Cold Paradise (21 page)

44

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, STONE MADE THE CALL HE had been dreading and could no longer postpone.

“Hello, Stone,” Eduardo Bianchi said.

“Good morning, Eduardo. I hope you’re well.”

“I have been better,” Eduardo said, then was silent.

It was up to Stone. “I understand that Dolce has . . . left your house.”

“I am afraid that is so,” Eduardo replied.

“Do you have any idea of where she might be?”

“Stone, my friend, I think she would
like
to be wherever you are.”

“I’m in Palm Beach, Florida, on business,” Stone said. “Dino is with me, and he feels that Dolce may be in Palm Beach; that she may have been following me.”

Eduardo heaved a sigh. “I will send people at once,” he said.

“Eduardo, I cannot guarantee you that she is here. It’s just a feeling.”

“I respect what you feel, Stone, and if there is any chance at all that she is in Palm Beach, then that is where I must look for her.”

“Eduardo, speaking as an attorney, I must ask if you have taken any legal steps toward guardianship?”

“No. This is a family problem, you understand, and I have no wish to bring the courts into it.”

“I understand your feelings, but simply sending people to find her and return her could present legal difficulties that might be more invasive of your family privacy than taking steps to have her declared incompetent.”

“She is not an incompetent person,” Eduardo said stiffly.

“I’m sorry. I meant incompetent in the legal sense, not otherwise. Unless you are willing to make a case to a court that she is not currently able to account for herself and her actions, then she is legally entitled to do and go as she pleases. Removing her to New York from another state could pose problems.”

“Stone, I understand this, and I am grateful for your advice, but you must understand that, in my family, we are accustomed to solving our problems without the help of, ah, public officials. If I can locate Dolce, I can achieve the reunification I desire.”

“Of course, Eduardo. I don’t doubt for a moment that you can.”

“You say that Dino is with you? I had not heard this.”

“Dino came down to help me with another matter, one not connected to Dolce.”

“I see. Well, it is good that he is there; you may well need his help. I need hardly tell you that Dolce may be a danger to herself and to you.”

“I hope you are wrong, but I understand,” Stone said. “If I should locate Dolce, what would you have me do?”

“Simply call me, and I will do the rest,” Eduardo said. “Please don’t try to deal with her yourself. From what her doctors have told me, she could be very dangerous.”

“Eduardo, if Dolce should be traveling under a name not her own, is there a name she might choose to use?”

Eduardo was silent while he thought. “Once, when she was sixteen, she ran away after a quarrel with me. At that time, she used the name Portia Buckingham. It was a ridiculous name for a schoolgirl to choose, I know, but it was a kind of fantasy identity she made up as a child. She might possibly use it again.”

“Would you like me to make some discreet inquiries?” Stone asked.

“Only if you can do so without involving the local police,” Eduardo replied. “I do not wish for Dolce to be brought to the attention of the authorities, unless she tries to harm someone.”

“There’s not much I can do on my own,” Stone said, “but I’ll try.”

“Ask Dino for his help. She is his sister-in-law, after all.”

“I’ll do that.” Stone told Eduardo how he could be contacted.

“Goodbye, Stone, and thank you for your concern for Dolce.”

“Goodbye, Eduardo.” Stone hung up.

Dino sat down beside him. “You called Eduardo?”

“I felt I had to. He’s sending people down here.”

“Great, now we’ll have goombahs roaming the streets of this piss-elegant town.”

“Dino, you know Eduardo is more subtle than that.”

“We’ll see.”

“He wants your help in finding her.”

“What can I do?”

Stone handed him a Palm Beach classified directory. “Start calling hotels. Flash your badge. Inquire about her under her own name and under the name Portia Buckingham.”

“
Portia Buckingham?
Give me a break!”

“It’s a name she used to fantasize about having when she was a child, Eduardo says.”

Dino shook his head and took the phone book. “I’ll use the phone in the saloon,” he said.

“Don’t alarm anybody, just find out if she’s registered.”

“Thanks, Stone. I needed that advice.” Dino went into the saloon.

“Leave a description with the desk clerk, too,” Stone called after him.

Stone called his office. “Hi, Joan, it’s me. What’s happening?”

“Amazingly little,” she said.

“Patch me into the dictator,” he said. “I have some documents I’d like you to type up and FedEx to me today.”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Here you go.”

Stone heard the beep and began to dictate. When he had finished and given Joan her instructions, he hung up and went into the saloon. Dino was just hanging up the phone.

“I need the phone book for a minute,” Stone said.

Dino tossed it to him. “I’ve called half a dozen places, starting with the Breakers.”

“No luck, I suppose?”

“She’s already checked in and out of two—the Breakers and the Brazilian Court, under Rosaria Bianchi.”

“You’re kidding. That was easy.”

“Not so easy, pal. She’s moving every day, and that’s going to make her harder to find.”

“Oh. Well, at least we know she’s really in town.”

“That, we know.”

“Will you call Eduardo and tell him that?”

“Okay, I guess.” Dino did not like dealing directly with his father-in-law, but he seemed willing to make an exception this time. He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

Stone began looking in the phone book under airports, and when he found what he was looking for made the call.

Dino finished his conversation with Eduardo. “What are you up to?” he asked Stone.

“I told our friend Mr. James that I was on the west coast of Florida, a couple of hours’ drive from the Palm Beach airport. I want him to go on thinking that until we get this settled.” He made the arrangements he required, then hung up. “There, I guess I’ve done what I can.” He picked up the phone again. “I’ll make some of the hotel calls. You don’t mind if I use your name, do you?”

“When did I ever mind?” Dino asked. “When did you ever care if I mind?”

45

A
T MIDMORNING, STONE DROVE NORTH ON I-95 AND took the well-marked exit. Soon he was at North Palm Beach County airport, a small general aviation field a few miles from Palm Beach International. He found North County Aviation and parked his car.

Inside, he told the receptionist why he was there, and she made a quick phone call. “Don will be right with you,” she said. “You’re taking the Warrior, is that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then if you’d like to give me a credit card we can take care of that while Don is on his way.”

Stone gave her his American Express card and watched as a Piper Warrior taxied up to the apron of North County Aviation and a young man got out and came inside.

“Mr. Barrington?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Don. There she is.”

Stone looked at the neat little airplane. “Looks very nice.”

“Can I see your license and medical, please?”

Stone handed the man his private pilot’s license and his third-class medical certificate. They were inspected and returned to him.

“How many hours do you have in type?” Don asked.

“A little over a hundred, but it’s been a while. I did most of my private ticket training in a Warrior, and I’m real comfortable with it.”

“Come on, then, and let’s do a little checkride.”

Stone signed his credit card chit, pocketed the card and followed Don outside.

“You do the preflight,” Don said, handing him a fuel cup.

Stone put his briefcase into the airplane and walked slowly around it, running through a mental checklist. He drained some fuel from each wing and inspected it for dirt or water, checked the oil and handed Don back the fuel cup. “Looks good to me,” he said.

“Take the left seat, then.”

Stone climbed into the airplane, followed by Don. He started the engine, listened to the recorded weather from PBI, checked the wind sock and taxied to the active runway. He pulled into the run-up pad and did his final check of the airplane, then, looking for traffic, he announced his intentions over the unicom frequency and taxied onto the runway. He pushed the throttle forward and, watching his airspeed, started down the center line. At rotation speed he pulled back on the yoke and left the ground. It was a fixed-gear airplane, so he didn’t have to bother retracting the landing gear. Announcing his intentions at every turn, he climbed crosswind.

“Just stay in the pattern,” Don said, watching his every move closely.

Stone turned downwind, reduced power and prepared to land. He turned onto the base leg, then onto final and set the airplane lightly down on the runway.

“Okay,” Don said. “You can fly it. Just drop me back at the FBO, and you’re on your way. How long will you be gone?”

“Just a couple of hours,” Stone said.

“You understand there’s a four-hour minimum on the rental?”

“Yes.”

Don hopped out of the airplane, and Stone taxied back to the runway and repeated his takeoff. He climbed to a thousand feet, listened again to the recorded weather, then called the PBI tower. “Palm Beach Tower, this is November One-two-three Tango Foxtrot,” he said, reading the airplane’s registration number from a plaque on the instrument panel. “I’m ten miles to the northwest, VFR, looking for landing instructions. I have the ATIS.”

The tower called back. “Enter a right base for runway niner. Traffic’s light today. You’re cleared to land.”

Stone followed the instructions and ten minutes later he was taxiing up to Signature Aviation, between a Gulfstream III and a G-IV. He wondered how long it had been since anything as small as his rental had parked here.

He got out of the airplane. “The brakes are off,” he told the lineman, knowing they wouldn’t leave it where it was. “No fuel. I’ll be about an hour.”

He went inside the handsome lobby and walked up to the huge desk. “I’m looking for Mr. Frederick James,” he said to the young lady behind it.

“Oh, yes, you must be Mr. Barrington,” she said. “Mr. James and his associate are in the conference room, right over there.” She pointed. “You won’t be disturbed.”

“Thank you.” He walked across the reception room to the door and knocked on it.

“Come in,” a man’s voice said.

Stone opened the door and entered the room. A man, who had been seated alone at the conference table, stood up to greet him. Stone recognized him immediately.

“Mr. Barrington, I’m Edward Ginsky,” he said, offering his hand. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored, double-breasted blue blazer and white linen slacks, his shirt open at the collar.

Stone shook it. “Of course. I’m glad to meet you.” Ginsky was a famous New York lawyer, known mostly for his expertise in representing women in divorce cases. He had handled a number of high-profile divorces, and his clients had always done very well from his representation.

“I’ve heard of you, too,” Ginsky said, sitting down and motioning Stone to a chair. “Bill Eggers speaks well of you, in fact.”

“That’s kind of Bill,” Stone said.

“Well,” Ginsky said, “enough chitchat. Shall we get to it?”

“Let’s,” Stone replied.

“I trust that now you won’t need the identification you requested.”

“No, not for you, but for your client.”

“Ah, yes. Trust me when I tell you that, before our meeting is concluded, you will have adequate proof that I represent Paul Manning. May we proceed on that basis?”

“For the moment,” Stone said, “but I should tell you that I will not come to any agreement until I am satisfied who I am dealing with.”

“Understood,” Ginsky said. “Now, what do you have to propose?”

“Are you acquainted with Mr. Manning’s activities with regard to the island of St. Marks some years ago?”

“I believe I have all the relevant facts.”

“Then you will know that your client and mine were married at that time and, in the absence of a divorce, still are.”

“You could put that light on it,” Ginsky said.

“I hardly know what other light to put on it.”

“I think you are aware that my client is, if not dead, then no longer legally alive.”

“You could put that light on it,” Stone said.

Ginsky allowed himself a smile.

“Still, he exists, my client exists and legally, as I’m sure you’re aware, their marriage still exists.”

“I assume your client would like that marriage to end,” Ginsky said.

“You assume correctly. She wishes the marriage to end and she wishes not to see her husband again or hear from him.”

“I think that could be arranged,” Ginsky said. “Under appropriate circumstances. What is your offer?”

“My client is willing to pay your client one million dollars in cash, wire-transferred to any bank in the United States, in return for a signed property settlement to that effect and a contractual agreement that your client will never contact her again, nor knowingly inhabit the same city at the same time as my client.” Stone knew that he had already put several stumbling blocks in the way of a settlement, one by omission. The two lawyers were circling each other, metaphorically, feeling each other out.

“I see,” Ginsky said. “Of course, hardly anything you’ve said is acceptable.”

“Tell me what you’re willing to accept, and let’s go on from there.”

Ginsky threw his first punch. “Your client achieved a windfall of twelve million dollars as a result of my client’s efforts. He wants half that.”

“Your client masterminded a criminal conspiracy, and when it went wrong, left my client to hang by the neck until she was dead,” Stone parried.

“She did not hang,” Ginsky said.

“Neither did your client,” Stone reminded him. “And, when your client murdered three people and was arrested in New York and extradited for his crimes, and was sentenced to hang himself, my client interceded on his behalf, paying half a million dollars to save his life. She could have done nothing, and we would not be having this conversation.” Stone heard the door behind him close; he had not heard it open. He did not turn around. “It seems to me that your client is deeply in my client’s debt.”

“I don’t owe her a fucking thing,” Paul Manning’s deep voice said from the door. “And don’t turn around.”

Stone felt cold steel pressed to the back of his neck.