by Stuart Woods
“We’ll cross that gutter when we come to it.” Stone shook her hand, and she left his office. He heard the outside door close behind her.
Joan came in. “What was she about?”
“About an ex-husband who won’t leave her alone.”
“Oh, one of those.”
“Yes, one of those.”
“You seem to have known a number of women with ex-husbands or boyfriends like that.”
“It has been my lot in life to know such women.”
“You attract them the way other people attract mosquitoes. How did you attract this one?”
“I forgot to ask her who recommended me.”
“She reminds me of a young Lauren Bacall.”
“Me too.”
“Don’t start thinking you’re Humphrey Bogart,” she said, then went back to her desk. A moment later she buzzed him. “Dino on one.”
Stone picked up the phone. “Good morning,” he said.
“It’s not bad,” Dino replied. Back when Stone had been an NYPD detective, he and Dino had been partners. Dino had prospered and was now the New York City police commissioner.
“I wish I could say that,” Stone said. “I woke up feeling like one of the undead. Funny, though, I feel better now.”
“How’d you get over that? It’s too early in the morning for you to have met a new woman.”
“Actually,” Stone said, “it’s not.”
3
Fred Flicker had a good look at Ms. Fiske as he held open the door of the Bentley. Pretty good, he thought, but Fred was a harsh judge of flesh. He got into the driver’s seat.
“And where would you like to go, madam?” he asked.
“Madam? Really?”
“Would you prefer miss?”
“Infinitely.”
“Where would you like to go, miss?”
“Home?”
“Would you like to give me a hint?”
“Oh, I’m sorry—740 Park Avenue.”
“Yes, miss.” Fred put the car in gear and drove away. Fifteen minutes later he pulled to a stop in front of her building, got out and opened the door for her.
“Thank you, Fred.”
He handed her a card. “Please call me at this number when you’re ready to go out, miss. I’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Actually,” she said, “I’d rather just go to lunch now. I’m presentable, no need to go upstairs.” She got back into the car.
Fred mounted the driver’s seat again. “Where to, miss?”
“The Boathouse in Central Park,” she said, dialing a number on her cell phone.
“Yes, miss.” Ten minutes later they were there. Fred assisted her from the car, then parked it and followed her into the restaurant. She was seated at an outside table overlooking the lake. A woman entered, they air-kissed, and the two women sat down together.
Fred stood to one side of the seating area and was approached by the headwaiter.
“May I help you?” the man asked, in a tone that sounded as if he had no wish to help.
“Security,” Fred said, nodding toward the Fiske table.
“Really?”
“Really. Trust me.”
“Oh, all right.” He stalked away.
A moment later the waiter returned to the terrace, leading a large, handsome gentleman. Fred looked him over: six-five, maybe six-six, two-twenty, chiseled features, square jaw. He was seated on the opposite side of the outdoor area from where Ms. Fiske sat. He looked at her, she looked at the man and nodded.
Fred walked over to the man’s table. “Good afternoon,” he said.
The man looked at him disdainfully. “Is it?”
“Take my word for it,” Fred replied. “I am a security person for Ms. Fiske.”
The man looked him up and down. “Really?”
“Really. She would be very grateful if you would leave the restaurant and not follow her anywhere again.”
The man stood up and approached Fred, who remained rooted to the spot. He reached out, put his hands under Fred’s arms and lifted him like a child, until they were nose to nose. “I would be very grateful if you would go away and stay away,” he said.
Fred reached out with both hands and briefly explored the man’s rib cage. Gun under the left armpit. “Kindly put me down and take your hands away,” he said.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll hurt you.”
Broad smile. “I’d like to see you try.”
Fred reached out with both hands, took the man by his ears and head-butted him squarely in the nose, hard. The man dropped him, and Fred landed on his toes. The man clapped a hand over his nose, and blood seeped between his fingers. Fred picked up a napkin from the table and handed it to him. “Use this,” he said, “and if I were you I’d run over to the nearest emergency room and have that nose looked at. It will need setting.”
While Fred waited for a reply, the headwaiter appeared again, this time in the company of two uniformed police officers.
“Can you do something about this, please?” he said, indicating Fred.
“Okay, what’s happening here?” one of the cops said.
“This man assaulted me,” Fred replied evenly. “It was necessary for me to defend myself.”
The cop removed the man’s hand from his face and took a look at his nose, then he turned to Fred. “You did that? How’d you reach that high?”
“He lifted me into range,” Fred replied. “And I have reason to believe that he is armed—shoulder holster, left side.”
“Oh, yeah?” The cop patted the area, then reached inside the man’s jacket and pulled out a small 9mm pistol. “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll give you a lift to the ER, and on the way we can have a little chat about this.” He held up the gun.
The man nodded, and the two policemen escorted him from the restaurant. Fred walked over to Ms. Fiske’s table. “I don’t believe he’ll bother you for the remainder of the day, miss.”
“I’m so glad,” Ms. Fiske replied. “In that case, I don’t believe I’ll need you for the rest of the day, Fred. You may convey the news to Mr. Barrington.”
“I will do so, miss,” Fred replied. “Good day.” He walked out of the restaurant and went for the car.
Half an hour later, Fred had conveyed the news to Mr. Barrington.
“Well done,” Stone said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Do you think he got the message?”
“If he didn’t, next time I’ll break his patella—that will keep him out of action for a while.”
“As long as it’s in self-defense,” Stone said, and Fred took his leave.
—
Stone joined Dino and his wife, Viv, for dinner at Patroon that evening, and he told them about Fred’s actions that afternoon.
“Sounds like a law-abiding citizen to me,” Dino said.
“Fred or the other guy?”
“Fred, of course. It would have weighed with the arresting officer that he was so much smaller than the one who was doing the bleeding. What was this all about?”
“Recently divorced woman with an ex-husband who can’t face reality and is stalking her.”
Dino, to Stone’s astonishment, began to sing: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before. It’s from an old familiar score . . .”
“Dino,” Viv said. “I never knew you could sing.”
“He can’t,” Stone replied.
“Still, the song resonates, doesn’t it?” Dino asked. “Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t know he was a musicologist, either,” Stone said to Viv.
“I learn something new about him every . . . month or so,” she replied.
“Half the women Stone has ever been involved with had angry men
in the way.”
“I’m not involved with her,” Stone said, “she’s a client.”
“That never got in the way before, and I don’t think the American Bar Association would like it.”
“So, I offer some of my clients a broad range of services.”
Viv burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me, just let my imagination run wild.”
4
Stone was at his desk the following morning when he heard voices—a man and a woman—followed by scuffling sounds, followed by a very large man with a length of tape across his nose and two black eyes, looking much like a sorrowful raccoon. Right behind him was Joan, wielding the .45 that she kept in her desk drawer.
“Freeze!” she yelled.
“Joan!” Stone said loudly. “Don’t shoot him!”
“Oh, all right,” Joan replied, sounding disappointed. She lowered the weapon.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Stone asked. “And talk fast, or I’ll let her shoot you.”
“My name is Harvey Biggers,” the man said.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I was a little slow on the uptake. You’d better sit down before you pass out. I’ll handle this, Joan. Put the gun away.”
Biggers sat down. “I have to talk to you.”
“I’m afraid that conversation can’t take place,” Stone said, “since I represent your former wife.”
“Look, you don’t know what you’re getting mixed up in. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for legal advice. Just give me five minutes to ease my conscience.”
“Your conscience? If you want to confess, speak to somebody at the Nineteenth Precinct.”
“This is not a confession, it’s a warning.”
“A warning about what?”
“About what you’re getting mixed up in.”
“Mr. Biggers, every time I take on a client I get mixed up in something, it’s what I do. Now what’s your point?”
“You’ve been misled.”
“Not for the first time.”
“Maybe not, but this time could be fatal.”
“Fatal for whom?”
“For you. Sorry, that was a terrible joke. Fatal for me, actually.”
Stone sighed deeply. “You’re not making any sense at all, Mr. Biggers.”
“I’m being set up.”
“Set up for what?”
“For getting killed.”
“Let me give you a little help with the noir nomenclature, Mr. Biggers. When you’re being set up it means someone is trying to have you wrongly accused of killing someone else.”
“It does?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t it mean something else, too?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“For someone else killing me?”
“Ah, you mean being set up to be killed?”
“That’s what I said.”
“That may be what you were trying to say, but it didn’t come out that way. You mean, someone is trying to kill you?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
“Very soon, it seems.”
“Who is trying to kill you?”
“Not trying, planning.”
“All right, who is planning to kill you?”
“My wife, of course.”
“Mr. Biggers, do you have more than one wife?”
“Well, not at a time. But right now I have two ex-wives, and one of them is trying to kill me.”
“Which one?”
“Why, your client, of course.”
“Mr. Biggers, unless you start making some sense real quick, the lady with the gun in the outside office is going to come back, and my client will never have the chance to kill you.”
“I know you will find this hard to believe, but she wants you to believe that I am trying to kill her, when it is she who wants to kill me. Look at me, she’s already gotten me beat up.”
“No, you got yourself beat up when you assaulted my associate, Fred.”
“That little twerp is your associate?”
“Mr. Biggers, let me remind you that the man you are referring to as ‘that little twerp’ put you in the hospital and made you look like a raccoon.”
“He just got lucky that time.”
“No, in that regard he is always lucky, and you should not provoke him again into having to defend himself. Now can we get back to the point?”
“The point is that your client, Carrie Fiske, wants you to think I want to kill her, when in reality it is she who wants to kill me.”
“Mr. Biggers, while I appreciate your newfound clarity of thought, your thought is preposterous. Why would she want to kill you?”
“Because she’s mad at me, and because she’s mean.”
“Let’s take those one at a time. Why is she mad at you?”
“Because I left her. Isn’t ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ a motive in this modern world?”
“I’ll grant you that—a woman scorned is capable of a lot.”
“Carrie is capable of anything.”
“All right, how is she mean?”
“In any way you can possibly think of—she’s mean morning, noon, and night, especially at night, in bed.”
Stone wanted to rest his forehead on the glass top of his desk and cool his fevered brow, but instead he did the right thing. “Mr. Biggers,” he said, “I cannot listen to your concerns any longer. I refer you to the New York City Police Department, to which you can express your fears and even make a charge against Ms. Fiske, should you desire to do so. Now, this conversation is at an end. Please leave before I ask my secretary to escort you from the premises with a .45 stuck in your ribs.”
Harvey Biggers made a small noise, then he got up and strode, nearly ran, from Stone’s office. Stone heard the outside door close.
Joan came into his office. “Did he harm you?”
“No, he was too afraid of you.”
5
Biggers had not been gone five minutes when Joan buzzed.
“Carrie Fiske on line one.”
Stone pressed the button. “Hello, Carrie.”
“Hello, Stone.”
“I hope you are well.”
“So far. Tell me, have you heard from my ex-husband?”
“Yes, and from close range.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he was right across my desk.”
“In your office?”
“That’s where my desk is.”
“Good God! Did he hurt you?”
“I don’t think he is in any shape to hurt anybody today—he just got out of the hospital.”
“I saw what Fred did to him. That little man was magnificent. Who knew?”
“I knew—your ex-husband didn’t. He does now, though.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted me to know that you are trying to kill him.”
“What nonsense! Why would I want to kill him?”
“That’s what I asked him.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said, because you’re mad at him, and you’re mean, especially in bed.”
“Well, God knows, I’m mad at him for creating that scene at the Central Park Boathouse. But mean? And in bed? What did he mean by that?”
“I was afraid to ask.”
“That’s very odd. I don’t think anyone has ever said I was mean in bed.”
“It is certainly odd, and I’m relieved to hear that you don’t have that reputation.”
“I wouldn’t like for a charge like that to get around—it might damage my . . . social life.”
“No doubt.”
“Can I sue him for defamation?”
“That is inadvisable.”
/> “But he has defamed me.”
“I don’t doubt that, but in the legal process of suing him . . .”
“Yes? Go on.”
“Well, do you remember that woman who was known as the Queen of Mean?”
“Leona Helmsley?”
“That’s the one.”
“What does she have to do with it?”
“I fear that, at least in the New York Post, you might well find yourself billed as the Queen of Mean in Bed, thus defeating the purpose of your lawsuit and sticking you with that sobriquet for life, perhaps longer.”
“Longer?”
“It might end up on your tombstone.”
“How?”
“You said you had a will. In it, is the person in charge of your funeral arrangements your husband?”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. I think we need to draw up a new will for you right away, especially since you think he wants to kill you. If he managed to do that, and get away with it, he would be in charge of everything.”
“Why don’t you come out to my house in the Hamptons for the weekend?” she said, abruptly changing the subject.
Stone reflected that he had no plans for the weekend, but still . . .
“And,” she added before he could speak, “I have some friends coming that you might enjoy. And you could draw up my new will, before Harvey gets a chance to kill me.”
“You make a weekend in the Hamptons sound like an emergency.”
“A dire emergency. Do you know Georgica Pond?”
“I know that it’s a very nice neighborhood. I read the real estate ads in the Sunday Times magazine.”
“Can you find it?”
“Probably not, but the GPS lady in my car can.”
She gave him the address. “Lunch is at one o’clock tomorrow. Be there in time for the world’s best Bloody Mary.”
“I don’t drink before noon.”
“That’s why lunch is at one. And bring a dinner jacket.”
“To the Hamptons? I haven’t spent a lot of time out there, but my impression is that everybody is terribly, terribly casual.”
“Do you own a dinner jacket?”
“I do.”
“Bring it,” she said.