Everyone drank. A moment later, a crystal bowl of caviar arrived, and the waiter went around the table spooning large amounts onto each plate.

Dino tried his.

“Well?” Thad asked.

“Well, wonderful,” Dino replied. “We don’t see a lot of beluga at the precinct.”

“I remember once when we did,” Stone said. “Somebody on the squad busted up a smuggling outfit, and, among other things, there was a lot of caviar. Most of it disappeared immediately, but I remember a few small tins found their way to your desk and mine.”

“You’re right, Stone,” Dino said. “Funny, I remember busts involving drugs and money, but you remember caviar.”

Menus appeared and everyone pored over them. Eventually, decisions were made, and the captain took their orders. Thad lingered over the wine list. “Who’s drinking red?” he asked. Everyone’s hand went up. “Ah, good. We’ll start with a magnum of the Opus One,” he said to the sommelier. “The ’eighty-nine.”

The sommelier scurried away and returned with the big bottle. Thad tasted it. “Marvelous! Go ahead and pour us a glass so it can breathe.”

“I like your friends,” Dino said to Stone, getting a laugh.

“Ah, Dino,” Thad said, “you have to spend more time in Palm Beach. The yacht is yours whenever you want it.”

“Nobody ever said that to me before,” Dino said, drawing another laugh.

Stone thought the evening was going particularly well. Then he looked up and saw Frank and Margaret Wilkes come into the restaurant, followed closely by a woman Stone did not know, and then, by Paul Bartlett. No one else at the table had seen them, but Stone caught Dino’s eye and nodded in their direction.

Dino watched the tall man hold a chair for his companion, then sit down. “I would never have made him as Manning,” Dino whispered. “He must have done something to his face.”

Stone slipped the little cell phone off his belt, cupped it in his hand to hide it as well as possible, and dialed Dan Griggs’s direct office number, which also rang at his home.

“Yes?” Griggs said.

“Dan, it’s Stone. I’m at La Reserve, and Bartlett is here with Frank Wilkes and his wife and another woman.”

“Have you talked to Lundquist?” Griggs asked.

“No.”

“The Minneapolis Police Department arrested a known car thief and insurance scam artist who, for immunity, told them Bartlett had hired him to fix his wife’s seat belt. Apparently, they met in prison, during Bartlett’s earlier existence, and he’ll testify against Bartlett. Have they just sat down to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll get ahold of Lundquist and put some people together, and we’ll take him when they leave. I don’t want to cause a scene in the restaurant. Let me give you my portable number.”

Stone wrote it down.