Standup Guy

“We’re giving him half a million dollars?”

“It’s a good deal, trust me.”

“The thing is, can we trust him?”

“He’s making half a million bucks in one night, and it’s all his, tax-free. He just borrows the cash from the casino for a few hours, and he returns it in small bills. It’s a wash, literally, no bookkeeping problems.”

“And you really trust him?”

“Trust is a relative word when you’re talking this much money,” Parese said. He looked at his watch. “I’m due to call him now.” He took out his cell phone and pressed a button.

Hank kept her hand on the wheel and her eyes on the road.

“Hey, Tommy, it’s me. We’re on. You got the cash ready?” He listened for a moment. “Good work. We’ll be there in an hour. Okay, got a pencil? I’ll give you directions.” Parese dictated precise driving instructions. “You got that? Repeat it to me.” He listened some more. “Now listen to me, Tommy. You know I trust you, but you can only be two guys. We’re two, you’re two. Got that? Good. Now, if there’s more than one guy besides you, and if anybody but you gets out of that car, he will die.” He listened some more. “I’m glad you understand. Did you get the suitcases? The ones with wheels? How many? Two is good. We’ll give you five. Now we’ve done a complete machine count of the money, and it’s exactly five mil. I’ve got the printouts for you to see, but if you want a recount, the machine will be there, and you can run it yourself. All right, two hours. Don’t be early or late. We’re go

“Are you satisfied that he’s going to do the right thing?” Hank asked.

“I’m satisfied, but there are two shotguns and an Uzi in the back of the van, where the spare tire lives. We’ll be ready for anything.”

“I suppose you’ve thought of killing him and keeping both his money and ours.”

“I thought about it, but it wouldn’t be good practice, you know? We do that and we’ll have not only the cops looking for us, we’ll have a lot of made guys all over the country watching for us, and probably a lot of Indians, too.” He laughed.

“Tell me about tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is pretty straightforward. We drive to Oxford Airport, maybe half an hour’s drive from the house. Nobody’s looking for the van, so we just leave it there. The airplane is a Hawker 400, has enough range to get us all the way to South America, but we’re going to stop in the Cayman Islands, just south of Jamaica, and open a bank account. Then we’ll go on to South America. Rio okay?”

“I think Rio sounds lovely. What’s the airplane costing us?”

“A hundred and fifty grand.”

“Jesus! Can’t we fly commercial from the Caymans?”

“We don’t want to leave a paper trail from there. Sure, we’re overpaying for the airplane, but it’s a long flight, and the pilots have to be taken care of up front.”

“What’s to keep them from abandoning us when we leave the airplane in the Caymans to go to the bank? They could just take off again and fly home, and we’d be out a lot of money.”

Parese thought about that and sighed. “All right, we’ll give them half up front and half when we land in Rio. Worst case, we’ll give them the second half when we’re ready to take off from the Caymans. Oh, we have to buy fuel, too. That could run another eight, ten grand.”

“What time are we meeting the airplane at Oxford?”

“Nine AM.”

“Where at the airport?”

“At the main terminal.”

“Are we clearing out with customs?”

“No, the pilot files a form with the feds before the flight.”

“Does it have our names and passport numbers on it?”

“Yes, no getting away from that. But it shows us going only to the Caymans. Once we land out of the country, we can fly anywhere with no record of it. The pilots will say they picked up somebody else in the Caymans for the Rio leg.”

“Who owns the airplane?”

“A guy I know runs a charter company. He buys time on airplanes from various corporations, time when they’d otherwise be sitting on the ground waiting for some CEO to fly somewhere. We’ve got the airplane for three full days.”

“That’s good work, Marty, I’m proud of you.”

He gri

“We don’t want to kill anybody at the cabin, either,” she said.

“I know, but we have to be ready to do it if it’s called for. I mean, if there’s more than one car, or three or four guys get out of the car, then we’re at war. No way around that.”

“Let’s don’t get into that position,” she said. “Remember to be charming. Charm works.”

“Up to a point.”

“Oh, what are we going to do with the counter-sorter?”

“We’ll dump it in the lake as soon as we make the cash swap.”

“Good. We don’t want to leave it in the van or the cottage, and we want to Windex the van all over to get rid of prints.”

“I’ve never been arrested,” Marty said, “so I’ve never been printed. You?”

“Nope. I’m squeaky clean.”

“Squeaky clean, I like that. Oh, I got a number in Rio—we can get new passports.”

“Fine. Maybe we’ll go to Europe from there. You’d like Rome. You speak Italian?”

“I grew up speaking it half the time. Couple weeks, you’d think I was a native Roman. Listen, babe, this is go

She leaned over and kissed him on the ear. “I’m not worried, Marty, I’m safe in your hands.”

56

Stone, Dino, and Viv had a good di

“Hurry up,” Dino said. “And bring a weapon.”

Stone went upstairs and let the hot shower run on his face, then he got into some comfortable clothes, holstered his lightweight Terry Tussey .45, and went downstairs. Dino was on the phone.

“Okay,” Dino was saying, “at the convenience store in about an hour. This time, don’t bring police vehicles. If we get there first, let’s don’t scare them off.” He hung up. “Everybody ready?”

They went outside and got into Dino’s car; his driver already had the engine ru

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. It’s going to be a late night. Let’s hit the West Side Highway.”

• • •

“Drive by the convenience store,” Hank said. “If there are police vehicles there, we’ll have to call it off and meet Tommy somewhere else.”

“Okay,” Parese said. They drove past the store at forty miles an hour. “I don’t see anything that looks like cops,” he said.

“Neither do I, but when we get to the lake, let’s drive around the shore road to the right and approach the house from the other direction.”

“Sounds good.”

They turned off on the road to the lake, and a couple of minutes later they came to the T junction and turned right.

“So far, so good,” Parese said. “And we’ve still got an hour before Tommy is due.”

“Look for clusters of vehicles,” she said. “Any kind of vehicles parked in driveways or side roads.”

Parese did as he was told. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Then let’s drive on around the lake,” Hank said. “And turn off your lights, there’s enough of a moon to see.”

Twenty minutes later, they were approaching the cottage.

“Pull into the drive and stop,” she said. “I want to walk down there first.”

He pulled into the drive; they could see the house, and it was dark.

“Never mind me walking,” Hank said, “just turn off the engine and coast down to the front of the house, then turn around and back up near the porch. I’d like to be pointed the other way if we have to move.”