge Ippolito for a murder that didn’t work out, and I doubt if somebody like Mancuso knows anything of importance about Ippolito.”

Cable spoke up. “You’re better off getting what you can from Mancuso using the bookie charge as a weapon, without implicating Ippolito. That would only tip him off, he’d pull up the drawbridge, and I don’t want that. I want to get a lot of stuff on him before we move.”

“I guess you’re right,” Stone said.

“Look, Stone,” Cable said, “I get the impression that you want all this to happen now, but it’s not going to. It takes time to get enough evidence to prosecute financial crimes.”

“I understand.”

“Of course, if you could come up with a witness who knows at least some of the inside workings of Abalone, that would move things right along.”

“Let me think about that,” Stone said.

“Oh,” Cable said, “there was mention of a kidnapping.”

“I’m not sure about that yet,” Stone replied. “I’ll have to get back to you.”

“Stone,” the FBI agent said, “try not to get anybody killed, okay? Kidnappings are dicey.”

“I’ll try,” Stone replied.