“I think we’re sitting together.”
“Okay, and there’s the party at Sardi’s afterward. It may be the last time I see Rita.”
“Cheer up, maybe the show will close after the first performance.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on her. How much have you seen of Marla?”
“Only the once. Fortunately, unlike Rita, she’ll be available in the evenings once the show has opened.”
“Good for you. If I can’t see Rita, then I’m going to start thinking about Shelley again.”
“Have you heard from her since you booted her out of your bed?”
“I had a postcard with a picture of the Port Authority bus terminal on it. No signature.”
“What did she have to say?”
“‘See you around.’”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I hope you burned the postcard. You don’t want that lying around the house.”
“I’ve been a cop all these years, and you think I don’t know how to destroy incriminating evidence?”
Stone laughed. “I was getting worried about you.”
“I was getting worried about me, too. You know, there’s this female detective in my squad named Vivian DeCarlo, nice Ital-ian girl.”
“Dino, the next worse thing to fucking Shelley Bach is fucking somebody in your squad.”
“Unless we can get away with it,” Dino replied.
“Oh, shit,” Stone said. “You’re determined to destroy your career, one way or the other.”
“So what if I do? I’ve got the money from my divorce settlement, and a pension waiting for me.”
“Retirement would be an unnatural act for you. What would you do with yourself?”
“I don’t know. What do other retirees do?”
“Play shuffleboard and wait to die.”
“I could travel.”
“You hate travel, unless I’m there to fly you.”
“I could buy a place in Italy and go live there.”
“You’re a New Yorker, not an Italian.”
“With a name like Bacchetti, I’m not Italian?”
“You live and breathe New York. What would you do in Italy? You speak about as much Italian as I do.”
“I used to speak Italian, with my grandmother, when I was a kid. It would come back to me.”
“You’d end up sitting in some bar in Rome, trying to pick up American tourists, so you could talk to somebody.”
“That’s pretty much what I do here, except they’re not tourists.”
“What you do here is be a cop. I hope you’re not stupid enough to give that up before they boot you out.”
Dino sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to quit.”
“If you start seeing this DeCarlo girl, you’ll end up getting one or both of you transferred, probably to the Bronx or the outer reaches of Brooklyn.”
Stone looked toward the door and saw Herbie Fisher standing there.
“There’s Herbie,” Dino said. “At last, a familiar face.”
Stone waved him over. “He wants to be called Herb now-he’s growing up.”
Herbie sat down and ordered a drink. “What a day!” he said. “What a week!”
“Is that good?” Dino asked.
“You bet your ass it is,” Herbie said. “I got promoted to senior associate and pulled in two pieces of new business, maybe three.”
“What’s the third?” Stone asked.
Herbie told them about his dinner with Robert Bentley II.
“Sounds promising,” Stone said.
“Eggers is champing at the bit for me to get that.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“But I’m not going to rush it. I’m going to let him come to me.”
“That’s wise, if he comes.”
“He’ll come-his son is my associate.”
“How’d you swing that?” Dino asked.
“I didn’t swing it. The kid is the newest associate, and I’m the newest senior associate.”
“A marriage made in heaven,” Dino said.
“Don’t laugh, it could turn out that way. If we handle a major litigation for Bentley, it could bring millions into the firm.”
“Eggers would like that,” Stone said.
“I’m redoing my apartment,” Herbie said, apropos of nothing.
“Okay,” Stone replied.
“My secretary is doing it. Turns out she has a real gift. You should come and see my office-even Eggers liked it. He picked up the tab for it, too.”
“My word,” Stone said, “you did have a good week, didn’t you?”
“I’m going to make more rain,” Herbie said. “My goal is to bring in more business than a senior associate ever has.”
“The boy has ambition,” Dino said. “Who knew? Herbie-”
“Herb, please.”
“Ah, Herb, how’d you go from being a gold-plated fuckup to being a senior associate at Woodman and Weld?”
“Hard work and good luck,” Herbie said. “And good friends.”
“That’s an unbeatable combination,” Stone said, clapping him on the back.
Stone looked toward the door and saw Mike Freeman standing there. “Over here!” he yelled.
Mike came over and sat down. “You know, I went to Elaine’s automatically, looking for you.”
“I have to stop myself from doing the same thing,” Stone said.
“Stone, you up for a trip to L.A.?”
“What’s up in L.A.?”
“I think it’s time we had a look at our hotel’s progress.”
“Well, the hotel is a Woodman and Weld client, so I guess I can justify the trip.”
“We’ll take the Strategic Services G-550,” Mike said.
“That will take the sting out of air travel.”
“Can I come?” Herbie asked.
Stone shook his head. “No junkets for you. You have new business to take care of.”
“How about me?” Dino asked. “I can take the time.”
“You’re welcome, Dino,” Mike said. He looked around. “Do they serve food here?”
23
The big Gulfstream lined up for takeoff on Runway 1 at Teterboro, and the pilot pushed the throttles forward.
“What happened to the beautiful pilot Suzanne Alley?” Stone asked. “We had dinner in London once.”
“She got a better offer,” Mike replied.
The pilot rotated and the jet rose and climbed quickly.
“I’ll be interested to see if we get cleared all the way to cruising altitude,” Stone said.
“Not until we get away from Newark Liberty,” Mike said, “but that won’t take long.”
The airplane leveled off at Flight Level 440. The stewardess unbuckled her seat belt and came aft with a tray of breakfast pastries and a pot of coffee.
Dino accepted a pastry and a cup of coffee. “This is better than flying in your airplane,” he said to Stone.
“We have pastries and coffee on my airplane,” Stone replied. “If you bring them.”
“I believe my point is made,” Dino said. “I’d also have to bring my own stewardess.”
Later that day they set down at Burbank and got into a waiting rented Mercedes. Mike drove.
“I’ve booked us into the Bel-Air,” he said. “Might as well check out our competition.”
“I hope they don’t know who we are,” Stone said. “We might get mugged.”
“They’ll know,” Mike said. “They knew well before we broke ground. Shall we visit the site now?”
“Sure,” Stone said.
Mike drove them to Bel-Air and up to Vance Calder’s old property. Cars and pickup trucks were lined up along the road for a quarter of a mile. “I guess they don’t have any parking areas finished yet,” he said. They turned into the driveway and stopped to identify themselves to the security guard, then they continued up the winding driveway. “There’ll be cottages on both sides of the road all the way up,” Mike said.
They parked just short of the front door to the old house and got out of the car. A portico wide enough for half a dozen cars was being constructed, and the old garage was being turned into interior space. They looked down the hill to where an enormous pit had been dug. Mike pointed. “Underground parking,” he said.