“Yeah, I heard about Terry Prince’s takeover attempt of the studio. I’ll bet he’d give me more than twenty-five hundred.”

“Twenty-five hundred is his current offer, and I have some reason to believe that the deal is not going to work out for him, and if that happens, then his current offer disappears, so your shares might be worth quite a lot less.”

“Yeah, so you say.”

“It’s up to you, Mr. Long: you can accept my client’s offer or stick with Prince and take a chance of losing a lot of money on your shares. It’s up to you.”

Long fidgeted in his seat. “Oh, hell, all right; I’d rather be on Rick Barron’s side in all this, anyway.”

“Rick has asked me to give you his regards and to thank you for selling to us. This way, you’ll still have a studio to go back to when you get out of here. If Prince got his hands on the property, it would have made it impossible for Centurion to continue as they have.”

“All right, how do we go about this?”

“Where are your share certificates?”

“In my office safe at Centurion.”

“Does your attorney have the combination?”

“I’ll give it to him when I see him; he’s coming tomorrow.”

“I’ll see that he gets the sales documents to sign, so he can bring them with him. He asked me to tell you to call him as soon as you can.”

“I’ll try to call him this afternoon, if I can get to the phone. There’s always a line.”

“I’ll have the documents faxed to him from New York first thing tomorrow morning. They’re already closed for the day.”

“I’m sure that will be fine. When will I get the money?”

“As soon as Harvey sends me the signed documents, I’ll have it wired to your bank account. We might be able to manage it tomorrow, certainly the day after.”

“Good.” Long stood up and rapped on the door. The guard came in and cuffed him. “Nice to meet you,” Long said.

“I hope you get your writ,” Stone said.

Dino was waiting on the front steps when Stone emerged from the building. “How’d it go?”

“Long has agreed to sell us his shares. With the five thousand from the other guy, Baird, we should have a majority ownership in a day or two.”

“I’ve got some news, too: Alexei what’s-his-name, Prince’s driver, has turned up dead. Somebody dumped his body at the La Brea Tar Pits, where they found all those prehistoric bones of animals that went down to the water for a drink, got stuck in the tar, and sank. Luckily, they found Alexei’s body before it could sink. Want to take a guess on cause of death?”

“Tell me.”

“Ice pick to the back of the neck, like Jennifer Harris.”

“I guess it would be easy to make that happen if you’re being driven by Alexei, sitting behind him.”

“Prince has an alibi, of course.”