“Are you sure it’s the same Charlie Crow?”
“No, I’m not,” Stone said. “That was your contention. Is he from the Bronx?”
“Yeah, and you can take the boy out of the Bronx, but…”
“I get the picture,” Stone said. “Charlie is still a little rough around the edges, then?”
“Correct picture.”
“I’d like to know if he has a sheet for anything besides his real estate scam.”
Dino unsheathed his cell phone and made the call. “They’ll get back to me,” he said, putting the phone away.
“Who’s Charlie’s publicist?” Stone asked.
“Ask the guy behind you.”
Stone turned and found Bobby Zarem, ace publicist, at the next table. “Hey, Bobby,” he said.
“Hey, Stone.”
“You ever heard of a guy named Charlie Crow?”
“Hasn’t everybody?”
“You don’t, by any chance, represent him, do you?”
“Too sleazy for my taste,” Zarem said. “He’s one of Irv Kaplan’s clients. They’re well suited to each other.”
“Thanks, Bobby.” Stone turned back to Dino. “You hear that?”
Dino held up a hand while he opened his cell phone. “Bacchetti. Yeah? Yeah. Read it to me. Thanks.” Dino hung up. “Charlie had a juvey record, small time stuff: joyriding in other people’s cars, petty theft. Nothing after that. Maybe the Marines straightened him out.”
“From what Barton says, they just made him a better criminal.”
“Barton should talk.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the gold double eagle.” Stone told him the story.
“So, when Barton gets a little short, he can always stamp out another twenty-dollar gold piece and sell it for a few million?”
“He’s admitted to doing that twice but not recently.”
“Our Barton is quite the card, isn’t he?”
“He certainly is,” Stone agreed. “Did I mention that the die for the gold coin was in a drawer of the secretary when it was stolen?”
“You did not mention that, but I guess it makes Barton more anxious than ever to get the furniture back.”
“Yes, it certainly must,” Stone said.
“Well, let’s hope whoever has the thing doesn’t go through the drawers; he might recognize it. What does a die look like, anyway?”
“I’m not sure, but I once had a tour through a factory that makes class rings, and they had this good-sized machine that stamped them out. They’d put a blank piece of gold, already cut to shape, into the thing, and bang, the thing stamped the design onto it. The die part was pretty small, though, not a lot bigger than the ring it stamped out.”
“So you could put the die in your pocket?”
“Or in a small drawer in a large piece of furniture.”