“All right,” Stone said, trying not to grit his teeth. “Try East Sixty-Seventh.”
“How would you proceed?” Dino asked. “If you were in command.”
“I’d check the mailboxes.”
“Why? You want to read his mail?”
“You’re doing this just to annoy me, aren’t you?”
“I’m doing it out of logic. Annoying you is the cherry on top.”
“Logic dictates that if a mailbox has Eddie’s name on it, he lives in that building.”
“Oh, not just his car? Don’t you think that Eddie could live in one building and park his car in another building?”
“Maybe. I’d sure like to have a couple of NYPD detectives knock on all the doors, though.”
“I’ll call you back.”
Eddie Charles Jr. parked his new/old Mercedes E55 in the garage and walked across the street to his apartment. He checked his mailbox to see if the car’s registration certificate had arrived. They had claimed to be short-staffed and promised to mail it. The mailbox was empty. He went back across the street, got into his car, and started it.
Joan buzzed Stone. “Dino on one.”
Stone picked up. “Any luck?”
“Yeah, my guys figured out which garage Eddie parks in.”
“Is the car parked there now?”
“No, they saw it drive away when they were walking up the block to the garage.”
“A pity they weren’t a little earlier.”
“Well, you can’t have everything.”
“At least we know he lives on East Sixty-Sixth.”
“Yeah, but there’s no point in knocking on the door when we know he’s not there.”
“They could check the mailboxes.”
“I’ll see if they think that’s a good idea. Call you back.”
Joan walked in. “Any luck with Dino?”
“No. Dino has apparently devoted his career to getting me to put a bullet in my brain.”
“Don’t do it.”
“I have no intention of doing it.”
The phone rang, and Joan picked it up. “Dino?” She handed Stone the phone. “It’s Dino.”
“Hello there,” Stone said.
“Hello, yourself. My guys were checking the mailboxes on East Sixty-Sixth and found one that looked good, but they got a call. A shooting on East Seventy-Second Street. Shootings come first. I’ll call you after they’ve had a chance to open the mailbox.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll wait with bated breath.” He hung up. “Joan, can I borrow your .45 for a minute?”
Fifty-Six
Joan sat down in Stone’s office. “No,” she said.
“No, what?”
“No, you can’t borrow my .45 for a minute.”
“A minute is long enough.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re always telling me,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Take a few deep breaths. You’ll feel better.”
Stone took a few deep breaths. “You’re right, I feel better.”
“Now, tell me what to do.”
“Dino claims there’s a reported shooting on East Seventy-Second, and he’s had to pull his men off and send them up there.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Sort of. I mean, I wouldn’t put it past him to lie about the shooting except I know how bad he wants Eddie Jr., who is his only suspect in the murders of Annetta and the maid.”
“What about Mac? Isn’t he worried about Mac?”
“No, sweetie. Mac is dead, and Dino doesn’t think you’re a murderer. In his own mind, he’s already cleared the shooting of Mac as self-defense against an armed intruder.”
“What about the East Hampton cops?”
“They don’t matter. They know that Dino is more credible with the press than they are, so they’re not going to argue with him.”
Joan shook her head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten what we’re talking about here.”
“We’re talking about what to do next,” Stone said.
“Got it. What are we going to do next?”
“As I see it, we have two choices: one, we can go up to East Sixty-Sixth Street and check all the mailboxes to see if Eddie’s name is on any of them, then do the same at the East Sixty-Seventh address.”
“What’s the second choice?”
“We can sit here calmly until Dino has cleared the East Seventy-Second Street shooting scene, then let him go back and check on the mailboxes.”
“He’s already found a mailbox with Eddie’s name on it. Which one was that?”
“I can’t remember. Can you?”
“No.”
“Then I think we should use public funds in the form of Dino and his men, instead of wearing ourselves out trooping up and down the East Sixties.”
“Which one is likelier to give me a clear shot at Eddie Jr.?” Joan asked.
“Joan, you’re not going to get a clear shot at Eddie Jr. Mac was a fluke. If you take another shot at Eddie Jr. and hit him, you’re going to live the rest of your life with the consequences of that action hanging over you, and some of those years are likely to be in a women’s correctional institution, where you’d have to learn to like girls instead of boys.”
“You are such a pessimist!”
“I’m a realist, and you know it. You’re going to have to content yourself with seeing Eddie Jr. in prison, not in his grave.”
“I like the second one better.”
“I know you do, but it won’t work.”
“Tell you what. Let’s drive up to East Sixty-Sixth Street, park, and wait for the cops to get over whatever’s happened on East Seventy-Second Street, then go back to work looking for Eddie Jr.”
“That’s a reasonable suggestion, but only if you give me your .45 for safekeeping.”
“You really know how to take the fun out of things,” she said.
“Give it up.”
She reached into the big purse on the floor beside her chair, fished out the .45, and set it on his desk.
Stone picked it up, popped out the magazine, racked the slide, and released it. He put the racked bullet back into the magazine, then pocketed everything.
“Be nice to it,” Joan said.
Fifty-Seven
Edwin Charles Jr. sat at the wheel of his idling Mercedes E55 and watched his father’s house. Only the domestic staff appeared to be in residence, and not all of them. The Strategic Services people had gone back to wherever they had come from. He decided to be bold. He took the little remote control that he had stolen from the desk in the study and pressed the “alarm off” button, then he pressed “garage” and put the car into gear.
He drove to the garage door and slowly approached it. The door went up, as it should. He drove in and chose a parking spot for his car. Then he got out, reset the alarm, went to the elevator, and pressed eight. The car rose silently to that floor and the door opened. Eddie held the door back and stepped out of the car. He could hear no sound. He cased the floor thoroughly, finishing up in the study.
Eddie searched the desk drawers and found what he was looking for: some of his father’s stationery, which was too fine and expensive to throw away. Then he took out his father’s Montblanc pen, the old-fashioned, fountain kind, and checked the ink reservoir: nearly full.
He opened a drawer, went to the correspondence file, and removed a sheaf of his father’s letters, which he often wrote by hand. Eddie and his father had been taught penmanship, by the same ancient tutor, to write in the old-fashioned Palmer Method script. He found several letters his father had written as first drafts before he gave them to his secretary to be typed. The woman had filed the originals as the copies.
Eddie put on some latex gloves, took from his pocket a will that he had written out, then rewrote it on his father’s stationery. He went over the result carefully, looking for anomalies and found only two. His father had crossed T’s on a slant, and his R’s at the ends of words were idiosyncratic. Eddie wrote two further drafts of the will before he found his work to be perfect. He went back through the file of copies until he found two that had been witnessed by household employees, two of them dead and one who had been dismissed, signed on dates shortly before his death. He practiced forging all three until he had them perfectly. Then he wrote the signatures on the will as witnesses. Finally, after more than an hour’s work, he took the will into his father’s secretary’s office and ran it through the Xerox machine. He placed a copy in the correspondence file, then wrote Last Will & Testament on the original and sealed it in a matching envelope with a bit of glycerine found in the desk.