Hot Mahogany

by Stuart Woods

  “I kid you not,” Genevieve said. “I don’t think she’ll go through with it.”

  “Well, she’s leaving changing her mind kind of late, isn’t she?”

  “She won’t make a decision until she has to.”

  “And when do you think that moment will come?”

  “You’ll have an opportunity to stop it, Stone.”

  “Genevieve, are you telling me that you expect me – that Eliza expects me – to leap to my feet when they get to the line in the ceremony about… Well, you know the line.”

  “I don’t expect you to, but I think Eliza does.”

  “So I’m supposed to kidnap her from the church and drive her away in my little red sports car while Simon and Garfunkel sing the sound track?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “It would be insane.”

  “Dino,” Genevieve said, “help me out here.”

  Dino leaned forward and looked at Stone. “Kidnap her and drive her away in your little red sports car. If Simon and Garfunkel don’t show up, I’ll sing.” He leaned back.

  “I don’t want to discuss this any more,” Stone said. No one spoke for the rest of the ride.

  The church was at Madison and Seventy-first, next door to the Ralph Lauren store. Stone and Dino walked halfway down the church and took seats on opposites sides of the aisle, while Genevieve went into an anteroom to assist the bride.

  Stone looked around. It was as motley a collection of people as he had ever seen. Half of them were wearing scrubs, as if they had left the hospital in the middle of surgeries; others were dressed in jeans and parkas; and a few were dressed quite elegantly – Edgar’s friends, he supposed. Somebody was playing jazz tunes on an electric piano, while a couple of other musicians played bass and guitar. Stone wondered what the Episcopal priest thought about that. Then he felt himself dozing off.

  A slamming door snapped him out of it. The priest was entering, and he gave the audience an apologetic shrug for the noise. He was joined at the altar by Dr. Edgar Kelman, the renowned surgeon, then the trio swung into some uptempo Mendelssohn, and Stone heard foot-steps behind him. He looked back to see Eliza coming down the aisle, with Genevieve right behind her. Eliza looked lovely, and for a moment Stone’s heart began to melt, but when he made brief eye contact with her he spun his head around, eyes front. The ceremony began.

  Stone sat rigid, his jaw clamped shut, as the priest recited the ceremony. Then he came to that awful line, “If any person here knows any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.” Stone held his breath.

  He was sure the dead silence in the church lasted at least two minutes, but then realized that it was probably more like five seconds. The priest continued, and Stone exhaled in a rush. Half the audience, including Genevieve, turned and looked at him questioningly. Then the priest pronounced them man and wife, and everybody clapped.

  The happy couple strode quickly down the aisle, and as they passed, Eliza tossed her bouquet into Stone’s lap, getting a big laugh from everybody.

  Stone tried not to turn red.

  47

  Stone arrived home, still angry and depressed, to find a creamy envelope under the front door knocker, apparently delivered by hand, since it was Sunday. Inside, he ripped it open and read an engraved dinner invitation for that evening from Harlan Deal. RSVP was crossed out. “Just come” was scrawled next to it.

  Why the hell would Harlan Deal want him at his dinner party at the last minute? He tossed the invitation onto the front hall table, went into the library and made himself a drink. He did not often drink this early in the day, but it was the only thing he could think of that would change his mood.

  He switched on the library TV, settled into a chair and began surfing the channels, looking for something to take his mind off his day. A shopping channel was selling wedding dresses; an Asian evangelist was marrying four hundred identically dressed and unsuspecting couples in a football stadium; Martha Stewart was teaching her viewers how to plan the perfect wedding.

  He switched off the TV and turned on the local classical music radio station. Fucking Mendelssohn again. He switched to the jazz station. Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Making Whoopee.” “Another bride, another groom,” etc. He switched off the radio.

  He took his drink upstairs, stripped off his suit and lay on the bed. Drinking horizontally was hard. He pressed the button on the remote that raised the head and foot of the bed. Easier. He drained his glass, set it down and dozed off.

  He woke, befuddled and hazy about date and time. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was half an hour before the dinner party. He splashed some water on his face, got into his evening clothes and left the house, taking the invitation with him. What the hell.

  Harlan Deal lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse in an elegant old co-op building with a spectacular view of Central Park. He would, wouldn’t he? A uniformed maid took his coat and an actual tails-wearing English butler showed him into a huge living room hung with a collection of mostly large abstract paintings and occupied by a larger group of people than he had expected to see, at least fifty.

  He spotted a Motherwell, a Pollock, a Rothko, two Hockneys and a Frankenthaler without even trying. All Harlan Deal needed was an eighteenth-century mahogany secretary from Newport, but it wouldn’t have looked so good among the classic modern furniture, all Mies and Breuer. He spotted no one he knew until Harlan Deal broke out of the crowd and greeted him, hand out.

  “Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” he said. “I’m sorry for the short notice, but I’m very glad you could make it.”

  “Thank you for asking me, Mr. Deal.”

  “Harlan, please.”

  “And I’m Stone.”

  A waiter appeared, took his drink order and was back in a flash with a Knob Creek on the rocks. Harlan excused himself to greet other arriving guests.

  Stone wandered around the room, looking at the art, then walked out onto a large terrace that had been glassed in for the winter. Central Park, lamplit, stretched out before him, and across the park the lights of the tall apartment buildings on Central Park West glittered in the distance. He was alone on the terrace, except for a woman who stood at the north end, looking out toward the reservoir.

  She held a martini glass in her left hand, displaying a bare third finger. Stone moved closer, and she turned to face him. He froze for a moment and took her in. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen: tall, slender, raven hair perfectly coiffed, nails perfectly polished, perfectly dressed in a longish thing that Stone reckoned was Armani. He exhaled.

  “Come closer,” she said. “I can’t hear you, if you stand way over there.”

  He did as she commanded.

  “Good evening,” she said, holding out a hand with long fingers and a large emerald ring. “I’m Tatiana Orlovsky.”

  Stone took the hand, cool and soft. “I’m Stone Barrington,” he managed to say.

  “Why are you and I the only people on this lovely terrace?” she asked.

  “Because God meant us to be alone together.” There was some laughter a few footfalls behind him. “But not for very long.”

  She laughed, a very nice sound.

  “Your name has a heavy Russian accent,” he said, “but your voice does not.”

  “My name has been in this country since my grandfather stole a lot of very good jewelry from a titled Moscow family during the revolution in 1917 and stowed away on a ship bound for New York,” she said. “I, on the other hand, have been here for only thirty-four years, and English is my only language.”

  “I hope you still have the jewelry,” he said.

  “Oddly enough, we do… At least, my mother does. My grandfather was clever: He borrowed money on the jewelry, invested it in the stock market, redeemed the jewels and spent the rest of his life building a business and a lifestyle in which the jewelry would not look out of place.”

  “I
s the very beautiful necklace you’re wearing part of the collection?”

  “No. It’s a string of cubic zirconia that cost less than two thousand dollars at Bergdorf’s. The design is a copy of a Harry Winston necklace, though.”

  “You make it look like real diamonds.”

  She laughed that laugh again. “My husband never notices.”

  Stone’s heart sank.

  She must have seen the look on his face. “Oh, no. I don’t… I mean, I’m not… I’m in the process of being divorced, at the moment. I’ve stopped wearing my wedding ring.”

  Stone’s heart soared again. “I’m relieved to hear it,” he said, “because I’m opposed to adultery. I’m afraid that, in your case, I might have gone against my principles.”

  “I’m flattered that you would think of abandoning your principles,” she said, “but I’m glad you don’t have to.”

  “So am I,” he replied.

  “And what, may I ask, do you do?”

  “I’m an attorney.”

  “With a firm?”

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

  “Oh, I know the firm, but what does ‘of counsel’ mean?”

  “It means that I handle the cases that they would rather not be seen to be associated with.”

  “That sounds a lot more interesting than drawing wills and managing estates.”

  “Believe me, it is, and it suits me perfectly. Before I was an attorney I was a police detective, and that experience has come in handy when dealing with people like Harlan Deal.”

  “I should imagine so. Do you deal with Mr. Deal?”

  “I have in one instance, but, I’m happy to say, it won’t be a regular thing.”

  A silver bell rang somewhere.

  She glanced inside. “Why don’t we go inside and eat some of our host’s very expensive food?”

  Stone offered her his arm, and they wandered in to join the buffet line.

  48

  They found seats on the sweeping staircase that led to Harlan Deal’s no doubt very elegant bedrooms, and were kept in Dom Perignon by revolving waiters.

  “Who are these people?” Tatiana asked, looking around at the crowd.

  “The crumbs of the upper crust, as Charlie McCarthy used to say.”

  “Who?”

  “A woodenheaded young gentleman who used to sit on the knee of a man named Bergen.”

  “Oh, of course. What are the qualifications for being crumbs of the upper crust?”

  “Well, they used to be money and breeding, but now it’s just money. Consider our host. How do you know him, by the way?”

  “A friend of a friend,” she replied. “I think she had some match-making in mind, but after meeting Mr. Deal…” She didn’t finish the sentence; she didn’t have to.

  “You have such good taste.”

  “I know what I don’t like when I see it. You’re right. His only qualification is money.”

  “Apart from a nearly-ex husband, do you have other means of support? A career, I mean.”

  “I’m an illustrator.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of anything anyone will hire me to illustrate: advertisements, book jackets, fashion layouts for magazines. I was going to say album covers, but they’re too small these days to be much fun, and matchbooks, but since nobody smokes anymore, they hardly exist.”

  “Have you actually illustrated a matchbook?”

  “I did several tiny drawings for ones you used to see on restaurant tables. They’re gone, mostly… the restaurants, I mean.”

  “Where do you live?” He asked.

  “In Turtle Bay on the north side.”

  “You are conveniently located. I live in Turtle Bay on the south side.”

  “In that case, you must lead me up the garden path some time.”

  “I would be delighted to lead you up the garden path.”

  She laughed. “Oh. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Well, not yet.”

  “Where will you live when you’re divorced? Or have you thought that far ahead?”

  “I’m determined to keep the house,” she said. “I’ll have to buy his half with some of my settlement.”

  “Is the divorce amicable?”

  “Not by any stretch of the imagination. He’s very angry.”

  “Are there children?”

  “Only a cat, and she is a premarital asset, so I expect to retain custody.”

  “It sounds as though you have the settlement all worked out.”

  “Oh, no. We may end up in court, though I’m trying to avoid that.”

  “Don’t try too hard to avoid it; you’ll damage your negotiating position. You must appear willing to sue, if necessary.”

  “That’s good advice. Do you always give good advice?”

  “As I was telling a friend the other day, yes. If I don’t know what I’m talking about, I try and shut up.”

  “That’s more than I can say for most people.”

  Stone looked up and saw Barton Cabot and Carla approaching. “My word,” he said.

  “What?” Tatiana asked.

  Stone got to his feet. “I’ll explain later.” He shook Barton’s hand and was allowed to peck Carla on the cheek. “May I introduce Tatiana Orlovsky?” he said. “Tatiana, this is Barton Cabot and Carla. Just Carla, before you ask.”

  Tatiana shook their hands.

  “I must say,” Stone said, “I’m even more surprised to find you two here than I am to find me here.”

  “An invitation was delivered this morning,” Barton said, “as we were leaving the house.”

  “I took it as a sort of peace offering,” Carla said, “since both our names were on the envelope.”

  “We spent most of the day in Bristol, photographing Mildred Strong’s house and all her pieces,” Barton said. “Carla turns out to be an excellent photographer.”

  “Did you remember to inquire about her acquaintance with our friend, Crow?”

  “I did. She admitted to selling him something, but she wouldn’t say what. Not something on our list, though.”

  “Did you ask how they met?”

  “Through a friend, she said, but when I asked who, she changed the subject.”

  “I hope you were able to warn her about Crow.”

  “I tried. I hope it registered.”

  “So do I. Tatiana, forgive us for discussing business. We’ll stop now.”

  “You are kind. I think I’ll seek out the powder room.”

  “May I join you?” Carla asked.

  “Of course.” The ladies left them.

  Stone turned to Barton. “How did Mr. Deal react at seeing you together?”

  “Graciously,” Barton replied. “Having invited us, how else could he behave?”

  “I don’t know,” Stone said. “He’s an odd one. He sent people into my houses in Washington and in the city. Messed with my dressing room.”

  “What?”

  Stone told him about the incident. “You may arrive home and find your living room rearranged.”

  “I don’t think odd is a strong enough word for this fellow,” Barton said, gazing across the room at his host.

  “I was about to say,” Stone said, “that I think I’ll avoid his company in the future, but then, look what I found by seeking his company tonight.” He nodded toward Tatiana, who was coming back from the ladies’, followed by Carla. They stopped to speak to someone.

  “There’s something I should tell you about Carla,” Stone said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, I know that, by now, you must know her better than I, but it’s about her last name.”

  “What is her last name? She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “It’s Bianchi. Her grandfather is a friend of mine, Eduardo Bianchi.”

  “How odd,” Barton said. “I sold him a pair of tables a few years ago.”

  “You do get around, Barton. So you know who he is?”
>
  “You mean the Mafia connection? I’ve heard about that.”

  “Some of the women in the family can be a little screwy,” Stone said, reflecting on his experience with Dolce, Eduardo’s daughter. “You might keep that in mind.”

  49

  Stone and Tatiana left the party, having said good night to their host, and they got into a cab. “Would you like to take the scenic route home?” Stone asked.

  “Why not?” Tatiana replied.

  Stone gave the cab driver his address, and when they arrived, he let them into the house and pressed the switch that turned on lights in every room.

  “Oh, it’s bigger than my house,” Tatiana said. “And beautifully furnished.”

  “I inherited the house from a great aunt several years ago and did most of the renovations myself. Much of the furniture and all of the cabinet work were built by my father, who had a reputation in that field. Most of my decoration was just updating upholstery and fabrics on the original furniture and adding some pieces.” He showed her the library and kitchen. “My offices are on the ground floor, where there used to be a dentist’s office. Would you like to see the master suite?” he asked.

  She gave him a little smile. “Perhaps another time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”

  “Then let me lead you up the garden path,” he said, opening the kitchen door to the garden.

  “Sooner than I had expected,” she said, stepping outside. “Your garden looks very nice.”

  “Oh, I have someone who looks after it.”

  “You’re not a gardener?”

  “I don’t bend over unnecessarily.” He opened the gate at the end of his plot, and they stepped into the common garden. The moon was big and high, and it illuminated the trees and plants.

  “It’s such a beautiful place, isn’t it?” she said.

  “The jewel of the city, as far as I’m concerned.”

  She led him into her garden and to the kitchen door. “If you don’t mind I’ll give you the tour of my house after the housekeeper comes.” They exchanged cards.

  “I’ll look forward to it.” They kissed lightly, and Stone left her and returned to his own house.