Stone looked around; the beach was deserted now. He walked under the house’s deck and listened. Soft music wafted out into the night air. Above his head he could see the outline of a folding stairway to the beach, in its retracted position. He looked around in the dark until he found a rusty coat hanger, then, after listening for a while, he climbed up on a supporting beam between two of the pilings that supported the house, unbent the hanger, hooked the end of the stairway, and pulled it slowly down until it reached the sand.
Carefully, he climbed the stairs until his head was at deck level, then stopped and listened again. To the right of the sliding glass doors a window was open, and human noises were emanating from it, grunts and groans, sighs and little shrieks. Ippolito was getting laid. Stone continued softly up the stairs.
Finally at deck level, he looked around. There was an assortment of deck furniture and a charcoal grill; a folded beach umbrella leaned against the house; he saw nothing and no one else. Stone carefully peeked through the open sliding door and saw a handsomely furnished living room. A fire was crackling in the fireplace, and the romantic music was louder now. He had hoped that Ippolito was meeting with somebody and that he might overhear something useful, but all he heard was the continuing sounds from the bedroom.
The least he could do, he thought, was to disturb the fun. On the deck beside the charcoal grill was a can of firestarter and a box of matches. Stone picked up the can, which was nearly full, and unscrewed the top. Still standing on the deck, he squirted a stream of the fluid onto the living room carpet, making a trail back out to the deck. He made a little puddle on the deck, then carefully tossed the can into the living room; it landed on the trail of fluid. He looked up and down the beach but could see no one. After checking his escape route again, he struck two matches, let them burn for a moment, then stuck them into the box, and closed it. A minute or two would pass before the box and then the matches in the box ignited. He turned and hurried quietly down the stairs, then gave them a push, sending them back into their retracted position with little noise.
He walked quickly back to the restaurant, picked up his drink from the steps, and climbed to the deck. He walked to the opposite end and took up a position there, sipping his drink. A moment later he heard a softwhoomp as the can of lighter fluid exploded, followed a moment later by a female shriek and male cursing. The diners looked toward the house with the cupola, some of them standing up and pointing.
“Call the fire department,” somebody told a waiter, who ran inside to the phone.
Stone leaned against the railing and watched the glow of the fire against the glass of the sliding doors. Another three minutes passed before he heard the sirens. The sound made him smile to himself.
It wasn’t much of a fire, but it had surely ruined Ippolito’s evening. Pretty soon, after Ippolito thought about the sinking of his sports fisherman and the fire at his beach house, he was going to start thinking that somebody was out to get him.
He would be right, Stone reflected, sipping his drink. Then his hand began to shake. He had committed arson. Ippolito and the woman in the house might have died, and then he would have been a murderer. He hadn’t carried the pistol today, and that was good, because in his present frame of mind he might have just walked into the house and shot Ippolito.
He had better start carrying the weapon now, he thought.
42
Stone had finished breakfast and was getting out of a shower when the phone rang. He grabbed a robe, got into it, and made the bedside table on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s Rick; did I wake you?”
“Nope; I was just getting out of a shower.”
“Get dressed and meet me at the back gate of the hotel in ten minutes; I want you to take a look at something with me.”
“Okay, I’ll be there.” Stone hung up, toweled his hair mostly dry, got into some slacks, a shirt, and a blazer, and started out the door. Then he remembered; he went back, took off the blazer, slipped into the shoulder holster, fitted the pistol into it, slipped an extra clip into his pocket, got back into the blazer, grabbed a tie, and left the suite.
Rick was waiting at the rear gate. “Morning,” he said.
Stone got into the car. “Morning. What’s up?” He began knotting the tie.
“I’m not sure, exactly, but I have a hunch; we’ll see if it’s a good one.” He handed Stone the late edition of theLos Angeles Times and pointed to a story in the stop press column on the front page, then drove away.
Stone read the short piece.
Last night, late, the Malibu Fire Department answered a call from the Pacific Coast Highway home of Onofrio Ippolito, chairman of the Safe Harbor Bank and a well-known Los Angeles philanthropist.
A spokesman for the department said that Ippolito, whose wife was out of town, was at home alone and had an accident with a charcoal grill while fixing himself some dinner.
The fire was put out in less than fifteen minutes. There was little structural damage to the house, but a deck and the contents of the living room were destroyed. Mr. Ippolito was not injured.
“Sounds like an exciting evening,” Stone said, smiling.
“And where did you spendyour evening?” Rick asked.
“I went out, had a few drinks and some dinner.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember exactly; I’m a stranger in town, remember? The geography of this city confuses me.”
“Yeah, it can be confusing,” Rick said, sticking a flashing light on the roof of the car. They were on the freeway now, driving fast, weaving in and out of the mid-morning traffic. Occasionally he used the siren.
“Where we going?”
“Long Beach.”
“For what?”
“I’m superstitious about predictions; indulge me.”
Half an hour later they parked next to an ambulance, got out of the car, and walked down a long dock between fishing boats. At the end of the dock a clutch of uniformed and plainclothes cops loitered around a trawler that was moored stern to.
“Hey, Rick,” a detective said, shaking his hand. “I didn’t know you left headquarters anymore.”
“I like a little sea air,” Rick replied. “What have you got?”
The detective pointed into the boat, where a tarpaulin covered something.
Rick beckoned Stone to follow him, then jumped down into the boat and pulled back the canvas. “Confirm my guess,” he said. “The other one is Manny.”
Stone looked at the two bodies. Vincent Mancuso and Manny were wet, dead, and chained together with a hefty anchor. “Good guess,” he said.
“When the call came in I had a feeling.” Rick turned to a man in a suit, who was writing in a notebook. “Did they drown?”
The man shook his head. “They each took two rounds behind the right ear. Small caliber, very neat job. It was the wildest kind of luck that they ever turned up; the trawler brought them up with the catch between here and Catalina.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. He turned to Stone. “I think we’ve seen enough.”
Stone followed him up the ladder and back to the car.
“Who says there’s no justice?” Rick said.
“Poetic, isn’st it?” Stone agreed.
“Now there’s nothing to tie your little swim to Ippolito.”
“Except me.”
“Yeah. You carrying that piece I got you?”
“I started this morning.”
“Good idea. If things keep happening to Ippolito, like his boat sinking and his house catching fire…”
“Yeah, I might need it.”
