by Stuart Woods
“So, are you a native New Yorker?” Holly asked.
“Born and bred in Greenwich Village; father was a cabinet and furniture maker, mother, a painter. Went to NYU and NYU law school. My last year I joined a program to ride with the NYPD, became enamored of law enforcement, and, on graduation, joined the department, became a detective three years later, partnered up with Dino, and had a hell of a good time. Put in fourteen years. That’s the nutshell bio.”
She shook her head. “Incomplete. Why’d you leave the force?”
“The force left me. We disagreed on an investigation I was ostensibly running, and they used a knee wound as an excuse to ship me out. I did a cram course on the bar exam, took it, passed, and joined the law firm of Woodman and Weld, courtesy of an old law school buddy. That complete enough?”
“For the moment,” she said.
“How about you?”
“Born in the army, grew up in the army, mother died when I was twelve, joined the army after high school, got a degree in the service, went to OCS, got a commission, and commanded MPs for the rest of my twenty years.”
“Why didn’t you go for thirty?”
“Another female officer and I accused a bird colonel of sexual harassment—rape, in the other girl’s case. We got him court-martialed, but he was acquitted. After that, there was no place to go in the army. He had too many friends in high and low places. Got an offer of the deputy chief’s job in Orchid Beach; the chief got himself killed, and I was bumped up a rung. Met Jackson Oxenhandler, moved in with him, made plans to marry him. You know the rest.”
“How are you living with that?”
“Better than can be expected. I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing things, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind. It comes out once in a while, but less and less often. Jackson, fortunately, had made a will, and he left me well fixed.”
“Seen any men since then?”
“Just one—Grant Early Harrison. We had . . . well, I guess you’d describe it as a fling, and after he got the AIC’s job in Miami, we cooled down. Before, he’d been an undercover agent, and that was interesting. Now he’s a bureaucrat, and that’s not.”
“Ever thought of getting out of that little town?”
“Listen, so much happens in that little town you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve busted up two major organized crime operations in three years, with all the attendant homicides and other felonies. You’re looking funny—skeptical, maybe. What are you thinking?”
“I was just thinking, the idea of you waltzing into town, looking for some guy in the Witness Protection Program, then going down to Little Italy your first day and spotting him on the street is ludicrous; couldn’t happen.”
“That sort of thing happens to me all the time,” Holly said, laughing. “Either there’s some sort of angel watching over me, or I’m the world’s best cop.”
“Another thing: It’s okay for you to pack my Walther while you’re in town—the NYPD would overlook that, since you’re a serving officer—but if you start shooting at Trini on the street and clip a civilian—well, that’s big trouble. You might keep that in mind.”
“I certainly will,” Holly replied. “I’d take a dim view of something like that happening in my jurisdiction.”
“Good. And if you remember that you’re not in your jurisdiction, that would be a big help. Even if you hit Trini between the eyes with your first shot—that’s a lot of paperwork for the locals, and the New York news media would fall on you from a great height.”
“Okay, okay,” Holly said, raising her hands in surrender. “Lecture heard and understood. You want the Walther back?”
“Keep it,” Stone said, “but make sure the circumstances are dire before you use it.”
“Dire,” she replied. “I promise. So how’s your love life, Stone? Now that we’ve covered mine.”
“Varied,” Stone said.
“I’ll bet that’s a New York City term, meaning ‘nonexistent.’ ”
“You sound like Dino.”
“And I’ve seen you looking at me. You look pretty horny.”
Stone tried to repress a blush. “You’re an attractive girl,” he said, “but don’t get cocky; it’s unbecoming.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to do anything unbecoming.”
“If I put my hand on your knee, is Daisy going to bite it off?”
“She will if I tell her to.”
“Would you tell her to?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t need her help to handle you.”
Stone choked on a noodle.
5
AFTER LUNCH, STONE drove them back to his house, and Holly and Daisy headed for Central Park and a long walk. Stone called down to his office.
“Good afternoon,” Joan said dryly.
“Sorry I didn’t check in this morning,” he said. “I took my houseguest downtown for lunch.”
“You didn’t tell me you bought a killer dog,” she said. “I went upstairs to find you, and, luckily, I slammed the door before he could tear my arm off.”
“She,” Stone said. “It’s Holly’s dog. Didn’t you meet her when Holly arrived?”
“No, I was on my way out. I just gave her the key and the alarm code and pointed her upstairs. I guess the dog was still in the cab.”
“Anything up this morning?”
“Well, a guy who says he’s an old friend of yours has been waiting for you for more than an hour.”
“Who is he?”
“He won’t say, and he won’t leave. Could you get down here and deal with him, please?”
“I’ll be right there,” Stone said. He got up and went downstairs to his office. As he came down the stairs he could see down the hall to the waiting area, and saw two long legs extended from a chair, with a very fine pair of shoes at the end of them.
“Good afternoon,” Stone said. He couldn’t see the face, but when the man stood up, it was familiar enough.
“Lance Cabot,” he said.
“So that’s his name,” Joan’s voice called from her office.
Lance offered his hand. “I’m sorry, perhaps I was being too cautious. I thought that if you called in and she gave you my name, you might not want to see me.”
“Come into my office,” Stone said, pointing the way. He was still trying to get his breath back. A little more than a year before, a man had walked into his office and offered Stone a lot of money to go to London to rescue his niece from the clutches of her bad, bad boyfriend, whose name had been Lance Cabot.
Stone had taken the job, only to learn that his client had used a false name and was trying to track down Cabot to kill him. The client, whose name turned out to be Stanford Hedger, was CIA, and Cabot was ex-Agency, then operating as a rogue. Stone had asked for help from a friend and had been contacted by British intelligence, who asked him to enter into a business arrangement with Cabot, who was trying to steal some important equipment from a military arms lab. With the help of an inside man, Cabot had stolen the item, presumably sold it to bad people, and had disappeared with Stone’s money. A couple of weeks later, to Stone’s astonishment, his money had been returned, along with the healthy profit Cabot had promised him.
Lance took a seat and crossed his legs. He was casually dressed in a tweed jacket and tan trousers, looking for all the world like a resident of New York, out for a walk and a cup of coffee.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Stone asked.
“Thanks, but your secretary provided that, in spite of her suspicions.”
“What brings you to New York, Lance?”
“I live here now, a few blocks uptown.”
Stone’s jaw dropped. “Aren’t you a fugitive? Is that why you’re here, looking for a lawyer?”
Lance shook his head. “I’m not a fugitive, and I don’t need a lawyer, at least for myself.”
“For someone else?”
“Maybe, but not just yet.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m baffled by all this. I thought you were be
ing sought by every intelligence agency and police department in Europe, not to mention your own former people.”
“They’re not former,” Lance said. He fished a wallet out of his pocket and handed it to Stone.
Stone found himself staring at a CIA ID card, complete with photograph. “How long have you had this back?”
“I always had it,” Lance said. “Let me explain. When Hedger hired you—”
“Hedger was CIA, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was, but he was led to believe that I had gone rogue. That’s why he was looking for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s complicated. I was sent over there to . . . well, ostensibly to acquire a British invention, a piece of military hardware, you will recall, and sell it to a Middle Eastern country—Iraq, as it happens.”
“The CIA wanted you to steal British military hardware and sell it to Saddam Hussein?”
“Yes. Well, not really. You see, Hedger wanted the hardware, too, ostensibly for our nuclear weapons program. He really wanted it to help him regain the Agency’s high regard, in which he had formerly been held.”
“This is very confusing: The Agency had two agents trying to steal the hardware, working at cross-purposes?”
“Now you’ve got it.”
“And you were supposed to sell it to Saddam Hussein?”
“Yes, and I did, but not before it had been modified to make it useless. It needed the right software, too, and he didn’t have that, but by that time, I had his money and was gone. You got a very nice slice of those funds, too. What did you do with the money?”
“I paid the taxes on it and invested the rest, as my accountant recommended.”
“Good,” Lance said. “Just what I would have done.”
“Lance, it worries me to think I did what you would have done.”
Lance laughed. “You have nothing to worry about, Stone. You’re clean as a whistle.”
“Does your agency know that I was paid the money?”
“Of course. I had a little trouble convincing them, but after I had repeatedly pointed out how valuable you had been to us, they agreed.”
“But I was supposed to be helping the British.”
“Well, yes, but you were really helping us all the time.”
“Did the British know this?”
Lance pursed his lips. “Not exactly, but they do now. After all, I helped rid them of a man in their midst who was willing to sell their technology to anybody. Why do you care?”
“As it happens, I’ve spent a good deal of time in the company of one of their people, a woman called Carpenter.”
“Felicity Devonshire?” Lance laughed aloud.
“I didn’t even know that was her name until a few months ago.”
“She’s a piece of work, that girl. Did you know that, at this very moment, she’s being considered to replace Sir Edward Fieldstone as head of her service? If she gets the job, she’ll be the first woman to do so. She was prominently mentioned in the last Birthday Honours List, too. She’s now Dame Felicity.”
“I didn’t know any of that,” Stone said. “We parted on less than the best terms.”
“Pity,” Lance said. “She’s a remarkable woman. My people are rooting for her to get the job.”
“Good for her. Now, why did you come to see me, Lance?”
Lance chuckled. “I thought I might send some more business your way.”
6
STONE’S FIRST REACTION was to send Lance on his way, but, as it happened, things had been a little slow in the way of work, and a fresh injection of business could help his cash flow. “What are we talking about?” he asked.
“Just a little legal work,” Lance replied, studying his well-manicured nails.
“Look at me when you lie to me, Lance.”
Lance looked up. “Why do you think I’m lying?”
“Because you’ve never said anything to me that was the truth. Ever.”
Lance shrugged. “Surely you understand that that was business. I was carrying out an assignment important to the national interest, and you were helping.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that.”
“I wasn’t allowed to tell you, and it was important that you didn’t know. In fact, you never would have been involved at all, if I hadn’t been in a situation of, shall we say, temporarily interrupted cash flow. I needed your quarter of a million, which you very kindly supplied, and you made a very tidy profit from the arrangement. Where else could you have gotten a return of four hundred percent in less than thirty days?”
“Everybody was lying to me, especially Hedger.”
“Hedger is dead. Did I mention that?”
Stone took a quick breath. “No, you didn’t. Do I want to know how and why? I assume he didn’t keel over of a coronary.”
“No, he was expertly stabbed by somebody who worked for you.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Stone demanded.
“Remember those two retired British cops you hired to follow me around London and bug my house?”
Stone hadn’t known that Lance knew about that, so he said nothing.
“You’ll remember that Hedger’s people beat up one of them very badly, so badly that he later expired.”
“Go on.”
“Well, his mate took exception to that and held Hedger accountable. He knifed him in a mews a short walk from the Connaught, while you were still in London.”
“I didn’t know,” Stone said.
“Scotland Yard hushed it up, the knifer having been one of their own. Had an exemplary military record, too, killing people in the Special Air Services. That detective inspector, Throckmorton—unlikely name, isn’t it?—didn’t think a shady American spook’s life was worth a blip in the happy retirement of one of their former officers.”
“And what did the Agency have to say about that?”
“Almost nothing. Somebody gave Throckmorton a good lunch and received the details. They shook hands and went their separate ways. Hedger is now a star on the memorial in the lobby of the headquarters building at Langley.”
“The more I learn about your business, the less I want to learn about it.”
“You shouldn’t feel badly about Hedger. He was a bad apple; been using his position for years to enrich himself in various underhanded ways, and the Agency was sick of him. Good riddance and no trial or publicity. His death didn’t even make the tabloids, let alone the Times. His alumni newsletter ran a nice obit, though, most of it lies.”
“An ignominious end,” Stone mused.
“In Hedger’s case, deservedly so.”
“What is this legal work you want done? It isn’t illegal work, is it?”
“Oh, no, no, nothing like that. It’s pretty simple, really: A fellow we hired for some contract work got himself into a scrape with the local law, and—”
” The local law where?”
“Right here in Gotham, actually.”
“Go on.”
“There’s a DUI and some other minor stuff involved. He needs a lawyer, and we feel honor bound to provide him with one. We’ll pay five hundred an hour.”
Stone’s normal fee for that sort of thing was three hundred an hour. “That is not ungenerous.”
“We don’t want it to go to trial, you see; could be embarrassing and might even reveal information detrimental to national security.”
“You mean, detrimental to the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Same thing. Do we have a deal?” Lance held out his hand to shake.
“Oh, all right,” Stone said, shaking the hand. He picked up a pen and pad. “What’s your client’s name?”
“Herbert Fisher, a professional photographer by trade.”
Stone nearly choked. “Oh, no, no, no, no,” he said, holding out his hands as if to ward off evil.
“You know Mr. Fisher?” Lance asked, looking surprised.
“I know him far better than I want to,” Stone sai
d.
“Well, come to think of it, he did ask for you. I’m glad you’ve agreed.”
“Wait a minute, Lance. I’m not doing this. The guy is trouble from beginning to end—he won’t take legal advice, won’t do anything he’s told.”
“Stone, Stone, it’s a simple matter, really. We just want you to negotiate something for him—get him off, if possible, sure, but we can’t let it go to trial.”
“Lance, sometimes these things go to trial, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Stone, we can do something about it, if necessary, but we’d rather let you handle it in the normal way.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Lance.”
Lance held up a placating hand. “Now don’t go reading a subtext into my words.”
“Do you know Herbie Fisher?” Stone asked.
“We’ve met.”
“Well, let me tell you about him. Last year, I hired him—on the recommendation of a guy who does a lot of good work for me—to take some photographs. A domestic matter. Herbie fell through the skylight while taking the pictures, got himself arrested, then, when I got him out, jumped bail and ran for the Virgin Islands. I had to go down there and get him back to make his court appearance and get my bail money back.”
“Well, he does sound lively, doesn’t he? He did come well recommended.”
“Lance, you don’t want anything to do with this guy, and neither do I.”
“Fine with me, Stone. See him through this, and we’ll both kiss him off.”
“You’re not listening, Lance. I won’t represent him.”
“But you’ve already agreed, old sport, and you’re a man of your word.”
“But I didn’t know who we were talking about.”
“Then you should have asked before we shook hands on it, not afterward.”
“Lance . . .”
“Tell you what: We’ll make it seven-fifty an hour, in cash, and I’ll send you over a retainer of twenty-five thousand. You can bank the unused portion, or stuff it into your mattress.”
That stopped Stone in his tracks just long enough for Lance to place a card on his desk, get up, and walk out of his office.