“Three times,” Jack said.
“Three times,” Dino echoed. “Have you been practicing?”
“He told me he hadn’t even been aiming.”
“Ah, then it makes perfect sense. I would have been worried if he had been trying to hit him on purpose.”
“Iwastrying to hit him on purpose,” Stone said. “I just wasn’t looking when I fired.”
“You should try that more often.”
“That’s what I said,” Jack said.
“At least this means Jack’s extortion problem has been eliminated.”
“About that,” Stone said. “Seems there’s a third party of whom we were previously unaware.”
“I thought you said you weren’t able to talk to Estrada and Kroger.”
“That part is true.”
“There’s a part that’snottrue?”
“No, but there is a part I haven’t told you about.”
“Are you going to tell me now?”
“I will, but unofficially for the moment.”
“You’re not planning on killing whoever this third part is, too, are you?”
“As a refresher, we weren’t planning on killing Kroger, either,” Stone said.
“Or Estrada.”
“We didn’t kill Estrada, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. He took a bullet for you.”
“I doubt he did that on purpose. And to answer your question, no, our goal is not to kill the third party.”
“You have goals now?”
“Everyone should have goals. Ours is to take him alive so we can question him and find out if anyone else might be coming after Jack’s money.”
“Isn’t that the same plan you had for Estrada and Kroger?”
“Are you purposefully trying to annoy me or is it just by chance?”
“A bit of both, I think. So, how do you know about a third party in the first place?”
“That was the thing I was going to tell you next.”
“The unofficial thing,” Dino said.
“Correct.”
Stone told Dino about the phone call from the extortionist Jack had received at the bar, that there was no question it was the same person who had called the first time, and how it couldn’t have been either Estrada or Kroger since Stone had had eyes on them the whole time, and neither had been on a phone.
