Reckless Abandon

Books by Stuart Woods

FICTION

Dirty Work*
Capital Crimes°
Blood Orchid†
The Short Forever*
Orchid Blues†
Cold Paradise*
L.A. Dead*
The Run°
Worst Fears Realized*
Orchid Beach†
Swimming to Catalina*
Dead in the Water*
Dirt*
Choke
Imperfect Strangers
Heat
Dead Eyes
L.A. Times
Sante Fe Rules
New York Dead*
Palindrome
Grass Roots°
White Cargo
Under the Lake
Deep Lie°
Run Before the Wind°
Chiefs

NONFICTION

A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (1978)

MEMOIR

Blue Water, Green Skipper

*A Stone Barrington Book
†A Holly Barker Book
°A Will Lee Book

This book is for Harry and Gigi Benson.

1

ELAINE’S, EARLY.

Stone Barrington had just walked through the door when his cell phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He dug it out, while Gianni led him back to his usual table. Dino wasn’t there yet.

“Hello?”

“Stone?” An unfamiliar female voice.

“Yes.”

“It’s Holly Barker.”

It took only a nanosecond for Stone to display her image on the inside of his eyelids—tall, light brown hair, sun-streaked, well put together, badge. “Hello, Chief, how are you?”

“Confused.”

“How can I help?”

“I’m in a taxi, and I don’t know where to tell the driver to take me. Can you recommend a good hotel, not too expensive?” “In what city?”

“In New York. I’m headed for the Midtown Tunnel, I think.”

“Why don’t you stay at my house? There’s a guest room.”

“I have a friend with me.”

“Male or female?”

“Female.”

“My secretary is there right now, working late. I’ll call and tell her to expect you.” He gave her his Turtle Bay address. “There are three guest rooms—two with king beds and one with twins, all on the top floor. You choose.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble at all. That’s what the guest rooms are for.”

“When will I see you?”

“Have you had dinner?”

“No.”

“Drop your luggage, freshen up, and meet me at Elaine’s—Second Avenue, between Eighty-eighth and Eighty-ninth.”

“Sounds great. We’re at the tunnel now. How long should it take me?”

“If you’re quick, half an hour, but you’re a woman . . .”

“Half an hour it is, and don’t ever put a ‘but’ in front of that statement.” She hung up.

Gianni put a Knob Creek on the rocks in front of him, and Stone took a sip. “Better get him something, too,” Stone said, pointing at Dino, his partner when he had been an NYPD detective. Dino spoke to a couple of people at the front tables, then came back and pulled up a chair. His drink had already arrived.

“How you doing?” Dino asked.

“Not bad. You?”

“The same. You’re looking thoughtful.”

“I was just trying to remember everything about my trip to Vero Beach, Florida, last year, when I was picking up my Malibu at the Piper factory.”

“Why?”

“I was in a bank in the next town, a place called Orchid Beach, getting a cashier’s check to pay for the airplane, when a bunch of guys wearing masks walked in and stuck the place up.”

“Oh yeah, you told me about that. They shot a guy, didn’t they?”

“Yes. A lawyer with a funny name—Oxblood, or something like that.”

“Oxenhandler.”

“How did you remember that?”

Dino tapped his temple. “I do
The New York Times
crossword every day. Calisthenics for the brain.”

“Funny, it doesn’t seem to have muscled up.”

“I remembered the name, didn’t I? While your brain has apparently turned to mush. Why were you thinking about the bank robbery?”

“Not the robbery so much, the woman.”

“Ah, now we’re getting to the nub of things. I’ll bite. What woman?”

“She’s the chief of police down there, name of Holly Barker. She was supposed to marry Oxenhandler that very day. I met her at the police station.”

“You went to the police station?”

“I was a witness, and I didn’t have a shirt.”

“You’re losing me here.”

“I took off my shirt and held it to Oxenhandler’s chest wound, not that it did much good. He died shortly after reaching the hospital.”

“So you were bare-chested in Orchid Beach, and you met this girl?”

“Woman. We’re not supposed to call them girls, remember?”

“Whatever.”

“A cop loaned me a shirt. Holly arrived and took over the case. I remember how cool she was under the circumstances.”

“Pretty bad circumstances.”

“Yeah. After I came home I called her with some information, and we had a couple of phone conversations after that.”

“So why are you thinking about this . . . person?”

“She’s in town. In fact, she’s at my house right—Jesus, I forgot to call Joan.” Stone dialed his office number and got his secretary on the phone. “There are a couple of women coming to the house—one is named Holly Barker; I don’t know the other one. Will you put them in whichever of the guest rooms they want, and give them a key?”

“You’re doing two at a time now, Stone?” Joan Robertson asked.

“I should be so lucky. Just get them settled. I’ll explain later.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” She hung up.

“What’s she doing up here?” Dino asked.

“She didn’t say. She called from a taxi on the way in from the airport.”

“Nice of you to offer her a bed,” Dino said slyly.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Did you offer the two of them your bed?”

“I offered them a guest room; that’s it.”

“So far. Well, I guess it’s how you keep your weight down, isn’t it?”

“Dino . . .”

Gianni put some menus on the table.

“We’ll be two more,” Stone said. “And we’ll order when the ladies arrive.”

Gianni brought two more menus and a basket of hot bread. Stone tore into a slab of sourdough.

“Carbing up for later?” Dino asked.

“Get off it. I just want to get something in my stomach with the bourbon.”

“Mary Ann and I worry about you, you know.”

“Mary Ann has enough to worry about with you on her hands.”

“We want to see you settled with some nice, plain girl.”

“You just want to drag everybody down with you,” Stone said. “And what do you mean, ‘plain’?”

“A beautiful woman demands too much of a man.”

“You’re married to a beautiful woman.”

“I speak from experience. Their care and feeding is a full-time job.”

“Mary Ann cares for and feeds both of you, and without the slightest help from you, as I recall.”

“She’s an exceptional woman,” Dino said. “You’ll never do that well.”

“Thanks a lot.”

They finished their drinks and had just ordered another round, when Dino nodded toward the front door. “I’ll bet that’s your lady cop,” he said.

Stone looked up to see a tall woman, more striking than he remembered, striding toward them, smiling.

“Hey, there,” Holly said, offering her hand.

Stone and Dino were on their feet, getting her chair.

“This is my friend Dino Bacchetti, my old partner. He runs the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct.”

“Hey, Dino.”

“Hey, Holly.”

“Where’s your friend?” Stone asked.

“Oh, Daisy’s exhausted,” Holly replied. “I put her to bed.”

“Can I get you a drink?” Stone asked.

“What are you drinking?”

“Bourbon.”

“That will do nicely,” she said.

Gianni brought her the drink.

“So what brings you to the big city?” Stone asked.

“I’m in hot pursuit of a fugitive,” Holly said.

Stone handed her a menu. “Let’s order dinner, then you can tell me about it.”

2

THEY WERE HALFWAY through their first course, a salad of French green beans, mushrooms, and bacon.

“Tell us about your fugitive, Holly,” Dino said. “Maybe I can help.”

“That would be nice, Dino,” Holly replied. “First, a little background: Not long ago, I wrapped up a case in my jurisdiction that involved a man named Ed Shine; his history is interesting. He came to the U.S. from Italy, as a teenager, and his original name was Gaetano Costello.”

“Costello?”

“Second cousin to Frank. The mob changed his name to Edward Shine, planted a birth certificate in the county records, and put him through high school and college, ostensibly the son of some people named Shine, who just happened to live in the same apartment building as Mr. and Mrs. Meyer Lansky. Right out of college, Ed starts building office buildings, and he never has any trouble arranging financing; he’s laundering money for the mob. He continues doing this for forty years or so, and very successfully. In the meantime, he’s visiting Florida on a regular basis, and he has a brief affair with a Latino woman and fathers a son out of wedlock, naming the boy Enrico. The kid takes his mother’s maiden name, Rodriguez, and is called Trini.

“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 you?”

“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.