by Stuart Woods
“Stone, how you doing?”
“Just great. I want you to meet the late Paul Manning.”
“How you doing, Paul?” Dino said, grinning broadly.
“Just great,” Manning said, wiping away some blood from the side of his mouth.
“Dino and I used to be partners,” Stone said. “He’s still a cop; he runs the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct.”
“What is this?” Manning said, alarmed.
“Dino’s going to put you in jail,” Stone said.
“I haven’t committed any crime in the United States,” Manning said.
“It’s like this, Paul,” Dino said. “I’m arresting you for the homicide of your wife, your ex-wife, the pilot, and the other passenger on that airplane you sabotaged.”
“I didn’t murder my wife or anybody else,” Manning said, “and nobody can prove that I did. Anyway, I don’t believe she’s dead.”
“Well, there are a lot of fine legal points in this case,” Dino said. “I mean, in addition to the four homicides, there’s the insurance fraud. It all gets very complicated, doesn’t it?”
Manning smiled, showing blood on his teeth. “Yes, it does. In fact, I expect to be a free man again before the day is over. I’ve already retained a lawyer, and you’ll never be able to hold me.”
“I know this is going to come as a big disappointment, Paul,” Dino said, “especially since you worked so hard to figure it all out, but I’ve got some really bad news for you.”
“What do you mean?” Manning asked.
Dino pulled a document from his pocket. “This is for you,” he said. “Consider yourself served.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an extradition warrant. You’re going back to St. Marks for trial.”
“You can’t do that!” Manning said, trying to read the warrant.
“Sure I can. Of course, you’ll fight extradition, but eventually you’ll go back. And then you can prove to them that your wife is still alive.”
Manning’s jaw dropped. “How can I prove she’s still alive?”
“I doubt if you can,” Stone said, “but there’s more bad news.”
“What?”
“The St. Marks police went out to the airport after Chester crashed, and they dusted everything, and I mean everything, for fingerprints, and you know what? They found some prints on the tool cabinet in the hangar that don’t match anybody else’s at the airport. I had a phone conversation with Sir Winston Sutherland, and he told me all about it. Of course, they never thought to check the fingerprints of the New Yorker writer, Jim Forrester. So when Dino gets you back to the precinct, he’s going to fingerprint you, and then he’s going to fax your fingerprints to Sir Winston, in St. Marks, and if they match the prints on the tool cabinet—and you and I both know they will—then Sir Winston is going to have a real good case against you for those three homicides. And even if they don’t match, there’s Allison.”
“She isn’t dead, is she?” Manning asked. “Come on, Stone, you know she isn’t.”
“I don’t think Sir Winston will adopt that view, Manning. After all, he convicted her and had her hanged himself.”
Manning looked as if he wanted to run, but now there were two more detectives standing in the driveway.
Stone continued. “You saw how they tried Allison, how they convicted her with hardly any evidence at all. My prediction, Manning, is that before the year is out, you’re going to have your neck stretched in St. Marks.”
Dino motioned the two detectives forward, and they handcuffed Paul Manning. He stared at Stone, apparently speechless.
“Good-bye, Manning,” Stone said. “I’ll be a witness at your trial; I’ll tell the court how you admitted your identity to me and that you told me how you faked your death. Funny thing is, without our conversation today, they might not have been able to prove who you really were. So I’ll see you in St. Marks.” He smiled broadly. “And there won’t be any attorney-client confidentiality.”
The cops put Manning into their car.
“How about some dinner tonight?” Dino asked.
“Absolutely; we’ll celebrate.”
“Elaine’s at eight-thirty?”
“That will be great,” Stone replied.
Alma appeared in the garage. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is all right,” Stone said.
Late that night, Stone and Dino sat over the remains of their dinner at Elaine’s.
“All in all,” Stone said, “it’s been a very satisfying day.”
“Glad I could help,” Dino said. “That guy from Boston, the insurance dick, was in my office this afternoon. He’s a very happy man.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s going to get at least some of his money back from Allison Manning’s estate.”
“He’d better not count on it.”
“Why not?”
“Because, unless I miss my guess, that money has disappeared into the worldwide banking system and will never be seen again. Allison moved it the day before her trial.”
Dino looked at Stone sharply. “What was that stuff said about his wife not being dead?”
“I think Manning is still in denial.”
“Is she dead?”
Stone was still trying to figure out how to answer Dino’s question when Elaine came over to the table.
“Phone call for you, Stone,” she said, pointing at one of the two pay phones on the wall nearby.
“Excuse me, Dino,” Stone said. He got up and went to the phone. “Hello?” he said, sticking a finger in the other ear to blot out some of the noise.
“Stone?”
“Yeah? Who’s this?”
“Stone, this is Vance Calder.”
That stopped Stone in his tracks for a minute. “Hello, Vance,” he was finally able to say. “How’d you find me here?”
“There was no answer at your house, and I remembered that Arrington said you were at Elaine’s a lot. I took a chance.”
“How is Arrington, Vance?”
“That’s what I’m calling about, Stone. Arrington has disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“Just that; she’s vanished.”
“When?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“Have you been to the police?”
“I can’t do that; the tabloids would be all over me. I need your help, Stone.”
“Vance, you’d really be a lot better off going to the police; there’s nothing I can do about this.”
“You can find, her, Stone; if anybody can, you can. I want you to come out here.”
“Vance, really…”
“The Centurion Studios jet is at Atlantic Aviation at Teterboro Airport right now, waiting for you. You can be here by morning.”
“Vance, I appreciate your confidence in me, but…”
“Stone, Arrington is pregnant.”
Stone felt as if he’d been struck hard in the chest. He could count.
“Stone? Are you still there?”
“I’ll be at Teterboro in an hour, Vance.”
“You’ll be met at the Santa Monica airport.”
“Write down everything you can think of, Vance; we’ll have a lot to talk about.”
“I will. And thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Stone said, then hung up. He returned to the table. “You’re buying dinner, Dino,” he said. “I’m off to La-La Land.”
“About what?” Dino asked.
“I’ll call you,” Stone said.
“You didn’t answer my question about Allison Manning.”
“That will have to wait, I’m afraid.” He kissed Elaine on the cheek, then walked out of the restaurant and started looking for a cab.
Key West
February 10, 1997
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my editor, HarperCollins vice president and associate publisher Gladys Justin Carr, and he
r associate editor, Elissa Altman, for their hard work, and to my literary agent, Morton Janklow, his principal associate, Anne Sibbald, and all the people at Janklow & Nesbit for their careful attention to my career over the years. I must also thank my wife, Chris, who is always the first to read a manuscript, for her keen eye and sharp tongue, which help keep my characters in line.
“We Are Very Different People”:
Stuart Woods on Stone Barrington
An Interview by Claire E. White
Stuart Woods was born in the small southern town of Manchester, Georgia on January 9, 1938. His mother was a church organist and his father an ex-convict who left when Stuart was two years old, when it was suggested to him that, because of his apparent participation in the burglary of a Royal Crown Cola bottling plant, he might be more comfortable in another state. He chose California, and Stuart only met him twice thereafter before his death in 1959, when Stuart was a senior in college.
After college, Stuart spent a year in Atlanta, two months of which were spent in basic training for what he calls “the draft-dodger program” of the Air National Guard. He worked at a men’s’ clothing store and at Rich’s department store while he got his military obligation out of the way. Then, in the autumn of 1960, he moved to New York in search of a writing job. The magazines and newspapers weren’t hiring, so he got a job in a training program at an advertising agency, earning seventy dollars a week. “It is a measure of my value to the company,” he says, “that my secretary was earning eighty dollars a week.”
At the end of the sixties, after spending several weeks in London, he moved to that city and worked there for three years in various advertising agencies. At the end of that time he decided that the time had come for him to write the novel he had been thinking about since the age of ten. But after getting about a hundred pages into the book, he discovered sailing, and “…everything went to hell. All I did was sail.”
After a couple of years of this his grandfather died, leaving him, “…just enough money to get into debt for a boat,” and he decided to compete in the 1976 Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Since his previous sailing experience consisted of, “…racing a ten-foot plywood dingy on Sunday afternoons against small children, losing regularly,” he spent eighteen months learning more about sailing and, especially, ocean navigation while the boat was built at a yard in Cork.
He moved to a nearby gamekeeper’s cottage on a big estate to be near the building boat. In the summer of 1975 he sailed out to the Azores in a two-handed race, in company with Commander Bill King, a famous World War II submarine commander and yachtsman, who had done a round-the-world, single-handed voyage. Commander King then flew back to Ireland, and Stuart sailed back, single-handed, as his qualifying cruise for the OSTAR the following year.
The next couple of years were spent in Georgia, dividing his time between Manchester and Atlanta, while selling his grandfather’s business, a small-town department store, and writing two non-fiction books. Blue Water, Green Skipper, was an account of his Irish experience and the OSTAR, and A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland, “was a travel book, done on a whim.
He also did some more sailing. In August of 1979 he competed in the now notorious Fastnet Race of 1979, which was struck by a huge storm. Fifteen competitors and four observers lost their lives, but Stuart and his host crew finished in good order, with little damage. That October and November, he spent skippering his friend’s yacht back across the Atlantic, calling at the Azores, Madiera and the Canary Islands, finishing at Antigua, in the Caribbean.
In the meantime, the British publisher of Blue Water, Green Skipper had sold the American rights to W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, and they had also contracted to publish the novel, on the basis of two hundred pages and an outline, for an advance of $7500. “I was out of excuses to not finish it, and I had taken their money, so I finally had to get to work.” He finished the novel and it was published in 1981, eight years after he had begun it. The novel was called Chiefs.
Though only 20,000 copies were printed in hard-back, the book achieved a hefty paperback sale and was made into a six-hour critically acclaimed television drama for CBS-TV, starring Charlton Heston, Danny Glover, John Goodman, Billy D. Williams, and Stephen Collins.
Chiefs also established Stuart as a novelist in the eyes of the New York publishing community and was the beginning of a successful career. He has since written fifteen more novels, the most recent of which are Dead in the Water, which just came out in paperback, and Swimming to Catalina, just out in hardcover from HarperCollins. Both books feature Stone Barrington, the handsome, sophisticated attorney/investigator, and are New York Times bestsellers. Chiefs won the coveted Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America, and Stuart was nominated again for Palindrome. Recently he has been awarded France’s Prix de Literature Policière, for Imperfect Strangers.
In 1984 Stuart married for the first time, but the marriage ended in 1990. “I married too young,” he says. “I was only forty-seven.” Then, after fifteen years in Atlanta, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There he spent five years, building a house and meeting his second wife, Chris, who was working in a local bookstore while trying to write her own novel. He now divides his time between Florida and Connecticut and travels widely. At fifty-nine, he has no plans to retire. “I reckon I’m good for another fifteen or twenty novels, maybe more,” he says. “I began to be a lot more careful about my health after I learned that heart disease can be prevented by drinking red wine, so I should be around for a long time.”
CEW: When did you first know you wanted to be a novelist?
SW: My mother taught me to read a year before I went to school, and I became a voracious reader. I first tried to write a novel when I was nine, but I gave up when I found out how hard it was.
CEW: Did you take any formal writing classes or seminars?
SW: The only writing class I ever took was a correspondence course at the University of Georgia, because I needed an additional five credits to graduate. Any teaching I learned from came from my early bosses in the advertising business, who were sticklers for persuasive prose. I learned a lot there.
CEW: I’d like to talk about the latest two novels which feature the popular character, Stone Barrington:Dead in the Water and Swimming to Catalina. What was your inspiration for the storylines?
SW: The inspiration for Dead in the Water came from an article I read in a yachting magazine about an incident where a woman’s husband died in the middle of the Atlantic and she managed to sail herself the rest of the way across. I wrote a short story about it for another sailing magazine, and later, it occurred to me that it might make a basis for a novel. Still later, it occurred to me that it might make a Stone Barrington novel. Near the end of the book, when Arrington marries her movie star, I thought that might make a good beginning for the next book, which is how Swimming to Catalina came along.
CEW: In Swimming to Catalina, Stone Barrington returns and Hollywood and its pretensions are skewered—hilariously. Did you spend a lot of time in Hollywood to research the story or did it grow out of your experience in having Chiefs turned into a TV mini-series?
SW: My experience of Hollywood comes from being in Los Angeles on book tour every year or two and having some friends in the movie business. Chiefs was filmed in Chester, South Carolina, and that never took me to California. I didn’t do any specific research for the book.
CEW: What or who was the inspiration for Stone Barrington?
SW: There was no particular inspiration for Stone Barrington. I just put him together as the story went along, and I liked him, so I brought him back.
CEW: How much of Stuart Woods is there in Stone Barrington?
SW: Stone and I share a few tastes, but we are very different people.
CEW: How did you first become involved with sailing?
SW: I moved from London, where I was working in advertising, to Ireland, in 1973, to begin to write my fi
rst novel. I worked for two days a week at an ad agency in Dublin to support myself, and spent the rest of the time in a little flat in the stable yard of a castle in County Galway. While there, I took up dinghy sailing against small children, losing regularly. You can’t win dinghy races when you weigh more than the boat.
CEW: What was it like sailing alone for six weeks during the OSTAR?
SW: The company was good.
CEW: What was the most difficult challenge you have faced in your sailing career?
SW: That came when the forestay broke, about four hundred and fifty miles north of Bermuda…I was holding onto it at the time, and it could have killed me, but I was lucky. I managed to repair it and finished the race.
CEW: Your love for the water and yachting is reflected in your work. Do you still spend much time on the water?
SW: I sail on other people’s boats, when asked, and my small motorboat is for sale, in Florida.
CEW: After Blue Water, Green Skipper, you finished your first novel, Chiefs. What was the most difficult aspect of writing this novel?
SW: The most difficult aspect of writing Chiefs was to finish it. It took me eight years. After that, I gained confidence, and now I write two books a year.
CEW: Please tell us about your writing habits: do you write everyday, do you use the computer, do you always write in the same location or do you take a laptop everywhere you go etc.?
SW: I usually write a chapter—five to ten pages—at a sitting, which usually comes at mid-afternoon and takes under two hours. First, I re-read the previous day’s work and make small corrections, and that gets me into the new chapter. Near the end of a book, I tend to write two chapters a day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. I write wherever I am, and I take a laptop when I travel while writing a book.
CEW: You are known for being a master of creating suspense in a novel. What techniques do you use when plotting to achieve that timing of the suspense and action which keeps the reader eager to turn the page to see what happens next?