“Don’t we all?”
“I got to thinking about what you said in your e-mail. Does Allison really want to buy him off?”
“Yes, she does.”
“For how much?”
“I don’t know that I can discuss that with you, since you claim not to be Paul Manning.”
“Tell me this, then. Why do you think I’ve been trying to get in touch with you?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t have asked you.”
“A man called my office several times and wouldn’t leave his name. I suspected it was Paul Manning. I managed to trace the call back to a Manhattan hotel, and you were the only guest whose name I recognized.”
“That’s pretty tenuous, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Wasn’t I right?”
“Actually, you may well be. Paul Manning was in my hotel suite a couple of times, and he made some phone calls.”
“Well, I’m glad you admit, at least, to being in the same room with Manning.”
“Have you ever met Manning, Mr. Barrington?”
“I got to know him rather well, but he was using another name at the time.”
“Listen to my voice. Does it sound like the voice of Paul Manning?”
Stone admitted to himself that it did not. “Manning’s is deeper,” he said.
“Exactly. I have rather a light voice, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose.”
“And Manning’s is a sort of bass-baritone.”
“Yes.”
“Does that do nothing to convince you that Manning and I are not the same person?”
“It helps. Of course, we can resolve the question of identity very easily.”
“How?”
“We can meet, face-to-face.”
“Where are you, at the moment, Mr. Barrington?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I’d rather not say, too.”
“Then we might as well be on different continents.”
“We may very well be.”
“How are we going to resolve this?”
“I may be able to help you deal with Manning.”
“Deal, how?”
“You’re trying to buy him off, aren’t you?”
“Let’s just say that I’m trying to bring a difficult situation to an amicable close.”
“Then I’ll take him your offer.”
“You know how to get in touch with him?”
“How could I take him your offer, otherwise?”
“All right. Tell him that Allison wants to come to an arrangement with him to get out of her life. If he agrees in principle, then we can discuss it in more detail. Or just get him to call me.”
“I don’t think he’ll do that.”
“Why not?”
“He’s very shy these days, and he’s not fond of you.”
“Tell him I can arrange for him to live his life more openly, without fear of legal difficulties.”
“Now that might appeal to him. Can I reach you at this number?”
“Yes. How can I reach you?”
But Frederick James had hung up.
Stone turned to Dino. “You heard that?”
“I heard it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think this is getting very weird,” Dino said.
41
Callie came on deck.
“And what have you two planned for the day?” she asked Stone and Dino.
“Zip,” Dino said. “But I wouldn’t mind some golf.”
“I’ll book you a tee time at the Breakers,” she said.
“I don’t want to leave you and Liz alone,” Stone replied. “We’d better stick close.”
“Liz and I will be just fine,” Callie said. “I have your gun, and Juanito and a couple of crew members will be around. Besides, if you have to spend all your time here, you might get tired of me.”
Stone snaked an arm around her and kissed her on the neck. “Not much chance of that,” he said.
“I know,” she replied, “but unless you and Dino get out of here and allow Liz and me some girl time, I’m going to start getting sick of you both.”
Stone threw his hands up. “Golf, it is. Come on, Dino.”
The starter cleared them from the first tee. Stone drove his usual slice into the next fairway, and Dino hooked his into yet another fairway.
“How’re we going to handle the cart on this?” Dino asked, getting in.
“Well, I’m not giving it to you. You’re away, so we’ll go to your ball first.”
Dino addressed the ball with a fairway wood, took a practice swing and sent the ball two hundred yards over a stand of palm trees, back into the fairway. “Take that!” he said.
Stone drove to his own ball, took a long iron and hit it to within five yards of Dino’s ball.
“Looks like we’re back in the game,” Dino said.
“Back in the fairway, anyway.”
They both parred the hole. A bit later, as they were crossing South County Road, Dino spoke up. “You are the most unobservant person I know.”
“What brought that on?” Stone asked. “And how does being observant help my golf game?”
“Nothing can help your golf game,” Dino replied, “but if somebody had told me that my former wife and lover was hunting me down to kill me, I’d take a look around me once in a while.”
Stone tensed. “Where?”
“Over your left shoulder, parked at the curb, about two hundred yards down. Don’t look yet!”
Stone tried to keep his eyes ahead. They stopped to tee off, and he took his driver out of the bag and tried a couple of practice swings, which allowed him to look at the car. “I can’t see who’s inside,” he said.
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Dino asked. “If she’d wanted you to see her, she could have parked twenty yards from us.”
“We’ve already made the local papers this week, as a result of the scene in the restaurant,” Stone said. “I don’t think I want to read a story that says I was shot dead on the golf course at the Breakers.”
“Don’t worry,” Dino said, “you won’t. I may, but not you.”
“How do you know she doesn’t want to kill you, too?”
“Because I never married her, then dumped her when an old girlfriend called,” Dino said. “I’ve always been nice to Dolce.”
Stone teed up and swung at the ball, hitting it straight, for a change. “I remember once your telling me that Eduardo was the devil, and that Dolce was his handmaiden. Is that what you call being nice?”
“I didn’t say it to her,” Dino pointed out. “You think I have a death wish?”
“But she must know what you think of her.”
“I don’t know how she could. I’ve certainly never told her.”
“What about Mary Ann?”
“Mary Ann and I have not yet come to the point in our marriage where she wants me dead. Someday, maybe, but not yet.” Dino drove the ball, and they got back into the cart.
“What is it with Sicilians, anyway?” Stone asked.
“Well, speaking as a scion of the more elegant north of Italy, it has always been my opinion that all Sicilians are totally batshit crazy. I mean, the vendetta thing would be counterproductive anywhere else but Sicily, but they’ve made an art of it. Do you have any idea how many more Sicilians there would be in the world, not to mention in this country, if there were no vendetta? If you took all of them who’ve been knifed, shot-gunned, garrotted, blown up, and poisoned, married them off and had them produce, say, four point five children each? Millions.”
“And you’re saying that’s not counterproductive?”
“Nah. It just concentrates more ill-gotten wealth in fewer hands, and it prevents a Sicilian population explosion. And that can’t be a bad thing.”
“But you married a Sicilian.”
“How do you think I know all this? It’s been an education, I can tell you.” Dino curled a thirty-foot, breaking, downhill putt into the cup.
“How’d you do that?” Stone asked, astonished.
“I just thought about how a Sicilian would do it, if the ball would kill somebody.”