Free Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward Page A

money? How the fuck would he know the difference?
    Wait, he was moving too fast again. The first thing he had to do was find Edwards and make the deal.
    How to do that? On the off chance that all this would be resolved in an easy fashion, Bob tried calling information in the Baltimore-Washington area, but there was, of course, no listing for the man.
    Okay, forget it. Don’t beat up on yourself. How best to proceed?
    Ask Emile about Edwards? Pry a little. And how would he do that?
    “Excuse me, Emile I was just wondering where this Edwards fellow lives? I’m thinking about stealing the mask and …”
    No, that wouldn’t do. Emile must never think that he had contacted his enemy.
    Okay, then what did he know? Only what Emile had told him. That Edwards drove a silver BMW, that he sometimes parked near Emile’s house in order to mock or unnerve him. That was it. He’d set up a post, like a spy on reconnaissance until he saw the silver BMW, and then …
    He’d have to improvise.
    First, he had to lie to Jesse again. He’d tell her that there was more financial work that needed to be done. He’d have to meet with his accountant tonight. Maybe for a few nights. He hated lying to her, but he reminded himself that the ends surely justified the means.
    Because if he was going to keep her around he had to have the money.
    That was the simple truth of it all. Lie now. Make love later. Everything else was just idle conversation.

CHAPTER TEN
    The only problem with Bob’s plan was that after two weeks of casing Emile Bardan’s house, he still hadn’t seen Colin Edwards or any of his so-called crew. He had tried watching the house from a stoop down the street, from the back alley, and from the roof of a burned-out row house directly across the street from Bardan’s place, but he hadn’t seen one suspicious character the entire time.
    Bob’s middle-aged back hurt and his stomach rumbled from eating junk food. His fallen arches were radiating little circles of pain. Plus, he was tired, really tired, and discouraged. He thought of a line of one of his patients, a black kid who’d gotten involved in gangs. When he didn’t like somebody, he said, “Dissed and dismissed,” and that was how Bob felt now. Shut down before he’d even begun.
    But he had to fight through that. Get positive again.
    He told himself that the stakeout wasn’t a total loss. He’d found out quite a bit about Emile’s habits. Every Friday night Emile made the rounds of the local art shows, and ended up at the Havana Club, an illegal gambling casino out on the Ritchie Highway. From there, Emile went home with a Cuban woman named Laura Santiago. She lived on the opposite side of town, way out in the county, so Emile didn’t get back until the next morning. During that time, he left two guards at his place, one downstairs and one up on the third floor. Obviously this was where the safe was. But how he was going to get past two armed guards was anybody’s guess.
    By the end of the third week, Bob became depressed. Obviously his stakeout was a flop. He’d have to find the guy some other way. But how? He’d already tried looking up Edwards on the Internet and found nothing. Maybe Edwards had lost interest. Gone off to steal some other work of art? Then what? Bob stayed up late, working on the computer, trying to find another buyer. There were a few names that kept coming up in all the stories about the missing mask. One was a man named Tommy Asahina, a Japanese collector.
    The guy had served time for swindling investors in a securities and exchange scam. Maybe he would want to buy the mask. But calling him was to make himself vulnerable. Bob didn’t really want to start a bidding war. He just wanted to do this not-so-simple transaction and then disappear from the world.
    By the last day of the fourth week, Bob had nearly given up hope. Sighing unhappily, he shoved his binoculars into his jacket pocket and headed on home. All his plans were on the rocks