by Stuart Woods
“Well, you can hope,” Stone said. “What’s wrong with the penthouse?”
“Nothing if Herbie isn’t bothered by ghosts.”
“Ghosts? What are you talking about?”
“You know, if you read a real street newspaper instead of the Times, you’d know these things.”
“What things?”
“There was a double murder there about a year and a half ago: man and woman found hacked to death on the living room floor. The ME says the murderers used meat cleavers.”
“Why are you telling me this? I don’t want to know this stuff.”
“Herbie might. The apartment is unsalable; there’ve been two sightings of ghosts in the place. How much is Herbie paying?”
“I told you, three and a half million.”
“I guess that’s a bargain, kind of; they were asking five.”
“Herbie says five and a half but that he’s a great negotiator.”
“They should have paid him,” Dino said. “That’s the kind of thing that hangs over a piece of real estate for decades. I guess he could redecorate.”
“He bought it furnished.”
“Take my advice: when you draw up the contract, be sure to include a clause that requires the seller—or his estate—to have the living room carpet replaced.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stone said.
“Can you get him out of it?”
“He already gave them a check for three hundred and fifty grand.”
“Did he sign the disclosure form?”
“I don’t know.”
“The murders would be a factor affecting the sale price,” Dino said. “If they didn’t disclose them, you might be able to get him out of the deal.”
“If I were on the other side of the deal, I’d say that a two-million-dollar discount ought to cover the, ah, incident.”
“But you’re not on the other side of the deal.”
Stone took a swig of his drink. “I’m not going to think about this now. Tomorrow is soon enough.”
Herbie and Sheila walked into Elaine’s.
“Oh, shit,” Stone said.
The couple stopped at Stone’s table. “Hi, Stone,” Herbie said. “You remember Sheila.” Herbie was reaching for one of the two empty chairs.
STONE PUT A leg up on one of the chairs. “Sore knee,” he said to Herbie. “Good evening, Sheila.”
Sheila turned to Herbie. “They don’t want us to sit here; let’s sit in the back.”
“Herbie,” Stone said, “when you put down the deposit on the apartment, did you sign anything?”
Herbie looked thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said, slapping his pockets and coming up with an envelope.
Stone took the envelope. “I’d better look this over,” he said. “See you later.” He turned back to his drink, and Herbie took the hint, for a change.
“You going to open the envelope?” Dino asked.
“Not until I’ve had another drink,” Stone said, waving at a waiter, who was way ahead of him. Stone took a sip of his second drink and opened the envelope. “Here it is,” he said, reading from the document: “ ‘Seller acknowledges that he is aware of the previous owners’ deaths by violence in the apartment and that his offer is made with due consideration of market consequences of that event.’ ”
“I guess you could call that disclosure,” Dino said, “even though it doesn’t mention the meat cleavers or machetes.”
“I guess you could,” Stone said. “Excuse me for a minute.” He got up and walked back to Herbie’s table. “May I sit down for a moment?” he asked.
“No,” Sheila said.
“Sure,” Herbie said.
Stone decided to ignore Sheila and sat down. He handed Herbie the disclosure agreement. “Read paragraph eleven,” he said.
Herbie read it. “What does this mean?” he asked.
“It means that the previous owners were murdered in the apartment, hacked to death with meat cleavers.”
“Omigod!” Sheila shrieked. “It’s that building? You read about that in the Post, didn’t you, Herbie?”
“Ah, no,” Herbie said.
“But,” Stone interjected, “you did read about it in this disclosure agreement that you signed when you gave the agent your check for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Well . . .”
“Herbie,” Sheila said, “are you insane?”
“Now, wait a minute, Sheila.”
“Yes,” Stone said, “wait a minute, Sheila. Herbie got a two-million-dollar discount on the apartment because of the murders. That should make you feel better about the deal.”
“I don’t give a shit about the murders,” Sheila said. “What I do give a shit about are the ghosts! For God’s sake, don’t you two guys ever read a newspaper?”
Herbie had turned a lighter shade of his usual pallor. “Ghosts? What are you talking about?”
Stone stood up. “Sheila will explain it to you. I apologize for interrupting your evening,” he said, including Sheila. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
He got the hell out of there and went back to his own table.
“Never mind telling me,” Dino said. “I heard it from over here.”
25
Stone awoke the following morning to find Felicity lying next to him.
She opened an eye. “You didn’t know when I came home last night, did you?”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” he said, running a hand up the inside of her thigh. “But this feels familiar.”
“It should,” she said. “It’s wet, too.”
“I notice that. It must be some sort of signal.”
“It must be,” she agreed.
He gathered her into his arms and made the most of things.
LATER, WHEN THEY were lying on their backs, sweating and catching their breath, Stone said. “What do you know about a guy named Jim Hackett?”
“Strategic Services?”
“Yes, that Jim Hackett.”
“I met him once at a dinner party in London; there wasn’t much opportunity for one-on-one conversation. I looked him up after that: owns a very large private security company, is a contractor for the American and British governments and for many corporations, owns a factory that converts ordinary motorcars into virtual tanks, not averse to being paid in cash by foreign clients and stashing the funds in Switzerland or those little islands south of Jamaica.”
“Is he clean?”
“As clean as anyone can be in that business. Nothing outright unsavory about him, as I recall.”
“Has your firm used his company’s services?”
“No,” she replied. “Her Majesty’s government frowns on that sort of thing, except when they do it themselves. Why are you interested in Hackett?”
“I’m playing tennis with him at the Racquet Club this evening. It occurred to me that he’s the sort of person who might have run across Stanley Whitestone at some point, and I thought I might ask him about Whitestone.”
Felicity smiled. “What a good idea,” she said. “He is exactly the sort of person who might know something about Stanley. You see, Stone, this is why I hired you: you are imaginative as well as lucky. I want a complete report tonight when you come home.”
“Does he know who and what you are?” Stone asked.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she replied. “He’s the sort who would make it his business to know.”
“Mind if I drop your name? It might help.”
She thought about that for a minute. “Yes I mind,” she said, “and certainly in the same conversation in which the name of Stanley Whitestone is mentioned. I don’t want him making a connection between Stanley and me. My position is that Stanley is ancient history and nobody at my firm gives a flying fuck about him. Please remember that.”
“How could I forget it?” Stone asked.
“I’m going to have dinner at Elaine’s with Dino,” Felicity said. “Meet us there when you’re done
with Mr. Hackett, or vice versa.”
IN TENNIS CLOTHES, Jim Hackett was revealed to have a muscularly gnarled body that appeared to have lived through many difficult moments. His broken nose was a perfect representation of the rest of him. His tennis game was murderous; he thought nothing of aiming a shot between the eyes of an opponent who had come to the net. Stone knew this, because he had been struck between the eyes. It tended to make one more cautious on the court, which was exactly what Hackett intended.
Hackett and his partner, Mike Freeman, an employee of his who appeared to have been hired entirely for his tennis game, defeated Eggers and Stone in straight sets, 6-4 and 9-7. Stone felt as if he had played fifty tiebreakers at Wimbledon.
Afterward, at dinner in the member’s grill, Hackett bought the drinks and collected a couple of hundred in cash from Eggers. “You two gave us more of a match than I had anticipated,” he said.
“Where did you find Freeman?” Eggers asked. “At the U.S. Open?” Hackett laughed and shook his head. “Mike was a middling pro a very long time ago, but he made a very fine living for many years allowing gentlemen to nearly win their matches at some of the world’s finest clubs.”
“The man is an assassin,” Eggers said.
“That must be what he does for you these days,” Stone said. “When he’s not assaulting people on the courts.”
“No. Jim is a client’s man; he has great charm, and he’s a fine organizer of teams for special sorts of work,” Hackett said. “Stone, what exactly do you do for this upstanding law firm of Bill’s?”
Stone looked sideways at Eggers. “Oh, I handle the cases that Bill and his white-shoe colleagues don’t want to be seen to handle.”
“Is that a good description, Bill?” Hackett asked.
“Not far off the mark,” Eggers replied, a little uncomfortably.
“You should be very pleased to have Stone,” Hackett said. “Every business needs someone like him, and certainly every law firm.” Hackett passed Stone a business card. “Stone, if Bill ever stops appreciating you, give me a call. You’d find a very comfortable home at Strategic Services.”
“Jim,” Eggers said, “that is an outright attempt at theft, and I resent it. I mean, it’s not like you let me win at tennis first.”
“On the contrary, Bill,” Hackett said, “knowing that you have someone like Stone on the payroll impresses me, makes me more likely to want to hire your firm. He also kept you alive in the second set, even after I knocked him senseless at the net.”
“Stone has his uses,” Eggers said. “Standing between me and cannon fire is one of them.”
“I understand that you two impressed Lord Wight yesterday at lunch,” Hackett said.
“We had a pleasant conversation,” Eggers said, “even if Stone had to leave to get someone out of jail.”
“Hah!” Hackett roared. “I love it! Someone from Woodman and Weld fishing a client out of the pokey!”
“And I have the only record of his arrest in my pocket,” Stone said.
“I hope to God he didn’t murder anybody,” Eggers said.
“No,” Stone replied. “He merely pressed a disagreement over a traffic ticket a little too far and got himself a free ride to the precinct.”
“That’s what I mean,” Hackett said. “A firm needs somebody like Stone.”
AS EGGERS WAS being shown into his chauffeured car after dinner, he turned back toward Stone. “I hope you didn’t take that offer from Jim Hackett seriously.”
“I hope you did,” Stone said, turning toward home.
26
As Stone arrived at Elaine’s, Dino and Felicity were just ordering. He waved away a menu. “No thanks, just a drink; I’ve already eaten.”
Elaine, who was seated with regulars at the next table, reached over and took Stone by a lapel. “What did you say?”
“A business dinner,” Stone said, knowing her views on those who dined before they arrived at her restaurant.
“People do business here,” Elaine said, freeing the lapel from her grasp.
“I was forced to dine elsewhere, sweetheart,” he said.
She looked unconvinced but turned back to her previous conversation.
“So,” Felicity said, “what did you find out about Whitestone?”
“It didn’t come up,” Stone replied. “It would have been awkward to raise the question. Anyway, Hackett probably already knows I’m interested in Whitestone.”
“How would he know that?”
“Because I raised the name with Lord Wight, and Hackett was aware of my and Eggers’s lunch with him yesterday.”
“So you think Hackett and Wight are in league?”
“Wight owns the building that is Hackett’s headquarters. I don’t know that they’re otherwise ‘in league,’ as you put it.”
“Let’s suspect the worst,” she replied.
“You do that; I’ll just try to find Whitestone.”
“You’re not making a lot of progress on that, are you?” Dino asked.
“We’ve got the bank and the Seagram Building staked out; that’s all we can do at the moment.”
“Stone is making progress,” Felicity said to Dino.
“Thank you, Felicity,” Stone said.
Felicity took a sip of her Rob Roy. “If they are in league, then Hackett knows that you and I know each other, because you introduced me to Wight at the ambassador’s dinner party.”
“Good point,” Stone said. “Also, Hackett seems to be the sort of guy who knows everything about everybody, so we’d best assume he knows everything about us.”
“Everything?” Felicity asked.
“Well, not everything.”
“Hackett also made me a job offer,” Stone said. “Sort of.”
“What sort of job offer?”
“He gave me his card and said if I ever tired of working for Woodman and Weld, he would make me comfortable at his company.”
“Take the job,” Dino said. “Then maybe you’d know everything.”
“I think he did it just to annoy Bill Eggers,” Stone said, “and it worked.”
“Dino has a point,” Felicity said.
“You want me to go to work for Hackett?”
“That would never do,” Dino said. “Then Stone would actually have to work for a living.”
Felicity couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Why don’t you drop him a note and manage to indicate some interest?”
“Because Hackett would see that Eggers knew about it, and I’d catch hell from him.”
“Then tell Eggers why you’re doing it,” she said.
“You want him to know about Whitestone?”
“You already mentioned the name in his presence at the dinner party.”
“You want me to tell him I’m working for you?”
“Certainly not. You can lie about that.”
“Lies have a way of coming back and biting one on the ass.”
“Oh, handle it, Stone,” she said.
Dinner came, and the waiter began pouring an expensive bottle of wine.
“That’s two, Dino,” Stone said.
“And two to go,” Dino replied.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Stone was in his office when the phone rang. Joan had gone out for something, so he picked it up. “Stone Barrington.”
“You answer your own phone?” Hackett said. “Don’t you have a secretary?”
“You place your own calls?” Stone asked. “Don’t you have a secretary?”
Hackett laughed heartily. “Let’s have lunch today,” Hackett said. “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“All right,” Stone replied.
“The Four Seasons at one?”
“That’s Eggers’s hangout,” Stone replied.
“All right, Michael’s?”
“Good,” Stone replied. “See you at one.” He hung up and called Eggers. The secretary put him through.
“Good morning, Stone,” Eggers said. “I thought that wen
t well yesterday.”
“I don’t know about you, Bill, but it wore me out,” Stone replied.
“You should stay in better shape,” Eggers said, chuckling.
“You going to get any business from Hackett?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“How close are Hackett and Wight?”
“They know each other. I don’t know any more than that.”
“Hackett just called and invited me to lunch today. I accepted.”
“Now you listen to me, Stone . . .”
“Easy, Bill.”
“You’re not going to . . .”
“Bill, if I were job hunting, I wouldn’t be telling you about it, would I?”
“Then why are you having lunch with him?”
“Because I need some information for one of my own clients, and Hackett may have it.”
“What client?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. I can tell you there’s no conflict with Woodman and Weld.”
“Well, all right, then, but I want to know if he tries to poach you away from me.”
“But then I’d be violating Hackett’s confidence.”
“Goddamn it, Stone . . .”
“Bill, you’re going to have a stroke if you’re not careful.”
“Don’t you accept any work of any kind from Hackett, without my agreement.”
“Bill, I’m not trying to screw you. You’ve been very good to me, from the beginning. I just want to tap Hackett’s brain for my other client.”
“All right, all right, but you call me after lunch.”
“I will, but I don’t know how much I can tell you.”
Eggers hung up without another word.
27
Michael’s was a restaurant on West Fifty-fifth Street that catered to the publishing and media crowd, and Stone wondered why Hackett had chosen it. It was a wide-open room with contemporary furniture and good art on the walls. Michael Mc-Carty, the owner, had opened his first Michael’s in Santa Monica, California, in the late 1970s and the New York place not long afterward.
Hackett was already seated at a prime table when Stone arrived on time. They shook hands, and Stone took a seat. “This is a publishing hangout,” Stone said. “What are you doing here?”