Hot Mahogany

by Stuart Woods

  “Why is he whispering?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Stone picked up the phone. “Bill?”

  “Stone,” Eggers said in a raspy whisper, “get over here.”

  “What?”

  “Right now.” Eggers hung up.

  Stone slipped into his coat and stopped at Joan’s desk. “Bill wants me to come over there in a hurry.”

  “Why was he whispering?”

  “I forgot to ask. See you later.”

  Five minutes later, Stone got out of a cab at the Seagram Building on Park Avenue at Fifty-second Street, where the law firm of Woodman amp; Weld occupied four high floors.

  Woodman amp; Weld was often referred to as the gold standard of New York law firms, with a reputation for high-quality legal services, solid integrity and complete discretion. Every law firm, however, has clients and cases with whom it would prefer not to be publicly associated, and for that reason W amp;W employed Stone. He and Bill Eggers had been classmates at NYU Law School, and when Stone had been invalided out of the NYPD, Eggers had brought him aboard.

  Stone got off the elevator, and the receptionist didn’t even speak, just waved him in the direction of the corner office of the managing partner.

  Stone rapped lightly on the door, opened it and stuck his head in. “Good morning?”

  “Stone!” Eggers said, rising from his chair. His companion did not rise. “Come in, come in! I want you to meet someone.”

  At this, the other man rose. He was of medium height and build, wearing a very good suit but somehow unprepossessing. He was bald, with a fringe of blond hair, and wore rimless spectacles. Stone knew who he was immediately.

  “Stone, this is Harlan Deal. Harlan, this is my colleague, Stone Barrington.”

  Stone shook Deal’s hand. His grip was firm and cool, but his demeanor was dour. He looked as though he had not slept well for some time. “How do you do, Mr. Deal,” Stone said.

  “Hello,” Deal replied. “Please call me Harlan; everybody does.”

  What most people called him, Stone reflected, was The Deal. Harlan Deal had inherited a portfolio of grimy real estate in the nether regions of the Bronx and Queens and had turned it into a giant holding company, called Real Deal, with a worldwide reach. It was a great American success story, but Deal, personally, remained low-powered socially. He contributed to good causes, even had his own foundation for that purpose, but he was not high on the dinner-party list of anyone who did not wish to borrow money from him. There were stories of dinner partners who had not heard him speak during a five-course meal.

  “Sit down, Stone,” Eggers said. “Harlan has a little problem that I think you might be able to help him with.”

  “Well, I’ll certainly try,” Stone replied.

  “Heh, heh,” Eggers chortled. “I think you’ll find, Harlan, that Stone’s efforts are of a very high order.”

  Stone stared at Eggers. What was he promising this guy? Stone had no clue as to why he was there. “Well, Bill,” he said, “let’s hear about the problem before we start making promises. Perhaps Mr. Deal will tell me about it.”

  “Harlan,” Deal replied.

  “Of course, Harlan, and please call me Stone.”

  “What sort of work do you do, Mr. Barrington?”

  “I’m an attorney, of counsel to Woodman and Weld.”

  “Of counsel? What does that mean, exactly?”

  “I think Bill could explain that better than I.”

  Eggers had not been ready for this, but he caught the ball. “Stone is a generalist, where most of our people specialize. That sometimes gives him a better view of the big picture. He is a very, very capable attorney, I assure you.”

  “I see,” Deal said, obviously not seeing at all. “And how are you going to help me, Mr. Barrington?”

  Stone fixed a benevolent smile on his face. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you at all, until you tell me your problem, Mr. Deal.”

  “It’s Harlan, please.”

  “And please call me Stone.”

  “I assure you, Harlan,” Eggers said, “all this will be kept in the closest confidence, under the full force of the attorney-client relationship.”

  “I should certainly hope so,” Deal said, but he still made no move to explain his problem. He sighed deeply and finally said, “It’s my wife.”

  Stone and Eggers sat silently, hanging on his every word.

  “Oh, sorry,” Deal said. “I mean my fiancée. Soon to be my wife.”

  “Yes, go on,” Stone said.

  “There’s not much to tell,” Deal said.

  Stone had that impression. “Perhaps you could tell me the nature of the problem with your fiancée.”

  “I hope you understand that this is deeply embarrassing for me,” Deal said.

  “Harlan,” Eggers said. “You’re among friends. Please feel free to speak candidly.”

  “All right,” Deal said, but then he became silent again, staring out the window of Eggers’s office toward the East River.

  Stone and Eggers waited patiently. Stone fought the urge to doze off. He was beginning to understand the reluctance of people who gave dinner parties to invite Harlan Deal.

  “Harlan?” Eggers asked, expectantly.

  “Yes, Bill?”

  “You were about to tell us about the problem with your fiancée.”

  “Oh, yes.” But still Deal said nothing.

  “Tell me, Harlan,” Stone said, “if I may call you that.”

  “Of course. Please call me Harlan, Mr. Barrington.”

  “And call me Stone.”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me, do you think that your problem with your fiancée might require a legal solution?”

  “Well, certainly,” Deal replied. “Why else would I come to my law firm?”

  “Of course,” Stone said. “Could you give me some idea of what might be the legal action you consider necessary?”

  “Well, I don’t want to sue,” Deal replied. “That would just be all over the papers.”

  “Discretion is the byword in these cases,” Stone said, although he had no idea what cases he was talking about.

  “Well,” Harlan said, rising to his feet. “I’m glad you understand, Mr. Barrington.” He offered his hand. “May I say that it has been a real pleasure meeting you.” He shook Stone’s hand warmly, then Eggers’s, then walked out.

  Stone turned to Eggers. “Bill, what the fuck was that all about?”

  “I apologize for Harlan,” Eggers said. “He has difficulty articulating problems that are not related to his business.”

  “You seem to be having difficulty articulating, too, Bill. What is the problem?”

  “The young lady won’t sign the prenup,” Eggers said.

  23

  Stone sank into a chair. “Bill, how the hell am I supposed to get a woman to sign a prenup she has already declined to sign?”

  Eggers leaned across his desk and handed Stone a two-page document. “Read it. I wrote it myself.”

  Stone scanned the agreement. “She gets an allowance of half a million dollars a year, adjusted annually for inflation, and if she leaves him, she gets a million dollars for every year they’ve been married, calculated to the nearest month?”

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “Not bad, if she’s considering it as employment. Not good, if we’re talking about Harlan Deal’s very large fortune.”

  “Stone,” Eggers said, “a good prenup should accomplish two things: one, insure the financial welfare of the wife in the event that the husband changes his mind about how beautiful and sexy she is, and two, prevent an avaricious woman from looting the husband’s fortune when she decides she can be just as rich divorced as married. I think this document satisfies both those requirements.”

  “Well, this certainly accomplishes the second, but there’s nothing in here about housing after a divorce. She’s not going to be able to buy a nice apartment in New York – I�
��m assuming we’re talking New York – on a stipend of a million a year.”

  “Good point. I think I can get Harlan to kick in, say, two million for an apartment.”

  “Make it three million; you can’t get much for two these days.”

  “All right.”

  “Does the lady have any children?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Is she young enough to get pregnant, assuming Harlan is fertile enough to get her that way? If we don’t make provision for possible children, and she has some, it will never stand up in court.”

  Eggers stared at him, annoyed. “Okay, what do you suggest?”

  “If she has his kids, five million for an apartment, half a million a year per kid in child support, a twenty-million-dollar trust fund per kid and the same as a bequest in an irrevocable codicil to his will.”

  “That’s upping the ante quite a lot,” Eggers said, frowning.

  “It’s a small fraction of what he’d pay without the prenup. Anyway, he can always get a vasectomy and cut his costs.”

  “You’re sounding a lot like the lady’s lawyer.”

  “Believe me, she’s going to get one before she signs this thing, so we’d better anticipate.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to Harlan. Anything else, before I call him?”

  “She’s almost certain to want other things; we have to consider them, if he wants to marry the lady.”

  Eggers looked at his watch and picked up the phone.

  “Has he had time to get back to his office?” Stone asked.

  “His office is two floors up,” Eggers replied, dialing a number. “Harlan? Bill Eggers. Stone and I have talked this over, and he has made some very important suggestions to be included in the prenup, ones that might make her more amenable and, at the same time, make you look more generous.” Eggers went through the list, then listened. “Harlan, a twenty-million dollar bequest to each kid isn’t all that much, and since you’ll be dead, you won’t miss it. And you can always get a vasectomy.” Eggers listened some more. “All right, but remember, she’s bound to talk to her own attorney about this; in fact, we want her to do that, because we may have to make this agreement stand up in court. There may be other things she wants, so let’s make our objective to just keep her reasonable and, of course, happy. After all, you’ll have to live with the lady.”

  Stone spoke up. “Tell him, if she signs it, to send her two dozen roses and a bigger ring.”

  Eggers ignored him. “We’ll get back to you, Harlan. Give us a few days.” Eggers hung up. “I’ll tell him that later. Now you’d better get going.”

  “Do I get to know who the lady is?” Stone asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Her name is Carla.”

  “Come on, Bill, what’s her last name?”

  “She doesn’t use one, and Harlan doesn’t know it.”

  “Wait a minute, there’s a woman who plays piano and sings at Bemelmens Bar in the Carlyle Hotel.”

  “That’s the one. She lives in a suite in the hotel.”

  “I’ve heard her a couple of times; she’s very good.”

  “Well, it’s nice that you’re a fan; it will give you two something to talk about.”

  “All right,” Stone said, getting to his feet, “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Eggers rose with him and walked him to the door. “You’d damn well better give this a lot more than a shot, Stone. Harlan Deal spends one hell of a lot of money with this firm, and losing him would impact us in all sorts of ways, including having to trim our expenses, like what we spend on of-counsel attorneys.”

  “I get the picture, Bill. No threats, please.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t a threat, Stone; that was just a clear picture of what the landscape around here would look like if we should lose Harlan Deal’s account. These offices would look like a nuclear test site.”

  “I get it, I get it,” Stone said. He didn’t let the doorknob hit him in the ass on the way out.

  24

  Stone went back to his office, ordered in a sandwich and had lunch at his desk. He had nearly dozed off on his sofa when Joan buzzed him. “Bob Cantor on line one.”

  Stone staggered back to his desk, slapped himself a couple of times to wake up and picked up the phone. “Hi, Bob.”

  “Hi, yourself. I thought you might like to know that I had an unexpected call from Charlie Crow.”

  “That’s very interesting. What was it about?”

  “He wants to have lunch.”

  “I thought you had all agreed not ever to contact each other.”

  “We did, and I’ve stuck to that. I don’t know about the others.”

  “How do you feel about having lunch with Crow, Bob?”

  “Nervous.”

  “What exactly did he say when he called?”

  “He said he thought that enough time had passed that it wouldn’t matter, that he’d always liked me and that he’d like to renew our friendship.”

  “Was he lying about liking you?”

  “We got along in ’Nam, but that’s about all. Renewing our ‘friend-ship, ’ as he put it, is not all that appealing.”

  “Was there anything sinister in his tone?”

  “No, he was affable, I guess you’d say. Charlie could always be affable if he felt like it. Some thought he had a lot of charm. It was pretty much lost on me, though.”

  “Are you going to see him?”

  “I faked another call coming in and said I’d get back to him.”

  “I think it might be a good idea to see him, Bob.”

  “Why?”

  “It might help us help the Colonel.”

  “Yeah, I guess it might.”

  “You’ve got to play dumb, though. You can’t give him the slightest idea that you know about the Colonel’s problem. Remember, it wasn’t in the papers, so you can’t possibly know about it. If he brings up the Colonel, and I suspect he will, then you can talk about him.”

  “All right. I’ll call Charlie back.”

  “Bob, before we had lunch and had our first conversation about Colonel Cabot, did you know anything about his life after Vietnam up to now?”

  “I never heard a word about the guy. I guess we travel in different circles.”

  “Another thing: You have an unlisted number, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how did Crow get hold of it?”

  “It’s not all that hard to get an unlisted number; I’ve done it for you from time to time, remember?”

  “I remember. Okay, call Crow back and make the date. And I think having a recording of the conversation would be nice. Can you wire yourself in a way he can’t detect?”

  “Yeah, I can wear a transmitter that looks like a pen and a tiny mike.”

  “Where would it transmit to?”

  “It has a range of about a mile. I can put the recorder in my van and park near the restaurant. Otherwise, I’d have to wear a recorder, and that would be easy to find in a pat-down.”

  “Is he likely to pat you down?”

  “How the hell should I know? Depends on how paranoid he is, I guess.”

  “Better pick a quiet restaurant; don’t do it at P. J. Clarke’s.”

  “A good point.”

  “Don’t tell him anything about your expertise with electronics. There’s no reason why he would know about that, is there?”

  “None. I didn’t get my first computer until ’79.”

  “I’d love to know if he’ll admit having had any contact with Abner Kramer.”

  “I guess I can ask him if he’s seen any of the other guys, give him an opportunity to say so. I’ll call you after.”

  “Thanks, Bob.” Stone hung up. This, he thought, was a move in the right direction, especially since he had little or nothing to go on. He needed a break badly.

  Stone met Dino for dinner at Elaine’s. “Anything to report?” he asked.

  Dino gave him a smart salute. “Nothing to report, sir!”


  “I’d hoped one of your people could give us something to go on.”

  “What, you think somebody is just going to stumble across this piece of furniture?”

  “I’d like that,” Stone said, “as unlikely as it is. Maybe there’s something else your guys can do.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this,” Dino said.

  “I need to know a lot more about Charlie Crow, not your Google sort of stuff – I need to know where he goes, who he hangs out with. Especially who he hangs out with.”

  “You’re actually asking me to put New York City police officers on a tail unconnected to any crime?”

  “It is connected to a crime: the beating of a man and the theft of an extremely valuable object.”

  “It’s not like I can open a file on it, Stone. I mean, there was a time I could have opened a file, then shredded it when it was over, but these days, once you put something in a computer it’s there forever.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, don’t put anything in a computer. Just put a couple of guys on tailing Mr. Crow for a few days. I especially want to know if he’s in touch with Abner Kramer.”

  “Maybe I can do that. Why don’t you put Bob Cantor on this? Get him to tap Crow’s phones.”

  “Fortunately, Crow called him and invited him to lunch, and he’s going to wear a wire.”

  “That might produce something.”

  “I’m counting on it, since I have nothing else.”

  “How was your time with Holly?”

  “It was very good, thanks. I’m sure she’s already reported back to Lance.”

  “Well, she does work for him, after all. Is she enjoying being a spook?”

  “Seems to be. I think she likes it better than being a small-town police chief. She doesn’t have to do traffic tickets and penny-ante drug busts. Also, working for Lance, she must be privy to a lot of very interesting information.”

  “You think Lance’s job is all that interesting?”

  “Jesus, Dino, he’s the fucking head of CIA operations.”

  “Then he must know everything in the world.”

  “I would think so.”

  “Then how did he lose track of his brother for thirty years?”

  “That’s an interesting question, and he hasn’t answered it very satisfactorily. My guess is when somebody doesn’t want to be found, he’s hard to find.”