by Stuart Woods
Ben sank back in his chair, looking stunned.
“Now, before you get over that idea, I’ve something else to tell you.”
“I’m not sure I can stand it,” Ben said.
“I’m not sure you can, either, but here goes: Ben, I’m only sixteen years old.”
Ben sat bolt upright, looking at Peter’s face for some sign that he was kidding. “I’m going to be eighteen next month; you mean you’re two years younger than I am?”
“You’re good at math, Ben.”
“I can do eighteen minus sixteen.”
“Now, Ben, my age makes me a freak, at least until I’m in my thirties, when it won’t matter. But, if people think I’m eighteen, then I’m not a freak, and life will be so very much easier for me. Can you understand that?”
“Sure, I can. Your secret is safe with me, Peter.”
“Good. And I have a legal birth certificate to prove I’m eighteen. Please remember: life will be easier for both of us if you continue to treat me as if I’m eighteen.”
Ben smiled broadly. “No sweat, pal.”
“That means I’m not going to drink until I’m twenty-one, which means until I’m twenty-three. I’m not suggesting that you should wait that long, but you’ll have a better brain in your head if you do.”
“I’ll think about that.”
“I’m probably not going to have sex for a while, either, and I don’t need you to give me a hard time about it.”
“Up to you, Peter.”
“And it will help our career plan if you don’t get anybody pregnant.”
“Good point.”
“Great. Now, are you ready to watch Citizen Kane again?”
“Are you kidding? I’m ready to produce it!”
22
O n Christmas Day Stone and Arrington were dressing.
“Do you think this dress will be all right?” Arrington asked.
“It’s beautiful,” Stone said, “even if it’s not white.”
“I think I’m a little beyond the white dress,” Arrington said. Stone kissed her. “You look like a virgin bride to me.”
She laughed. “It’s going to be fun being married to you.”
“Let’s be sure to keep it that way,” he said, zipping up her dress.
“Who did you say is going to marry us?”
“Eduardo said, ‘an official.’ That probably means a judge. He knows a lot of people like that.” Stone went to his dressing room and came back with a clear plastic box. “Here’s your bouquet,” he said, handing it to her.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, Stone. I wouldn’t even have thought about that. Where’s the wedding ring?”
“In my pocket,” Stone said, “for Dino to convey.”
“Who’s going to give me away?”
“How about Peter?”
“Perfect. I don’t guess we’ll have a rehearsal.”
“No, but if I know Eduardo, we’ll have one hell of a wedding feast.”
She looked at herself in the mirror. “Am I ready?”
Stone looked over her shoulder at her reflection. “I don’t think it’s possible to improve on that image.”
Peter knocked on the door and came into the room. “Are we ready to go?”
“We are,” Stone said. “What’s in your leather envelope?”
“Just some stuff for Ben.”
“Let’s get out of here, then.” They took the elevator down to the garage. Stone got them into the car and backed out into the street.
Peter rolled down the window a little. “Wow,” he said, “how come the glass is so thick? It wasn’t this thick on our Arnage, in L.A.”
“Because it’s an armored car.”
“Why do you need an armored car?” Peter asked. “Is this something I should worry about?”
“No. When I bought my last car it was already armored, and it turned out to be very helpful a couple of times, especially when I rolled it end-to-end. Mike Freeman’s company has a division that armors vehicles, and when I was out of a car, he lent this to me. I liked it, so I got the law firm to buy it for me. Mike gave them a good deal.”
“What was the other occasion when having an armored car helped?” Peter asked.
“Somebody threw something at me from a motorcycle that might have hurt me, except for the armored glass.” Stone didn’t mention that what had been thrown at him was a bullet.
They drove out to Brooklyn and beyond and pulled into Eduardo’s driveway at exactly twelve-thirty. Pietro, Eduardo’s butler, valet, and probably bodyguard, stepped out the front door and got the car doors for them. “Everybody is ready,” he said. He took their coats in the foyer, then led them down the hall in a direction Stone had never been in the house. He opened a set of double doors, and they stepped into a small, quite beautiful chapel.
Eduardo greeted them, and Stone introduced Arrington and Peter. Dino and his former wife, Mary Ann, and Ben were there, as were Bill and Marian Eggers, and then they were surprised to be introduced to the mayor of New York.
“His Honor will perform the ceremony,” Eduardo said.
“Do you have the license?” the mayor asked.
Stone handed it to him.
Eduardo arranged everybody in front of the altar, and the mayor read the ceremony from a small book. Dino dealt with the ring, Peter gave away his mother, and Marian Eggers served as matron of honor. Stone and Arrington kissed and the mayor dealt with the paperwork. “I’ll see that everything is filed,” he said.
Eduardo led them to his large living room, where his elderly sister supervised the pouring of champagne, and toasts were offered. Then Pietro opened the doors to the dining room, they found their place cards, and were seated. There followed a parade of food that could have fed everyone in a Salvation Army chapel, where, Dino whispered, most of it would end up, with the mayor delivering it personally.
After Christmas dinner they adjourned to Eduardo’s handsome library for coffee. Ben came over to Peter, whispered something to him, and Peter handed him an envelope from his little leather case. Ben went to his grandfather and asked if he could speak to him alone for a moment. They were out of the room for, perhaps, ten minutes, then returned. Ben flashed Peter a thumbs-up.
Stone leaned over to Peter, who sat between him and Arrington. “What was that all about?” he asked.
“Ben’s grandfather is going to help him change from Columbia to Yale, so that we can go to college together. He’s going to pass along my application, too.”
“You shouldn’t have asked Eduardo to do that without talking with us first,” Arrington said.
“I didn’t ask him, Ben did.”
“Still.”
“Mom, he’s just passing along my application. I think it’s better than mailing it in, don’t you?”
“I hope you both get in,” Stone said.
“We’ve both got the qualifications,” Peter replied. “It’s the interview that’s important, and at least they’ll know who we are when we get there.”
Stone looked at Arrington. “I don’t think Dino and I could have dealt with this as well as the boys have.”
Dino pulled up a chair. “I’ll second that,” Dino said.
Peter went over to talk with Ben and his grandfather.
“Ben’s not going to law school,” Dino said. “He wants to be a movie producer.”
“I can imagine where he got that idea,” Arrington said.
Stone spoke up. “I think it’s a good idea that they go to college together.”
“I’m for that, too,” Dino said. “I suppose you dealt with Peter’s birth certificate.”
Stone nodded. “Bill Eggers did it through an L.A. judge with whom we both went to law school.”
Later, Stone had an opportunity to talk with Eduardo.
“I’m very impressed with your son,” the older man said.
“To tell you the truth, so am I,” Stone replied. “He surprises me every day.”
“Benito has told me of their pla
ns to work together after Yale,” Eduardo said. “I think it’s good that he has a friend with a good head on his shoulders.”
“I’m glad Peter has such a good friend, too, Eduardo,” Stone replied.
He was going to have to ask Peter about this plan he had, since he had heard nothing of it.
23
K elli Keane was at her tiny desk in a corner of the Page Six offices at the New York Post when she got a call from the young man with whom she had slept the night before, who happened to work on the outer periphery of the mayor’s staff.
She listened through her earpiece while simultaneously typing on her computer keyboard. “Go,” she said.
“Word around the office is that the mayor married somebody yesterday.”
“I thought he wouldn’t do that.”
“Only in exceptional cases, and in this case, secret ones. It happened at the home of Eduardo Bianchi.”
“Who?”
“Big shot, lives way the hell out in Brooklyn; on a lot of boards, corporate and charitable.”
“So, who got married?”
“That’s the mystery. The mayor has had Christmas dinner booked there for weeks, and after the dinner he took all the considerable leftovers to some mission down on the Bowery.”
“Come on, Bruce,” she said, “who are the happy couple? They must be somebody special.”
“You’re right, but it beats me.”
“Who were the other guests for Christmas dinner?”
“I don’t have anything hard on that; I’d have to guess.”
“So, guess.”
“Well, Bianchi has two daughters, but one of them is supposed to be in a loony bin somewhere, so the one daughter must have been there. She used to be married to Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti, who runs the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct, and they have a son, so he must have been there.”
“How about Dino, was he there?” She had seen him often at Elaine’s.
“Maybe, who knows? Bianchi has an old battle-ax of a sister, who acts as his hostess when he entertains. That’s all I can think of.”
“Thanks, Bruce.”
“See you this week?”
“Maybe. Give me a call.” She hung up and thought for a minute, then she got up and maneuvered her long legs toward a bulletin board across the room. There was a photograph, taken at the marriage license office downtown, of a couple standing in line for a license. They were noticeable, because they were so much better dressed than anyone else in the room, but the woman stood behind the man, and her face was visible only from the eyebrows up, while the man’s back was halfway to the camera. A Post-it was stuck to the picture and the words “Who are these people?” were scrawled on it. Kelli unpinned the picture and walked back to her desk with it.
Who, she wondered, was that guy who was always with Dino Bacchetti at Elaine’s? Kelli was new at Page Six, having come up from Philly, so she was new in the city as well. She had been told this guy’s name, but she hadn’t written it down. He was tall and good-looking and always well-dressed, like the man in the photograph. She phoned her friend Gita, who worked in sports.
“Gita,” the woman said. “Speak.”
“It’s Kelli. Remember when we were at Elaine’s last week?”
“Yeah, sure.” The two women had had a few drinks at the bar.
“Remember the cop Dino Bacchetti was there?”
“Yeah; he almost always is.”
“And who’s the good-looking guy he hangs with?”
“That’s Stone Barrington. All the girls at the bar want to screw him.”
“Who is he?”
“Lawyer, sort of a fix-it guy for Woodman amp; Weld.”
“What does he fix?”
“Whatever needs fixing, I guess.”
“Is he married?”
“No, famous bachelor. What, you want to screw him, too?”
“Not that I would mind, but no. We have a picture of somebody who looks like him standing in line for a marriage license the other day.”
“That would definitely not be Stone Barrington; he’d rather be struck by lightning.”
“There were some other people with him and Dino that night-a woman and a couple of kids.”
“One of the kids was Dino’s son-I don’t know his name. No idea who the others were.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” Kelli hung up. Her stomach growled; it was nearly eight p.m. She turned to her computer and wrote: “Item: At whose marriage did the mayor officiate at Eduardo Bianchi’s house on Christmas Day? We thought Hizzoner didn’t hitch folks.”
She printed it out and dropped it in the day editor’s in-box on the way to the elevator. She pressed the down button and waited, then the day editor appeared with a sheet of paper in his hand and thrust it at her.
“This won’t fly,” he said.
“Why not? My source is good.”
“You don’t fuck with him.”
“The mayor? We fuck with him all the time.”
“That’s right, you’re new in town, aren’t you? We don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi. Nobody in this city does.” He turned and went back to his desk, and Kelli followed him.
“So who the fuck is Eduardo Bianchi,” she demanded, “that we can’t fuck with him? I thought we could fuck with anybody, if the source was good.”
“Almost anybody,” the editor said, sinking into his chair. “We don’t fuck with Rupert Murdoch, and we don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi.”
She started to ask why, but he held up a hand.
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Ever.”
Kelli walked back to the elevator, fuming, and rode down to the lobby. She went outside and threw herself in front of a cab. “Eightyeighth and Second Avenue,” she said to the driver. All the way uptown she turned the thing over in her mind. By the time she got to Elaine’s she was determined to get to the bottom of this.
She walked in and was greeted by Gianni, one of the two headwaiters. She ordered a drink at the bar, then grabbed Gianni’s sleeve when he came back from seating a party. “Gianni, you know everything; who were those people with Dino and Stone the other night?”
“What people are those?” Gianni asked.
“A beautiful blond woman and a couple of kids, one of them Dino’s.”
Gianni looked at her evenly for a moment. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.
She started to pursue it with him, but he stopped her.
“And let me give you some advice: don’t ask Elaine, either.” He walked away.
She turned away, her cheeks burning. Gianni knew who she worked for, so she was going to have to be careful, if she didn’t want to get eighty-sixed from Elaine’s.
A man came into the restaurant and sat down beside her at the bar. She cased him in the mirror: slicked-back black hair, Italian suit, cashmere overcoat.
“Hi,” he said to her, holding out a hand. “Anthony Cecchini.”
“Kelli,” she said, shaking the smooth hand. The guy was definitely not a stevedore.
“Kelli what?”
“Keane, with an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ on the end.”
“Buy you a drink, Kelli?”
“I’ve got one, thanks.”
“The next one, then.”
“Sure, why not.” He was kind of good-looking. “I perceive that you are Italian,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re very perceptive.”
“Tell me, Anthony, does the name Eduardo Bianchi mean anything to you?”
He froze. “Where did you hear that name?” he asked.
“Oh, around.”
He turned to the bartender. “Kevin, her next drink is on me,” he said, then he got up and moved to the other end of the bar.
Kelli was flabbergasted, and she didn’t flabbergast easily. What the fuck was going on here?
24
A couple of days after Christmas Stone was catching up on his corporate reading, when Joan buzzed him.
“A Mr. John Ellis,
from Knickerbocker Hall, on one.”
Stone picked up the phone. “Stone Barrington.”
“Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” the man said. “I’m John Ellis from Knickerbocker.”
“Good morning.”
“I run a little office at the school that deals with keeping our budget on an even keel,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I’m afraid that running the school on tuition fees just isn’t possible, and we rely on the kindness of our alumni and the parents of our students to help us keep the ship upright.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Ellis?”
“I understand that when you took the tour last week you had a look at our film school facilities.”
“That’s correct, we did.”
“Perhaps you’ll recall that two of our three cameras were out of service.”
“My son certainly remembers that,” Stone said.
“Also, that our editing equipment needs updating.”
“He recalls that, too.”
“The school would be very grateful if you could manage a donation that could help us with the modernization of our film school.”
“I see. I expect you have a figure in mind.”
“We were hoping that you might think a donation of one hundred thousand dollars would be reasonable, given your very bright son’s deep interest in filmmaking.”
“Let me speak with his mother about it, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Of course, Mr. Barrington. Let me give you my direct line.”
Stone wrote down the number, hung up, and buzzed Arrington.
“Hello, there.”
“Are you awake yet?”
“More or less.”
“You recall that I mentioned that Knickerbocker might put the bite on us for a donation?”
“Yes, I recall.”
“Well, they’ve taken less than a week to get around to it. A Mr. Ellis just called and mentioned that their film school equipment badly needs upgrading. They’re looking for a hundred thousand.”