by Stuart Woods
He went to his kitchen door and let himself in, then disarmed the burglar alarm. Without turning on any lights, he went upstairs to his bedroom, changed into slippers, got the loaded riot gun, and went back downstairs to his study. He sat himself down in a comfortable chair and began to wait. The only light in the room filtered in from the living room, where a single lamp burned.
It had been a long time since he had been on a stakeout, and he tried to remember how he had dealt with the boredom without falling asleep. Reading was out; so was listening to music or watching television. Instead, he tried to remember things, things from a long time ago; that, he knew from experience, would keep him awake and wouldn’t interfere with his hearing. He tried to remember all the names of his high school graduating class, scoring about 80 percent, he reckoned.
The graduation memory done, he started on girls. He tried to remember each of the girls he had slept with from his freshman year at NYU, when he had had his first sexual experience, until he graduated. He began with Susan Bernstein, his first, who had invited him back to her dorm room and brazenly seduced him, cheerfully waiting until he had recovered from his first, premature ejaculation so that they could do it again, this time for a considerably longer period. He had slept with her throughout his freshman year; he tried to remember each experience. She didn’t come back his sophomore year; she had quit school to marry a jeweler in the diamond district.
He worked his way through the college years, lingering over the first experience he had had with two girls, at a summer house in East Hampton. The girls, he remembered, had been just as interested in each other as in him, something that had fascinated him to no end. Then there had been the assistant professor of English whom he had screwed late at night in the faculty lounge and on three other occasions, always in the same room. For some reason, doing it there had turned her on.
He was somewhere in the middle of his senior year, in the back seat of a Cadillac convertible parked on a dark Greenwich Village street, fucking the beautiful daughter of a New Jersey car dealer, when he was suddenly snapped back to the present. He had heard a noise from somewhere downstairs.
Chapter 31
Stone stood up, retrieved the shotgun leaning against his chair, and checked to be sure the safety was still on. If he had to use the shotgun, he reckoned, he would use it as a club, if at all possible. He had no desire to kill anybody, and he knew, from his experience as a police detective, what a pain in the ass it was to deal with the aftermath of a killing, even a legal one.
The noise had seemed to come from the lower front of the house, so he tiptoed down the hall toward the front stairs, keeping to the edge of the floor to avoid creaking. He went slowly down the stairs the same way. There was another noise, a tiny one, and he was sure it came from the direction of his office. He was in the kitchen dining area, and he moved very carefully toward the door that opened into his office. Arriving there, he put an ear to the door, held his breath, and listened. He was certain he could hear something, but it was so faint that he reckoned it must be coming from his secretary’s office or the hallway where the telephone box was located.
Slowly, he turned the knob and opened the door an inch. He could hear the noise better now, and it wasn’t coming from inside his office. He opened the door and stepped into the room. The noise stopped. Stone stood silently immobile for perhaps a minute, then the noise began again, this time a series of noises, like tools being taken from or returned to a toolbox. He moved on toward the closed door to the hallway and put an ear against it. Again, the noise had stopped. Stone reckoned that whoever it was was engaged in work that periodically made some noise, then was quiet. He began turning the knob, a quarter-inch at a time; when he had turned it all the way he opened the door an inch and listened. Silence. Then, slowly, an inch at a time, he swung the door open just enough to allow himself through it. He held the shotgun across his chest, ready to swing the butt if he encountered anybody, and stepped into the hallway. The floor made a tiny creak. He could hear nothing else.
As he inched along the hallway he began to be able to see better, and he realized that the tiny red lights from the alarm system and the telephone box were beginning to light his way; then he saw that the doors to both boxes were open. Bingo, he said to himself, almost at the very moment that something crashed into the back of his neck. It seemed a long time afterward that his head, along with his consciousness, came to an abrupt stop against the hall floor.
The first thing he heard was a ringing in his head. Then the ringing seemed to float out of his body and into another place, while changing pitch upward. Finally it stopped and he heard his own voice: “This is Stone Barrington; please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.” There followed an electronic beep, then a familiar voice.
“Stone, are you there? If you’re there, pick up.” A brief silence. “Please pick up, will you? I’ve got to talk to you right now!” Another silence. “Goddamnit, if you’re in the sack with somebody else, you’re in very big trouble!” There was a loud noise of a connection being broken.
Stone didn’t feel like moving just yet, since the floor seemed to be doing the moving for him. He lay there, his cheek against the cool oak, and tried to still it. Finally, hours later, it seemed, stillness arrived. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times. There was something inches from his nose, something tubular, and when he could move his head back and focus, he realized that it was the barrel of his own shotgun, lying on the floor in front of him.
He got to his hands and knees, then, using a coat rack for support, struggled to his feet, blinking rapidly to make the dizziness go away. That took a while. After a few more deep breaths to get some oxygen in his system, he turned and, leaning on the wall, went back toward his office. He found the switch that turned on the desk lamp, then moved around the desk and into his chair, resting his head on his hands against the desktop. He thought he had never had such a headache.
He forced himself to sit up and grope in a drawer for some aspirin, then swallowed four with some stale water from a carafe on his desk. That done, he sat up in his chair and tried to think. Somebody had just spoken to him. He looked down at the flashing red light on the answering machine, then pressed the replay button and listened to Arrington’s voice, an urgent voice. He struggled to remember her number, pressed the speaker button on the phone, dialed, and laid his head down beside it.
“Hello!” she said, sounding angry.
He tried to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again. “It’s Stone.”
“You’re trying to sound sleepy, aren’t you?” she cried. “You were there all the time.”
“Listen,” he said.
“You son of a bitch, you were there in bed with somebody, weren’t you? You got rid of her, and now you’re calling me back.”
“Arrington,” he said, as clearly as he could manage, “if you don’t shut up and listen I’m going to hang up.”
“All right,” she said, “I’m listening!”
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven-thirty; lose your watch?”
“I’ve been out since, I don’t know, ten, ten-thirty.”
“Out of the house?”
“Out like a light.” He looked at his left wrist. “And, as a matter of fact, I did lose my watch.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I know.” His head began to swim again. “Will you call an ambulance, please? I think I…” He passed out again.
This time, he came awake in a hurry. Somebody was waving something horrible under his nose, and he pushed it away.
“How’re you feeling, pal?” a man’s voice asked.
Stone looked up and found a cop and a paramedic standing beside him; just beyond them was Arrington. His head seemed to be resting in a puddle of something.
“Let’s ease you back here,” the paramedic said, lifting him by the shoulders and sitting him up in the chair.
Stone wiped at his face. “What’s this?”
“Vomit. You threw up on the desk. Out, as you were, you’re lucky you didn’t choke on it.”
“Stone,” Arrington said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
Stone nodded, and it hurt a lot.
“Let’s get you onto the stretcher,” the paramedic said. His partner appeared from somewhere, and they helped him onto the litter. “Just lie back and relax,” the man said. “We’ll have you checked out in no time.”
Stone drifted off again.
When he woke up he was in a curtained-off area. A woman in a green jacket was bending over him; Dino and Arrington were sitting beside the bed.
“How are you feeling?” the woman asked.
“Not so hot,” Stone responded.
“What’s your name?”
“Stone Barrington.”
“How many fingers do you see?”
“Three.”
“Good count.”
“How is he?” Arrington asked.
“He’s got a pretty good concussion, I think,” the doctor answered. She continued with a brief neurological examination. “I think we’ll admit him, at least for tonight.”
“Can I ask him some questions?” Dino asked.
“Make it brief,” the doctor replied, stepping back.
“You remember anything, Stone?” Dino asked.
“I heard a noise downstairs. Went down to check on it. That’s about it. My watch is gone.” He held up a wrist.
“Did you see the guy who hit you?”
“No; from behind, I think.”
“Right. Remember anything else?”
“The doors were open.”
“Yeah, the street door to your office was ajar.”
“No, the telephone and alarm doors.”
“Huh?”
“To the boxes in the hall.”
“I gotcha.”
“How did I get here?”
“You called Arrington, remember?”
“No. Yes. She’s mad at me.”
“No, I’m not, darling,” she said, bending over him and kissing him on the forehead.
“She called nine-one-one, and an ambulance and a cop showed up. The cop recognized you and called me.”
“That’s it,” the doctor said. “We need to get him to bed now.”
“Good idea,” Stone said, closing his eyes.
Chapter 32
Amanda looked into the mirror and was horrified at what she saw. God knew she had been under a lot of stress lately, if anger caused stress, but this was the absolute end! High on her left cheek was an irate, fiery-red pimple. A pimple! She had not had a pimple since high school!
She covered the protuberance with makeup as well as she could, then finished dressing and went to her office. Her staff of three was already hard at work as she entered. “Messages,” she said to Martha without so much as a good morning.
“Good morning, Amanda,” Martha said, handing her a stack of pink slips.
Amanda went into her office without a word and closed the door, tossing the messages onto her desk. Lately she had been operating at a high level of irritation, and at times she had had a very hard time to keep from losing her temper, something she never did. This DIRT business had gotten under her skin, and nearly two weeks had passed since she had hired Stone Barrington to get to the bottom of it, with no visible results. She picked up the phone and dialed his office number. His secretary answered.
“Good morning, Ms. Dart, how are you?”
“Terrible, thank you. Let me speak to Stone.”
“I’m afraid Stone won’t be at work today,” the woman said, “and possibly not tomorrow.”
“He’s taking a vacation?” Amanda spat. “On my time?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Amanda got hold of herself. “What I mean is, is Stone taking some time off?”
“He is ill at the moment.”
“I’ll? Then I’ll call his home number.”
“He’s not at home, Ms. Dart.”
“Where, then, is he? I want to speak to him immediately.”
“He’s in Lenox Hill Hospital.”
“What?” She hoped to God he hadn’t had a heart attack on her.
“He’s at Lenox Hill, but he can take phone calls. I’ll give you the direct number for his room.”
Amanda scribbled down the number. “Thank you,” she said, and hung up. She dialed the other number, and it was answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Stone? It’s Amanda. You sound terrible.”
“Thanks, Amanda.”
“What on earth is wrong?”
“Concussion, they tell me. They want to keep me here and observe me for another day.”
“Concussion? How the hell did you get a concussion?” she demanded, as if a concussion were a personal affront to her.
“Amanda, are you quite all right?”
“We’re talking about you, Stone.”
“I surprised a prowler in my house, right before he surprised me.”
“A burglar?”
“Maybe. He took my wristwatch and the cash in my wallet.”
“Maybe a burglar?”
“Maybe not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think he may have been bugging my house and phones again.”
“Does that mean he’ll try to do my place again?”
“Possibly, although being caught at it might give him pause. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”
“How can I stop him?”
“Hire a security guard, I suppose. Do you want me to find somebody for you? I might be able to get an off-duty cop to sit on your apartment and offices.”
“Oh. Yes, I would like you to find somebody for me.”
“I’ll make a call or two.”
“Stone, does this business mean this person is getting violent?”
“Not necessarily, unless he’s caught in the act.”
“I do not want to catch him in the act.”
“That’s what the cop will be for. I don’t think you have to worry about violence, Amanda; he hasn’t attacked anyone else but me, and I did get in his way.”
“I’m relieved to hear it, but I’d still like your policeman to come. How soon can you get somebody?”
“Right after my nap,” Stone said. “They want me to take lots of naps.”
“Oh, of course, I don’t want to interfere with your recovery.”
“Don’t worry about it; I can still use a phone.”
“What kind of watch was it?”
“What?”
“Your wristwatch that was stolen; what kind?”
“A Rolex. It had my name engraved on the back.”
“What kind of Rolex?”
“The quartz one; I don’t remember what they call it. Why are you worried about my watch?”
“I was just curious. You go back to sleep, and call me when you’ve found a guard for me.”
“I’ll do that,” Stone said, and hung up.
This was not going well, Amanda thought. She called Richard Hickock and was put through immediately.
“Have you heard?”
“Heard what?” Hickock asked, as if he weren’t sure he wanted to know.
“Stone Barrington’s in the hospital. Somebody broke into his house and hit him over the head.”
“Jesus Christ. Does this have anything to do with our problem?”
“He disconnected the bugging in his house, and he thinks they came back to put it in again. Has he checked your office?”
“I had it done; both the office and the apartment are clean.”
“What about… that little friend of yours?”
“That was bugged. Stone’s guy figured it out.”
“I’m hiring a security guard,” Amanda said. “I don’t want my place bugged again.”
“I don’t blame you,” Hickock replied. “I’m having my premises checked daily, and I’m not using my cell phone when it counts.”
“Good God, can they bug a cellular phone?”
“A cell phone is a radio; people can listen in if they have the right equipment. I know a guy who’s got a scanner thing in his car; he listens to other people’s phone conversations for entertainment while he’s being driven around town.”
“That’s disgusting!” Amanda jotted a quick note to herself to ask Stone how to get a scanner.
“Well, that’s life these days.”
“I suppose it is. Do you have anything to report?”
“Nothing. Is Stone okay?”
“Yes, he’ll be out of the hospital by tomorrow at the latest, or I’m having a word with his doctors.”
“Good, we need him on the job.”
“Good-bye, Dickie.”
“Bye.”
She hung up just as Martha buzzed her. “Yes?”
“Allan Peebles is on line two.”
“Peebles? That awful man who edits the Infiltrator?”
“That’s him; he’s called twice this morning already. His message is on top of your stack.”
“What could he possibly want to talk to me about?”
“I’ve no idea. Do you want me to get rid of him?”
No need to court trouble, she thought. “No, I’ll speak to him.” She pressed the button. “This is Amanda Dart.”
“Amanda, this is Allan Peebles.”
“Yes?”
“We don’t know each other – not really, I mean, but I thought we should talk.”
“Talk? About what?”
“Well, Amanda, you and I are the principal targets of this DIRT scandal sheet, aren’t we?”
“So?”
“So, I thought perhaps we should compare notes.”
“I don’t have any notes, I’m afraid,” she said. And if I did have any, she thought, you’re the last person on Earth I’d share them with.
“Tell me, have your telephones been bugged?”
She paused. “Why do you ask?”