“Right. How’s the mahogany-secretary thing going?” Cantor asked.
“Still simmering but not on the boil yet. I’ll bring you up to date on developments when I see you. Anything interesting on Charlie’s phone?”
“There have been a couple of short, cryptic phone calls to a cell phone. Just a few words exchanged.”
“What sort of words?”
“They’re like ‘It’s done. Good. Details later. Good.’ ”
“Whose cell phone?”
“I don’t know; I can’t trace it. Probably a prepaid job from Radio Shack or a supermarket.”
“I don’t like it when the guy I’m on to gets that smart,” Stone said.
“Neither do I.”
“If he’s going to be that cryptic, is there any point in paying your guy at the phone company five bills a day?”
“Probably not.”
“End it, then.”
“Will do. I’ll e-mail you Mr. Kennerly’s printouts later today.”
“That’s fast.”
“We aim to please.” Cantor hung up.
Stone hung up, too. He was going to give Tatiana all the ammo she needed to nail her husband’s hide to the barn door.
53
Barton Cabot visited the Madison Avenue branch of his bank and asked for James Foster, an important senior vice president who was in charge of all Manhattan branches. He was shown directly in.
“Good morning, Barton,” Foster said, waving him to a seat.
“Good morning, James. I have some new business for you.”
“Always good news. Tell me about it.”
Barton removed a stack of eight-by-ten prints of the photographs he had taken in Bristol and handed them over.
Foster leafed through them rapidly. “This is all very nice, but what am I looking at?”
“You’re looking at the largest and finest collection of eighteenth-century American furniture in private hands,” Barton said.
“In whose hands?”
“Mine.”
“Congratulations. It must have taken a long time to put together that collection.”
“It took me two days,” Barton said.
“I don’t understand.”
Barton sighed. The man was a banker. “All these pieces have been, since they were made, in one house, that of a Mrs. Caleb Strong of Bristol, Rhode Island, who passed away Sunday night at the age of ninety-seven.”