They saddled up and drove to the Carlyle, at Seventy-Sixth and Madison Avenue. Shep led them into an elevator, slipped his key card into a slot, and the elevator closed and went up fast.
“I’m going to get a nosebleed,” Dino said.
The car stopped, and they stepped into a handsome vestibule, facing double doors. Shep let them in.
“Wow,” Dino said.
“That goes for me, too,” Stone said. “You undersold the place.” The rooms were large and the ceilings high. They walked across the living room, Shep pressed a button, sliding doors slid open, and they stepped onto a broad terrace, with handsome outdoor furniture scattered about. The view was spectacular — south over Manhattan, and all the lights were on. “Great place for cocktails before dinner,” Stone said, “with the sun setting slowly into New Jersey.”
They toured the other rooms, and they were beautiful. Stone particularly liked the study/library. “Lots of showbiz titles,” he said, looking closer.
“Those come with the place,” Shep said. “The manager said the only things the estate took out were some museum-quality paintings, which their decorator replaced with good but less expensive pieces.” Shep led them back into the living room, pressed another button, and a mirror slid up, revealing a well-stocked bar. He poured them drinks.
Stone felt the heft of his whiskey glass. “Baccarat,” he said.
“The estate is leaving the crystal, but they’re keeping the silverware,” Shep said. “Somebody in the owner’s family wanted it.”
“Do you know what maker and pattern?” Stone asked.
“I’ve got it written down somewhere,” Shep said.
“Get on the Internet and do a search. You can be ready to serve dinner in a few days.”
They took seats in the living room. “Shep, what are you going to do with yourself, now that you’re a free man?” Stone asked.
“ ‘Do’? You mean, like, work?”
“If you like.”
“I’m enjoying doing nothing,” Shep said. “Every morning, I have breakfast in bed, then I get up and walk over to Central Park and spend an hour there, just nosing around. I do some window-shopping on Madison, check out the galleries — I’ve already bought a couple of pictures; they’re being framed — and in the evening I go to the theater or listen to whoever is entertaining downstairs.”
“What did you do before your father died?”
“I was the chief operating officer of the family business. Dad was always chairman and president. I knew it well, when the buyer came calling.”
“What sort of business was it?”
“We designed and manufactured machine parts, especially prototypes. Dad always said we were the best in the business, and I think he was right. We had seven plants around the world.”
“Did you have any problems selling it?”
“Not a bit. I sold to one of our competitors. They had wanted it for years. Dad had talked a lot about what to do with it, how much to ask, how much to take, so I didn’t have any problems.”
“Sounds like you’ve led a gilded life,” Dino said.
“Don’t you believe it. I went to work on the shop floor the day after I graduated from Brown, and over the next thirty years I worked every job in the place. Didn’t take much time off, either.”
“Was your dad on your back all the time?” Dino asked.
“Not after he was sure that I’d be a good worker. Then he would just turn me over to the next department manager, who’d put me to work. Dad and I had a drink every Friday evening to talk over my week. I usually had a few suggestions for him, and he took most of them.”
Dino stood up. “Well, I have to get up and arrest people tomorrow, so I’d better get home. My wife, Viv, gets home from a business trip tomorrow, so I can’t be hung over.”
Stone got up, too. As they got to the front door, Dino said, “Shep, you’d better rest up because you’re going to have one hell of a lot of sex, after the ladies see this apartment.”
“That’s good advice,” Shep said.
“Avoid the ladies downstairs,” Stone said. “If you can’t stand it anymore, rent a room in the hotel, and tell them you’re a traveling salesman. Don’t ever bring one up here.”
“I’ve never thought sex was something you should pay for,” Shep said, “so I’ll be okay.”
Stone and Dino rode down together.
“It’s going to be fun watching him,” Dino said. “I hope he can handle it.”
“He seems like a very capable guy to me,” Stone replied.
Four
Stone was getting dressed the following morning when his cell phone rang. He picked it up. “Speak.”
“It’s Dino. Listen, last night when we were at Shep’s apartment at the Carlyle, you remember that he said something about strolling in the park every morning?”
“Yeah. I was going to tell him not to stroll in the park at night, but I knew you’d be all over me for disparaging your department’s work at keeping the citizenry safe, and a bunch of statistics about how much safer it is in the park than it used to be.”
“All of that is perfectly true,” Dino said.
“Maybe, except for the ‘perfectly’ part.”
“Maybe you should have told him not to,” Dino said.
“What’s happened?”
“A park employee found him facedown in the grass, near the Bethesda Fountain. He’s at Lenox Hill now, still unconscious. They found your card and mine in his pocket. I guess they liked mine better, because they called me.”
“I’ll get right over there,” Stone said. He hung up and called down to Joan. “Get me a cab. I’ll be down right away.”
“Yes, sir!”
Stone presented himself at the ER desk a few minutes later. He gave the nurse his card. “You have a Shepherd Troutman here, with this card in his pocket. He’s my client. May I see him?”
A resident came out of the ER, and the nurse flagged him down. There was a whispered exchange between them, then the nurse said, “This is Dr. Seitz. He’ll take you up to Mr. Troutman’s suite.”
Stone followed the young man into the elevator, and they went to the top floor. The suite was one large room, with living room — type furniture at one end and Shep Troutman at the other, in a hospital bed, apparently asleep.
“These are pretty nice quarters,” Stone said. “Do you treat all your ER patients so well?”
“No,” the doctor said, “just the ones in custom-made suits with the police commissioner’s card in their pockets.”
“Right,” Stone said. “May I wake him?”
“He came to about an hour ago, and he’s been in and out since. Take a seat and wait for him to come around on his own. He might be having a nice dream.”
“What are his injuries?”
“Just one: a lump the size of a hen’s egg on the back of his skull. No fracture. The jury’s still out on brain damage.”
Shep’s eyelids fluttered and he made an effort to sit up. The doctor found the remote control and sat him up a little.
“Stone?” Shep said. “What are you doing here?”
Stone sat down next to him. “You first. Have a look around and tell me what you’re doing here.”
Shep looked around. “Did the hotel put me in another room?”
“No, this is a several-thousand-dollars-a-day suite at Lenox Hill Hospital.”
Shep made an effort to sit up further, then stopped. “Ow,” he said, and his hand went to the back of his head. “That’s quite a lump.”
“You should have seen it when you checked in,” the doctor said, “before we treated it.”
“Dino called me half an hour ago,” Stone said. “It seems you were found in Central Park this morning, unconscious, and his card was found in your pocket, along with mine. Not surprisingly the hospital called Dino, who called me. Do you remember how you ended up in the park this morning?”