by Stuart Woods
“Dessert?” the bartender asked, taking away their plates.
“What do you recommend?” Carpenter asked.
“I like the walnut apple pie, with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
“Sold!”
“Make it two,” the woman said, “though I’ll regret it tomorrow when I weigh myself.”
“Never weigh yourself,” Carpenter said.
They finished their apple pie, and Carpenter asked for the check. She paid it with one of her Susan credit cards. “This one’s on me,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Susan Kinsolving,” Carpenter said, offering her hand.
“I’m Ginger Harvey,” the woman said. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee somewhere?”
“Thanks, but I’ve had a long day, and I’m really tired. Maybe I’ll see you in here again sometime.” Carpenter waved goodbye, walked outside, and found a cab. “The Carlyle hotel,” she said. “Seventy-sixth and Madison.”
“Right,” the cabbie said.
“Do me a favor, will you? Check your rearview mirror and see if there’s a woman getting into a cab behind us.”
“Coming out of Clarke’s?” the man asked. “Yeah.”
“Take your time going uptown,” she said. “Don’t jump any lights.” Carpenter got out her cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “It’s Carpenter,” she said. “I think I’ve been made, and I think it’s our friend. I’m in a cab, heading up Third Avenue at Fifty-seventh Street, and she’s right behind me. I’m going to the Carlyle hotel. Call the manager there and set me up quickly, get me registered. I don’t suppose you can get anybody there in ten minutes? I didn’t think so. No, don’t call the cops. We’re going to have to handle this the best way we can, and all by ourselves.” She hung up.
“That’s funny,” the driver said.
“What’s funny?”
“You didn’t have an English accent when you got into the cab.”
Carpenter handed him a fifty. “Forget you heard it,” she said. “Drop me at the hotel, leave your meter running, and don’t pick up a fare until you’re at least twenty blocks away, all right?”
The driver looked at the fifty. “Yes, ma’am!”
Carpenter got out of the cab at the Seventy-sixth Street entrance to the Carlyle and walked briskly to the front desk. “My name is Carpenter. May I have my key, please?”
The man at the desk looked at her for a moment, then opened a drawer and handed her a key. “High floor, interior suite, as requested,” he said.
“Anybody asks for me, call the number you were given,” she said. “There’ll be somebody here soon.”
“Sleep well,” the clerk said.
Carpenter got onto an elevator before she looked at the number taped to the key. She gave the operator the floor number. Her cell phone vibrated as soon as the elevator began to move. “Yes?”
“It’ll be twenty minutes before we can get a team into place,” the voice said.
“So long?”
“We’re scattered. Don’t answer the door until you get a call first.”
“Right.” She snapped the phone shut and got off the elevator. She found the door and let herself into a small suite, chaining the door behind her. The view was of an air shaft, but she closed the curtains anyway before turning on lights. She picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“All right,” she said, “check this: Name Ginger Harvey, lawyer, lives in the East Eighties.”
“Hold, please.”
She could hear the tapping of computer keys.
“East Eighty-first, near Lexington,” he said.
“Get somebody over there now. If no one answers, go in and call me back.” She hung up, shucked off her shoes, and paced the floor. It worried her that Ginger Harvey was real.
21
They finished their dinner quickly, and Stone went to the front desk. “The photographer who was here earlier,” he said to the woman. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“Why?” the woman asked. “Did he annoy you? He only started coming here last night, and I told him not to bug the guests unnecessarily.”
“No, nothing like that,” Stone said. “I just want to talk to him.”
“All I’ve got is a phone number,” she said, digging into a drawer and handing over a card. It was crudely printed and read “Herbie the Eye, Great Photography Quick.”
“Thanks,” Stone said. “Do you have a rental car available?”
“I’ve got a jeep,” she said, handing him the keys. “I’ll charge it to your room, Mr. Barrington.”
“Thanks so much.” Stone and Dino hurried to the car park, where they found a red jeep waiting.
“Your job is to remember how to get back here,” Stone said, starting the vehicle.
“Sure,” Dino said. “We’re just going to cruise?”
“We’re going to cruise hotels,” Stone replied. “Having lost us, I don’t think Herbie is going to pass up a buck, do you?”
“He doesn’t seem like the type.”
They drove through the warm night, stopped at every hotel they passed and cruised the parking lot. They found two yellow jeeps, but no Herbie. Stone tried Bob Cantor’s cell phone again.
“Yeah?” Cantor said.
“Bob? Where the hell have you been?”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Stone. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I’ve been on a boat. We just got into Red Hook this evening.”
“Where’s Red Hook?”
“Out at the eastern end of the island. What’s up? Why have you been trying to reach me?”
“Have you heard from Herbie Fisher?”
“No, you’re my first call since I switched on my phone. Why would I hear from Herbie?”
“He’s jumped bail.”
“Jumped bail for what? Did you get the kid arrested? My sister will kill me when I get home.”
“I didn’t get him arrested. Herbie got himself arrested, and I’m trying to get him out of it. I bailed him out through Irving Newman, and he jumped a quarter-of-a-mil bail.”
“A quarter of a mil! What did the kid do?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” Stone said. “Where are you staying?”
“It’s my last night on the charter boat. I was planning to go home tomorrow.”
“How do I get to Red Hook?”
Cantor gave him directions and the name of his boat. “It’ll take you half an hour, forty-five minutes.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Herbie is going to call you. Count on it. When he does, tell him to come to Red Hook, and don’t tell him you’ve talked to me. I think he thinks that if I find him, I’ll take him back to jail.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No! I want to get the charges reduced to a misdemeanor and get him probation. He’s got a court appearance in about thirty-six hours, and if he misses it, it’s going to cost me a hell of a lot of money.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to the kid, Stone.”
“Don’t talk to him, let me do that. If he somehow gets there before I do, play dumb and sit on him.”
“Whatever you say,” Cantor replied.
Stone hung up. “We’re going to Red Hook.”
“I want to go to bed,” Dino said. “It’s midnight.”
“Later.” Stone began picking his way toward Red Hook.
Carpenter jumped. There had been a noise outside her door. She grabbed her handbag, extracted the little Walther, and screwed in a silencer. The Carlyle would not appreciate gunfire in their hallways. She ran across the room in her bare feet and checked the peephole. Nobody visible. She flattened herself against the wall and waited.
The doorbell rang, and she jumped again. She didn’t open it.
“Carpenter!” somebody said from the hall.
She checked the peephole again. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Mason,” he replied.
He wouldn’t use th
at handle if he were at gunpoint. She unchained the door and opened it, stepping back, the pistol ready, just in case.
Mason walked in. “It’s all right, I’m alone.”
“Why the hell are you alone?” she demanded. “Don’t you know who we’re dealing with?”
“Of course I know who we’re dealing with,” he said in his upper-class drawl.
“And why didn’t you call before you came up? I could have shot you.”
“I was supposed to call?”
“Oh, never mind. Where is everybody?”
“I sent two men to the Harvey apartment. We’re waking up more.”
“She’s around this hotel somewhere,” Carpenter said, “I can feel it.”
“Give me a description, and I’ll circulate it.”
“Early thirties, five-five, a little under nine stone, medium brown hair, shoulder length, black eyes . . .”
“Black eyes? Nobody has black eyes.”
“All right, very dark brown. She’s dressed in a business suit, carrying a handbag that looks like a briefcase. God knows what’s in there.”
Mason produced a cell phone and made a call. “Why don’t you want to call the police?”
“I’d like it if we could bag her on our own,” Carpenter replied. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
Mason shrugged. “Why share victory with the NYPD or the FBI?”
The telephone rang, and Carpenter waited for Mason to get to an extension before answering. They picked up simultaneously. “Yes?”
“We’re in the Harvey flat,” a man said. “It’s clean as a whistle.”
“It would be, wouldn’t it?” Carpenter said.
“Hang on, we’re checking the garden.”
Carpenter hung on for a very long time before the man came back.
“We’ve got a corpse—female, might be thirty, medium height and weight.”
“Got her where?”
“Got her in a hotbox in the garden.”
“A gardening hotbox?”
“Exactly.”
“How long dead?”
“No rigor present, she doesn’t stink. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Get out of there, and clean up after yourself. Tell me you didn’t jimmy the door.”
“I picked the lock.”
“Then stake out the place in case La Biche returns, and be very, very careful.”
“All right.”
“Tell me you didn’t make this call on Harvey’s phone.”
There was a brief silence. “Ah, we’re getting out.”
Carpenter punched off. “Dunces! They called here on Harvey’s phone!”
Mason groaned. “Now we’ll have to talk to the NYPD. They’ll surely check her phone records.”
“You let me do the talking,” Carpenter said. She looked up Dino Bacchetti’s cell phone number in her book and dialed it.
22
The jeep ground to a halt in the parking lot of a marina. “This way,” Stone said, pointing.
Dino jumped. “Hang on, it’s my cell phone,” he said, groping for it. “This time of night, somebody’s gotta be dead.” He opened the phone. “Bacchetti.”
“Dino? It’s Carpenter.”
“Oh, hi,” Dino said. He held his hand over the phone. “It’s Carpenter.”
“Why the hell is she calling you?” Stone asked, reaching for the phone.
Dino held it away. “She’s calling me, I’m talking to her. What’s up, Carpenter?”
“I have a little problem for you, Dino.”
“For me? What kind of problem?”
“A couple of my people stumbled into a murder on your patch.”
“Who did they murder, Carpenter?”
“Nobody. La Biche took care of that.”
“Who’d she murder, one of yours?”
“A civilian, a woman named Ginger Harvey, and La Biche has taken her identity, at least for the time being.”
“Tell me about it.”
Carpenter gave him the address. “It’s a ground floor, rear apartment with a garden. The body’s in a hotbox in the garden.”
“What’s a hotbox?”
“It’s a gardening thing, like a small greenhouse without glass.”
“I’ll send some people over there.”
“They’re not going to find much, except for the body. This woman is very smart, and she will have eliminated all trace of her presence there.”
“Yeah, but we’ve gotta go through the motions.”
“A favor, Dino: Can you wait until, say, mid-morning tomorrow before going in there? I’ve got the place staked out in case La Biche returns, and she’ll run like the wind if she spots anything resembling a policeman.”
“Okay. I’ll wait to call it in.”
“I appreciate that, Dino. I know it’s not proper procedure, but we’ve got at least a chance of bagging her.”
“Don’t worry about it. Keep in touch.”
“Let me give you my cell phone number.”
Dino fished for a pen. “Shoot.”
“I want to talk to her,” Stone said.
Dino nodded, writing down the number. “Hang on, Stone wants to talk to you.”
Stone took the phone. “Hi. You all right?”
“Right now, I’m running. La Biche has made me, and I’m holed up at the Carlyle.”
“Oh, shit. How’d she find you?”
“I think when she kidnapped our man in Cairo, he must have given up our New York office address. She probably waited outside for me to leave the building and followed me to P. J. Clarke’s, where we had a nice little chat at the bar.”
“Are you going to stay at the Carlyle?”
“No, I’ll get out of here in the morning. I can’t go back to the Lowell, either.”
“Go to my house.”
“She may know who you are.”
“She may not.”
“I’ll think about it. Why don’t you come around to the Carlyle a little later, when I’ve sorted this out?”
“A little problem there. I’m in Saint Thomas.”
“A church?”
“An island.”
“What on earth are you doing there?”
“Bringing back Herbie Fisher, who jumped bail, leaving me holding a great big bag.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Tomorrow, I hope.”
“Dino has my cell phone number. Call me when you get back.”
“You watch your ass.”
“I wish you were here to watch it for me.”
“Me too. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Stone hung up and handed Dino his phone. “Let’s find the boat. She’s called Tenderly.”
They walked down the main pontoon slowly, checking boat names, until they came to one, a sailboat, with a light burning.
“Here we are,” Stone said, stepping aboard. He rapped on the hatch. “Bob?”
“Come on down, Stone,” Cantor replied.
Stone and Dino clambered down the companionway steps. Bob was sitting at the saloon table, and Herbie Fisher was sitting beside him, looking like a small animal caught in a spotlight.
“Well, hi, Herbie,” Stone said. “You’re a tough guy to catch up with.”
“He called right after you did, Stone,” Cantor said. “He just got here.”
“I’m not going back,” Herbie said.
“Yes, you are,” Stone replied, taking a seat on the banquette opposite the saloon table. “Let me tell you why.”
“Shut up and listen to this, Herbie,” Cantor said.
“You didn’t kill the guy,” Stone said.
“Don’t hand me that shit,” Herbie said. “You think I don’t know when a guy’s dead? I grew up in Brooklyn.”
Stone let the non sequitur pass. “He was dead, Herbie, but you didn’t kill him. There was an autopsy. The girl killed him. He was already dead when you fell on him.”
“I don’t believe you,” Herbie replied.
“Let me introduce Li
eutenant Dino Bacchetti, chief of the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct. Show him your badge, Dino.”
Dino gave a little wave and showed Herbie his badge.
“Dino,” Stone said, “am I lying to Herbie?”
“Nope,” Dino replied. “The guy was poisoned.”
Herbie looked at them, back and forth.
“He’s not lying to you, Herbie,” Cantor said to his nephew.
“I’m still not going back,” Herbie said.
“What?” Stone asked, confused.
“I like it here. I’ve already got five hotels lined up. It’s going to be a sweet deal.”
“Herbie, you have a court appearance in thirty-six hours. We’ll get the manslaughter charge dropped, plead the other stuff down to a single misdemeanor, and get you non-reporting probation. Then you can come back here and take pictures at hotels.”
“But I’ll have a record,” Herbie said plaintively.
“Herbie,” Stone replied, “if you don’t show up for your court appearance, a fugitive warrant will be issued, and cops everywhere, including here, will be looking for you. Would you prefer that to probation?”
“I don’t know,” Herbie said.
Bob Cantor reached behind Herbie and brought the flat of his hand hard across the top of his nephew’s head. “Putz!”
“Ow,” Herbie said, flinching.
“Go home with Stone and fix this, or I’ll tell your mother,” Cantor said.
“Okay,” Herbie said sheepishly.
23
Carpenter was jarred awake by the slamming of the door. Her hand was immediately on the Walther. She was in bed, naked, and she could hear somebody whistling in the sitting room of the Carlyle suite. It was only Mason. She got out of bed, brushed her teeth with the hotel’s toothbrush, found a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and walked into the sitting room, running her hands through her hair. She hadn’t borrowed a hairbrush.
“Good morning,” Mason said cheerfully. His jacket and Eton tie were draped across a chair, and his shirt was open at the collar.
“Good morning,” she said, not meaning it. She had never seen him, in any circumstances, without his Eton tie.
Mason waved a hand at the rolling table. “We’ve got eggs, kippers, and sausage, and that wonderful fresh orange juice they get from Florida.”