by Stuart Woods
“Trini Rodriguez grows up his father’s son and is trained in all the little arts required of a Mafia-made man. His favorite is killing people. I thought I had killed him, but he bounced back.”
“Why did you think you had killed him?” Stone asked, putting down his fork.
“Because I stuck a steak knife in his neck and wiggled it around, and he was pumping blood at a great rate the last time I saw him.”
Stone gulped. “And why, may I ask, did you stick a steak knife in his neck?”
“He was trying to kill an FBI agent at the time, and I was trying to stop him.”
“Oh.”
“Apparently, though, his people got him to a hospital in time, and he recovered.”
“Wasn’t he arrested?”
“Yes, but there were complications.”
“He was trying to kill an FBI agent, but there were complications?”
“Right. Turns out Trini had been an FBI informant all the time he was killing people, and the Miami agent in charge, a guy named Harry Crisp, took him out of the hospital and put him in the Witness Protection Program, saying that he needed his testimony in the big case—my case. All this without mentioning it to me, and I wanted the guy for mass murder.”
Dino spoke up. “So the guy you’ve come to New York to find is in the Federal Witness Protection Program?”
“Right.”
“Well,” Dino said, wiping his mouth and taking a sip of his wine, “that’s going to make it just a little difficult to arrest him.”
“Hang on,” Stone said. “You said you wanted him for mass murder?”
“Right. I had a witness in protective custody, and he killed two of her relatives, trying to get at her. She insisted on going to the funeral, and the FBI had the scene covered with lots of agents and a few snipers. I’m up in the church bell tower with one of the snipers when the hearses arrive, and everybody is on maximum alert, looking for somebody with a weapon.
“The coffins are taken out of the hearses and set by the graveside, and my witness walks over, puts a rose on the first coffin and kisses it, then steps over to the other coffin, and, as she kisses it, both coffins explode.”
“Holy shit,” Dino said quietly.
“My sentiments exactly,” Holly replied. “It’s carnage, everywhere you look. More than a dozen people are dead and several dozen injured, some critically. Like I said, I’m in the church tower, and the shock wave from the explosions starts the bell ringing and nearly deafens the sniper and me.”
“So he murders a dozen people, and still the FBI puts him in the Program?”
“Harry Crisp puts him in the Program, and once anybody in the FBI makes a move, they never want to reverse it; makes them look bad, they think.”
“And I’ll bet Crisp still has his job,” Stone said.
“No, thanks to a little work of mine, but he still has a job: He’s the AIC in American Samoa.”
“Samoa?”
“It was the most remote place they could find to send him. The AIC in Miami is now one Grant Early Harrison, who was the FBI guy I was trying to save when I stuck Trini Rodriguez. He was undercover at the time.”
“Well, Grant Early Harrison must be very grateful to you,” Stone said.
“Grateful, but not very. He’s how I know Trini Rodriguez is in the Program and in New York, but he stopped talking to me the moment he realized that I planned to take Trini.”
“So there’s no more help forthcoming from Agent Harrison?”
“None at all, the bastard, and after I got him his job, too.”
“And how did you do that?” Stone asked.
“After this business was over, and Ed Shine and a lot of other people had been arrested, a deputy director of the FBI paid me a visit and asked me for my account of events. I managed to toss a couple of hand grenades into Harry Crisp’s lap, resulting in his getting shipped to the farthest reaches of the Pacific Rim, and I said some very nice things about Grant, which, ultimately, got him the AIC’s job in Miami.”
“I don’t ever want you for an enemy,” Dino said. “You’re not Italian, are you?”
“No, but I’m an army brat, and I put twenty years in, myself, commanding MPs. In the army, you learn how to work the system.”
“Do you learn how to stick a knife in somebody’s throat, too?”
Holly put a hand on Dino’s arm. “Oh, Dino, that’s the first thing they teach you in the army, didn’t you know?”
“Are you armed?” Dino asked.
“No, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle at the airport.”
“You got your badge and your ID with you?”
“Sure.”
Dino reached under the table and fiddled with an ankle, then he put his napkin over something and slid it across the table. “I think you’re going to need this,” he said.
Holly lifted the edge of the napkin and peeped under it. “Oh, Dino,” she said, “a Walther PPK. How sweet of you!”
Stone peeped under the napkin, too. “I’ve got one just like it,” he said.
“That’s yours,” Dino said. “You didn’t think I’d give her my piece, did you?”
“What are you doing with my Walther?” Stone demanded.
“You loaned it to me that time when we did that thing.”
“And you never returned it?”
“Holly will give it back to you after she’s shot Trini Rodriguez a few times,” Dino explained.
Holly slipped the weapon into her handbag and returned Dino’s napkin.
“Swell,” Stone said.
“Holly,” Dino said, “I’ve got a couple of friends on the organized crime task force. I’ll mention Rodriguez’s name and see if anybody has heard about him. Do you know what name he’s using in the Program?”
“No, Grant wouldn’t tell me.”
“It would be a big help if you could find out.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Holly said.
“Let me work on it,” Dino replied.
Their main course arrived, and there was no more talk of Trini Rodriguez.
On the way back to Stone’s house, in a cab, he turned to Holly. “Are you and your friend comfortably situated upstairs?”
“Oh, yes, thank you. The room is very nice.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about sleeping in the same house with somebody who could stab somebody else in the neck.”
Holly patted his knee. “I promise not to stab you in the neck,” she said. “At least not the first night.”
The cab pulled up in front of Stone’s house, and they got out. Stone went to the front door and unlocked it.
“Hang on!” Holly yelled. “I left my purse in the cab!” She ran toward the moving taxi, screaming at it.
Stone watched her catch up and stop the cab, then he turned back and stepped inside his front door. As he did, he heard a sound that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He froze.
Holly came up the steps behind him. “That was close,” she said.
“Don’t move,” Stone replied.
“What? Oh, God. Daisy! Stand down!” She brushed past Stone and took the dog’s collar. “Sit.”
Daisy sat down and looked at Stone warily.
“This is Stone,” she said. “Stone is good. Good.”
Daisy walked over and nuzzled Stone’s hand.
“How do you do, Daisy?” Stone said.
She licked his hand.
“Sorry about that,” Holly said. “You okay?”
“My heart rate is returning to normal. So this is your friend?”
“Yep. Isn’t she beautiful?”
“You didn’t mention that your friend is a Doberman pinscher.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No.”
“I hope it’s okay if Daisy stays, too. We can always go to a hotel.”
“Holly, in hotels, chambermaids enter your room several times a day when you aren’t there. You don’t want a dead chambermaid on your conscience, do yo
u?”
“Daisy’s not like that.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“She only kills on command.”
Stone looked at her askance.
“Just kidding.”
“Go to bed,” Stone said. He watched as she walked ahead of him to the elevator. It was a pleasant sight.
Stone was nearly asleep when he felt Holly sit on his bed. He wasn’t all that sleepy after all, he thought. He reached for her, and his hand found a warm, furry body.
“Go to sleep, Daisy,” he groaned.
Daisy sighed, snuggled against Stone, and settled in for the night.
3
STONE WAS SLEEPING soundly when he was disturbed by a chink, chink sound. He opened an eye and found Holly sitting on his bed in one of his terry cloth bathrobes, eating cereal from a bowl.
“Good morning,” she said. “I made myself some breakfast. Can I get you some?”
Stone pressed the button that made his bed sit up, then rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Six-fifteen,” she replied.
Daisy, who had been snuggled close to Stone, sat up and yawned.
“Six-fifteen,” Stone repeated tonelessly.
“Too early for you? What time do you normally get up?”
“I wake up around seven, then have some breakfast in bed and read the Times and do the crossword. I usually get out of bed around nine.”
“Lazy guy, huh?”
“I’m not running a police force in a Florida town,” Stone said, “and I don’t have people pounding on my door at the crack of dawn, demanding to see me. It’s one of the advantages of being self-employed.”
Holly nodded. “Guess so. I see Daisy slept with you last night,” she said.
Stone nodded. “Apparently so. You’ll need to avert your eyes while I dash to the bathroom. And doesn’t Daisy have to go out in the mornings, or does she use a flush toilet?”
“She has to go out. And why do I have to avert my eyes?”
“Suit yourself,” Stone said, getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom. When he came back, Holly was still there.
“And don’t forget the plastic bag,” he said, climbing back into bed.
“Plastic bag?”
“For Daisy.”
“You want me to put Daisy in a plastic bag?”
Stone shook his head. “It’s the law in New York that when the dog poops, the owner picks it up and puts it into the nearest trash can. It’s a hundred-dollar fine if you fail to do so. And don’t bring it back into the house.”
“Well, I never,” Holly said. “What’ll they think of next in the big city?” She stood up. “Where do I find a plastic bag?”
“Kitchenette,” Stone said, pointing. “Next to my dressing room; saves an elevator ride at breakfast time.”
Holly went and found a plastic bag. “Guess I’d better shower and get dressed, if we’re going out,” she said to the dog. “Come on, Daisy.”
“Doesn’t she have to go out right now?” Stone asked.
“She can hold it, don’t worry. You want to take her out?”
Stone rolled over and pulled the covers over his head.
At mid-morning Stone had finished breakfast and was dressing when Holly came upstairs, looking good in a sweater and wool slacks, Daisy at her side.
“Nice neighborhood,” she said. “Why is it called Turtle Bay?”
“There used to be a bay called Turtle Bay here, a long time ago. It got filled in.”
She went and looked out a rear window. “Beautiful garden. Do all the houses get to use it?”
“Yep, it’s a common garden. All the houses open onto it.”
“Nice feature.”
“So what are you going to do today?”
“Start looking for Trini Rodriguez, I guess.”
“Oh? Where?”
“Where do mafiosi hang out?”
Stone slipped his feet into a pair of loafers. “Hang on a minute. Trini is in the Federal Witness Protection Program, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, the Feds usually put people in there when they’re going to testify against the Mafia, when they’re running from the mob, you know?”
“Oh, I don’t think Trini would ever testify against his people.”
“Then who are the Feds protecting him from?”
“Probably me.”
“Holly, that just doesn’t make any sense. Why would they protect him from you?”
“Because he’s theirs, and they don’t want me getting him tried in Indian River County. And they think if he’s theirs, nobody else has a right to him. Well, I have a right to him.”
“You’re a very determined gir. . . woman, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and I don’t mind being called a girl, except at work. So where do the Mafia guys hang out?”
“Well, they used to hang out in Little Italy, but these days they seem to be more scattered. I guess there are some in each borough.”
“Borough?”
“There are five in New York: Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx, and Manhattan. Until the turn of the century, they were separate cities.”
“So where’s Little Italy?”
“Downtown.”
“Will a cabdriver know it?”
“That’s problematical these days,” Stone said. “Tell you what: I’ve got a light day; I’ll drive you down there, maybe buy you some lunch.”
“Hey, that sounds great, but I’m buying. You get the gas.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She put a hand under Daisy’s chin and gazed into her eyes. “You stay here and be a good girl,” she said, then she turned to Stone. “Do you want her to kill anybody who comes into the house?”
“No, thanks,” Stone replied. “I wouldn’t want to come home and find my secretary dead.”
Stone slipped into a tweed jacket. “Okay, let’s go.” He led her downstairs to the garage, opened the door, and backed out, closing the garage door with a remote control.
“Your car makes a nice noise,” she said, as he accelerated toward Second Avenue. It’s an E55, isn’t it?”
“Very good. Most people can’t distinguish it from the ordinary E-class Mercedes.”
“I drove one, once; pretended that I was a prospective customer. I liked it.”
“Did you train Daisy yourself?”
“No, she was trained by an old army buddy of my father’s who got murdered. I bought her from his daughter. Daisy is what’s called in dog-breeding circles an ‘Excellent Working Bitch.’ ”
Stone laughed. “I like that.”
“Applies to me, too,” Holly said, grinning.
Soon they were creeping through traffic through the little streets of Little Italy. “That’s Umberto’s Clam House,” Stone said, pointing at a little restaurant. “Joey Gallo got shot there. Down the street is a coffeehouse, where some other don got it while playing bocce in the back garden. You may have seen that photograph of the corpse, with a cigar still clamped in his teeth.”
“I think I saw that on the History Channel,” Holly said.
“I guess you have a lot of time for things like the History Channel in Orchid Beach.”
“Oh, we get out of the house once in a while.” She pointed at a little restaurant. “Let’s have lunch there.”
“Okay. Let me find a parking space.”
“I’ll go ahead and get a table.” She opened the door and got out. It took Stone another ten minutes before somebody freed up a parking space, and when he got back to the restaurant, she was sitting at a table in the window, looking at the menu. He stopped and just looked for a moment. He was finding her more and more attractive. He went in and took a seat.
“What looks good?”
“Pasta,” she said. “I was thinking about the white clam sauce.”
A waiter came over.
“I’ll have the same,” Stone said, after she’d ordered. “And let’s have a bottle of the Fr
ascati.”
“I hope that’s a dry white wine,” she said.
“It is.”
The waiter brought the bottle and poured them each a glass.
Stone raised his glass. “To . . .” But, to his astonishment, Holly had kicked over her chair and run out of the restaurant. He ran to the front door and looked down the street in time to see her sprinting through the crowds on the sidewalk, her handbag in one hand and his Walther in the other.
4
STONE RAN A few steps in the direction Holly had taken, but she had disappeared into the crowd. He ran back to the restaurant, left some money on the table, and ran to his car. He executed a lucky U-turn and started down the street, checking both sides for Holly. A couple of blocks down, he found a parking place and got out of the car, searching the street for signs of her. Then he saw her half a block away, walking toward him. He leaned on the car and waited.
“I can’t believe I let the son of a bitch outrun me,” Holly said, though she wasn’t even breathing hard.
“You saw Trini?”
“He walked right past the restaurant. Didn’t you see him?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what he looks like,” Stone said. “You want to give me a description?”
“Six-two or -three, two hundred pounds, looks more Hispanic than Italian. He has black hair with a ponytail; evil face.”
“Evil face? I don’t recall ever having seen that description on a wanted poster.”
“Trust me. What are we doing about lunch?”
Stone looked around. “I’m not giving up this parking spot. Follow me.” He led her a few blocks into Chinatown, to a restaurant called Hong Fat, and soon they were eating noodles.