29
W hen Stone arrived at his desk Joan handed him a slip of paper. “Mike Freeman would like you to have lunch with him and a friend at the Four Seasons, at one o’clock,” she said.
Stone looked at the paper. “Who’s his friend?”
“He didn’t say, even when I asked him, but there’s nothing else on your calendar, so I accepted for you.”
“All right,” Stone said.
“Also, Herbie Fisher’s divorce petition has been granted.”
She handed him a document. “Here’s his copy of the decree.”
“That was unusually fast,” Stone said.
“My information is that a lot of petitions have been withdrawn, pending the new no-fault law coming into effect.”
“Get Herbie for me, please.”
A moment later the phone buzzed, and Stone picked up. “Good morning, Herbie.”
“Good morning, Stone. You got me on the way out to class.”
“I won’t keep you. Your divorce petition has been granted; you’re a free man again.”
“That’s great news, Stone.”
“Try and hang on to your freedom for a while, will you?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Bye.” Herbie hung up.
Stone shook his head. He fully expected to hear soon from Herbie that he had found The One.
Stone walked up the stairs at the Four Seasons and immediately spotted Mike Freeman at his regular table in the Grill, along with another man. As he approached the table, Stone saw a thickly built gentleman in a good suit with short, salt-and-pepper hair, whom he did not recognize.
Mike stood when he saw Stone coming and offered his hand. “Stone, I’d like you to meet Hank Hightower. Hank, this is Stone Barrington.”
Stone shook the man’s hand and sat down.
“Drink?”
“I’ll stick with San Pellegrino,” Stone said.
Mike ordered the water for them all, and menus arrived. He waited until lunch was on the way before continuing. “Stone, Hank is CEO of Steele Security, the insurance company.”
“Ah, of course,” Stone said.
“Steele, as you probably know, is a broad-based insurance company, offering just about every sort of coverage.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the ads,” Stone said. “You’re an old-line company, aren’t you, Hank?”
“Since 1850,” Hightower replied.
Mike continued. “Hank and I have worked out a way for Steele to offer its best customers additional coverage from Strategic Services: personal security, various travel coverages, et cetera. For instance, many of Steele’s clients when traveling domestically or abroad take along expensive items, like jewelry.”
“Yes,” Hightower said, “and these days, with all the terrorism in the world, many of our customers are feeling a bit nervous about the personal safety of themselves and their families-kidnapping, robbery, that sort of thing.”
“I can understand that,” Stone said.
“We’re going to need a legal framework to cover our collaboration,” Mike said, “and we’d like your firm to draw that up.”
“We’d be very happy to do so,” Stone replied. “Hank, can you supply me with an outline of your collaboration, the specific services involved, and your various responsibilities to each other?”
“I can,” Hightower said, “and I will have it in your hands by tomorrow.”
“Then I should think that, in a week or so, Woodman amp; Weld will have a draft agreement for you both to review.”
“Thank you, Stone,” Hightower said. “There’s something else: we’ve been with a large law firm downtown for a dozen years or more, but for the past year or two we’ve been feeling neglected. I know you’ve heard this before: we’re not getting the kind of prompt attention to our needs as in the past, and we’re not getting the attention of the senior partners. In short, we’re being taken for granted.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Hank,” Stone said with a straight face, although he was delighted to hear it. “May we be of service?”
“I think that’s a very good possibility,” Hightower said. “I’d like to meet some of your people.”
“I’ll be very happy to arrange that,” Stone said. “I think we should start by having you meet our managing partner, Bill Eggers, and perhaps you might bring your in-house counsel, as well. Bill can give you both a precise description of the breadth and depth of our services and how we might be of help to you.”
“I’d like that,” Hightower said.
They talked further over lunch, and Stone left them with a promise to get back to Hightower with a firm appointment to meet with Eggers.
Stone didn’t go home immediately. Woodman amp; Weld was located in the Seagram Building, upstairs from the Four Seasons, so he took the elevator and went straight to Eggers’s office. The secretary showed him in.
“Afternoon, Stone,” Eggers said. The debris of his lunch was still on his desk, and the secretary cleaned up. “What’s on your mind?”
“New business,” Stone said.
“Glad to hear it. Anybody I ever heard of?”
“Steele Security.”
Eggers’s eyebrows went up. “Are you serious?”
“I am. I just had lunch with Hank Hightower, their CEO, and Mike Freeman. They’ve asked us to put together an agreement between Steele and Strategic Services to cover some joint services they’re going to be offering.”
“Sounds interesting. Could be a wedge to get some more business from Steele.”
“We don’t need a wedge,” Stone said. “Hightower says they’re feeling neglected by their current firm and are looking for new representation. He’d like to bring his in-house counsel to meet with us.”
Eggers placed a hand on his chest. “Be still my heart,” he said. “Set it up. I’ll make time whenever they want to come in.”
Stone dug Hightower’s card out of his pocket, walked over to Eggers’s sofa, sat down, and picked up the phone. Five minutes later he hung up. “Three o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“Done,” Eggers said, making marks on his calendar to block out the time. “And you’ll be there, too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course, though please remember that I don’t know a hell of a lot about insurance.”
“Maybe not, but you know how to tap-dance. I’ll get a couple of department heads in on this, too.”
Stone got up to go. “Bill, thanks for handling Arrington’s will with such dispatch. I’m happy not to have been involved in that process.”
“Have you read the will?”
“No, and I don’t intend to.”
“As you wish,” Eggers said. “If you ever get around to it, I think you’ll be pleased with the way we’ve organized her estate.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“How’s the new school for Peter?”
“He’s eating it up. He’s going to screen the rough cut of his film for them next week.”
“I made a call to Yale on the subject of his and Ben’s applications,” Eggers said, “and learned that Eduardo was in ahead of me.”
“Thanks, Bill. Peter wants Yale badly.”
Stone excused himself and walked slowly back to the house, thinking he had had a pretty good day. He walked into his office and found Arrington waiting for him, and she was in tears.
30
S tone sat down on the sofa next to her. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Arrington grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and blew her nose. “I just had a call from an old friend of Vance’s, Prunella Wheaton?”
“The gossip queen? What did she want?”
“She said she got wind of somebody looking into you and me.”
“Come on, tell me the whole thing.”
“Someone got ahold of a copy of our marriage license.”
“That’s a public record. What else?”
“Well, they’ve figured out that we were married at Eduardo’s house and about the mayor, too, but they’re afraid of printing anything about that for fear of angering some of Eduardo’s friends.”
“So far, so good. Is there more?”
“They’ve figured out that I’m Vance’s widow and that I have a son.”
“None of this is really a secret,” Stone said. “Nobody could make very much of that.”