6 Stone Barrington Novels (168 page)

S
TONE WAS SITTING at his desk when Joan came in with a Federal Express package.

“This just came for you,” she said. “You want me to open it?”

“I'll do it,” Stone said, glancing at the return address on the label. He ripped open the package and dumped the contents onto his desk as his secretary watched.

“Holy shit,” Joan said, uncharacteristically.

Stone picked up the note among the bundles of cash. “ ‘For services rendered,' ” he read aloud.

“Those must have been some services,” Joan said.

Stone laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“I never thought she'd use the cash,” he said.

“Who?”

“Holly Barker. Log this in, put it in the safe, and include the taxes in the next quarterly payment to the IRS.”

“Yes, boss,” Joan said, sweeping the money back into the envelope. She left his office.

Stone took out a sheet of his stationery and began writing.

 

Payment received. I don't know what you've decided to do about Lance's offer of work (and of assistance with foreign banking), but I hope your decision brings you back this way soon. It would be fun to know you without the burden of chasing somebody else. Best to Ham, Ginny, and Daisy.

Fondly,
Stone

 

He addressed and sealed the envelope, got his jacket, and dropped the envelope on Joan's desk on his way out.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“To look at Porsches,” he said, closing the door behind him.

I want to express my gratitude to my editor, David Highfill, and all the people at Putnam who work so hard to get my work to its readers.

I'd also like to thank my literary agents, Morton Janklow and Anne Sibbald, and all the people at Janklow & Nesbit for their fine representation over the past twenty-two years. Their fine work is much appreciated.

I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.

However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at
www.stuartwoods.com
, where there is a button for sending me email. So far, I have been able to reply to all of my email, and I will continue to try to do so.

If you send me an email and do not receive a reply, it is because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their email address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.

Remember: email, reply; snail mail, no reply.

When you email, please do not send attachments, as I
never
open these. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.

Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions, or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get email addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.

Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of
Writer's Market
at any bookstore; that will tell you how.

Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may email it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic, or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-1825.

Those who wish to conduct business of a more literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website,
www.stuartwoods.com
, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact
his Putnam representative or the G. P. Putnam's Sons Publicity Department with the request.

If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to David Highfill at Putnam, address above. Do not email your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.

A list of all my published works appears in the front of this book. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

Two-Dollar Bill

 

A
G.P. Putnam's sons
Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

All rights reserved.

Copyright ©
2005
by
Stuart Woods

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguin.com

 

ISBN:
978-1-1012-1012-3

 

A
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
BOOK®

G.P. Putnam's sons
Books first published by The G.P. Putuam's sons Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
and the “
P
” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

 

Electronic edition: June, 2005

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59

ELAINE'S, LATE.
For some reason no one could remember, Thursday nights were always the busiest at Elaine's. Stone Barrington reflected that it may have had something to do with the old custom of Thursday being Writer's Night, an informal designation that began to repeat itself when a lot of the writers who were regular customers gathered on Thursdays at the big table, number four, to bitch about their publishers, their agents, the size of their printings and promotion budgets, their wives, ex-wives, children, ex-children, dogs and ex-dogs.

The custom had withered with the imposition of smoking rules, when Elaine figured that number four needed to be in the smoking section, and since the new, no-smoking-at-all law came into effect, Writer's Night had never been revived. Anyway, Stone figured, every night was Writer's Night at Elaine's, and that was all right with him.

On this particular night, every table in the main dining room was jammed, and the overflow of tourists and nonregulars had filled most of the tables in Deepest Siberia, which was the other dining room. The only times Stone had ever sat in that room were either when Elaine had sold the main dining room for a private party, or when he was in deep shit with Elaine, something he tried to avoid.

Tonight, however, Elaine was fixing him with that gaze that could remove varnish. He had been to a black tie dinner party and had stopped by for a drink afterward, just in time to secure his usual table, the last available. Now he was sitting there, sipping a brandy, and not eating dinner. Elaine strongly preferred it if, when one sat down at a table, especially on a night as busy as this, one ordered dinner. She didn't much care if you ate it or not, as long as it got onto the bill.

To make matters worse, Dino had wandered in, having also dined elsewhere, and had sat down and also ordered only a brandy.

Suddenly, Elaine loomed over the table. “You fucking rich guys,” she said.

“Huh?” Stone asked, as if he didn't know what she meant.

She explained it to him. “You go out and eat somewhere else in your fucking tuxedos, then you come in here and take up a table and nurse a drink.”

“Wait a minute,” Dino said, “I'm not wearing a tuxedo.”

“And I'm not nursing this drink,” Stone said, downing the rest of his brandy and holding up his glass, signaling a waiter for another. “And you may recall, we were in here last night, eating with both hands.”

“A new night begins at sunset,” Elaine said. “Now get hungry or get to the bar.” She wandered off and sat down at another table.

“You feeling hungry?” Stone asked.

“Yeah, a little,” Dino replied.

Stone handed the waiter his glass. “Bring us an order of the fried calamari,” he said, “and get some silver and napkins on the table, so it'll look like we're ordering.”

“You think that'll work?” Dino asked, looking sidelong at Elaine.

“Maybe she'll get distracted,” Stone said. “Bring us a bottle of the Frascati, too, instead of the brandy,” he said to the waiter. “And some bread.”

“The bread is a good move,” Dino said. “You don't think she really meant that about going to the bar, do you?”

The bar crowd and the restaurant crowd at Elaine's were occupied by different tribes, each of whom acknowledged the presence of the other only when eyeing their women. Neither Stone nor Dino had ever had a drink at the bar.

“Nah,” Stone replied. “It's just her sense of humor.” He looked up and was elated to see Bill Eggers, the managing partner of Woodman & Weld, the law firm to whom Stone was of counsel, coming in the front door. Stone waved him over and pumped his hand.

“Sit down and order dinner,” Stone said.

Eggers sat down. “I already ate,” he said.

“Shhh, Elaine will hear you. Order
something
for Christ's sake.” Stone shoved a menu at him.

“Why?”

“You want to drink at the bar?”

Eggers opened the menu. “I guess I could eat some dessert.”

“Good.”

“I've been out with a new client,” Eggers said. “He'll be here in a minute; he went to get his limo washed.”

“Huh?”

“He wants to make sure it's
hand
washed,” Eggers explained, “and he doesn't trust his driver to do it right.”

“And you want this guy for a client?”

“Actually,
you
want this guy for a client, because he wants you for his lawyer.”

“You mean he asked for me?”

Eggers nodded. “Go figure.”

A new client did not usually ask for Stone; he first came to Eggers with some embarrassing, awful problem: a private detective in the employ of his wife had photographed him in bed with a bad woman; his son had been accused of the date-rape of his headmaster's daughter;
his wife, drunk, had driven his Mercedes through a liquor-store window. Like that. Eggers then hunted down Stone, whose lot it was to handle the sort of thing that Woodman & Weld did not want to be seen handling. In return for this service, the firm would occasionally hand him a nice personal-injury suit that could be settled quickly.

“What's his problem?”

“He doesn't have one, that I know of,” Eggers said. “He's a rich Texan, which may be redundant; he's a good-looking guy who attracts women like blackflies on a May day in Maine; and he's unmarried.”

“What kind of problems could he possibly have?” Dino asked. “Has he killed somebody, maybe?”

“Not that he mentioned.”

“How'd you come by him?” Stone asked.

“He was recommended by another Texan client, a very valuable one, a client you are not to go anywhere near.”

“And he just asked for me, out of the blue?”

“Out of the clear blue. He said, and I quote,” and here Eggers lapsed into a broad drawl, “ ‘I hear you got a feller, name of Barrington, does some stuff for you. I want him to handle my little ol' account.' ”

“He must be
planning
to kill somebody,” Dino said. “Maybe drum up some business for me?” Dino was the NYPD lieutenant in charge of the detective squad at the 19th Precinct, sometimes called the Silk Stocking Precinct because it covered the Upper East Side of New York City. He had been Stone's partner, back when Stone had been a police detective.

“Here he is now,” Eggers said, nodding toward the front door.

A man of about six-four and two hundred and twenty pounds, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, wearing a western-cut suit and a broad-brimmed Stetson, filled the front door.

“He looks like one of the Sons of the Pioneers,” Dino said.

Stone hated him on sight. “Make sure he orders dinner,” he said to Eggers.