Shoot First(Stone Barrington #45)(13)

“Whoa,” Stone said. “Even if that were successful, like the bribe you paid, it would create more problems for you than it would solve.”

“My brain tells me that, but my gut wants him dead,” she said.

“Let me explain how this would go,” Stone said. “First of all, you’d have to find a contract killer, a hit man. Do you know someone who might know someone who does that?”

She laughed. “The only person I know who might know someone like that is Gino Bellini.”

Stone laughed. “What happens when someone like you tries to find someone like that is that you have to deal with criminals, people who can’t be trusted, no matter how much money they are being offered. Often, these people are already snitches for one or more police officers or FBI agents. They’re out on parole, maybe, and they want to endear themselves to the people who have the power to send them back to prison. You’d find yourself handing over money in an alley or a bar somewhere to an officer of the law, who will then arrest you and charge you with conspiracy to murder. It’s a losing game.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I should just lure Gino into a back alley and shoot him myself,” she said. “Then I wouldn’t have to trust anybody, and I’d save a lot of money.”

“And you would almost certainly spend the rest of your life in prison.”

“Why? I’m smart, why couldn’t I get away with it?”

“You’re talking to a former homicide detective, and I can tell you from experience that there are so many ways to make mistakes and so many techniques available to the police for finding those mistakes that you’d have very little chance of success. All it takes is one little mistake, and you’re done. The best you could hope for is to hire the world’s most expensive defense lawyer who might, somehow, win at trial and get you off. You’d spend more than you’ve already given Bellini on your defense, then his wife would bring a civil suit against you for wrongful death, which you could easily lose, and for the rest of your life, at least half the people who know and love you would believe that you’re a murderer, and that would be hard to live with.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Meg said disconsolately.

“Ask O. J. Simpson,” Stone said.

The autopilot turned the yacht toward the last waypoint and, ahead, low islands came into sight.





10




Gino Bellini switched off his laptop. “There,” he said, “Miss Meg is up and running again. For the moment, at least.”

“Have you given up on just killing her outright?” Veronica asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Gino replied. “Dirty Joe is still on the hunt in Key West.”

“That didn’t go so well last time—we had to run for it.”

“I’ve instructed him to wait until he has a shot in some out-of-the-way spot, where the police can’t be all over him in a minute.”

“You’re going to let her do her demonstration to the Steele board?”

“Of course. I want her to have the illusion of progress, until I can hit her again. Or until Dirty Joe can.”

“Who is Dirty Joe? You haven’t told me anything about him.”

“Joe Cross. We did some time together in a California reform school when we were just kids, and we kept in touch. We called him Dirty Joe even then, because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for money. When I was at Stanford he dealt marijuana on campus. When I was in Silicon Valley, he upped his game to cocaine, which was the propellant of choice there in those days. On the side, he’d do hits, and he always got away with it. He sort of retired to the Keys, living up in Islamorada, but he’s always receptive to the opportunity for fast cash.”

“And you think he can handle this?”

“He hasn’t done a day of time since reform school, and that record was expunged when he was twenty-one, so he’s on nobody’s list of suspects, which is usually the problem when you want somebody hit. The police look at the record first.”

“But he hit the wrong person in Key West. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“It was a windy day, and that was as close as he could get. If we’re patient, Dirty Joe will come through, and Meg’s inferiors will be a lot easier to deal with.”



* * *



—

DIRTY JOE CROSS and his girlfriend, Jane Jillian, known to her friends as Jungle Jane, sat back a mile or so in their offshore boat, a thirty-six-footer with three large outboards clamped to the stern, and Joe watched through his binoculars as the blue Hinckley rounded Fort Jefferson and picked up a mooring in the little harbor. “They’re down for the night,” Joe said, “and the light’s going. We’re not going to get a shot at them before tomorrow morning. We got anything to eat aboard?”

“No problem,” Jane replied. “If you want fresh fish, I’ll catch you something for supper.”

“Good idea,” he said. “Snapper, maybe?”

“Whatever the sea yields,” she replied. “If you want to get picky, find yourself a fish restaurant. The nearest one is about seventy miles away.”

“I’ll eat whatever you put in front of me,” Joe said.