Lucid Intervals (6 page)

“Yes, please. Joan is frightened, and I have a houseguest, too. I don’t want them hurt.”

“Do you want the stalker hurt?”

“No, not if it can be avoided.”

“I’ll put Peter Leahy on it,” Cantor said.

“Tell Peter to cuff her, if he can, but tell him to watch his ass; she’s very good with a knife.”

“Jesus, Stone, where do you find these women?”

“There’s only one like her,” Stone replied, “and she found me.”

10

S
tone sat with Felicity, tucked into a corner table at La Goulue, one of his favorite restaurants. “You seem a little tired,” he said, as she took her first sip of her Rob Roy.

“It’s the job,” she said, “and it doesn’t change much when I’m out of the country. Of course, when I’m in New York I have you to, ah, entertain me.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

She smiled. “Don’t you believe it.”

“Tell me about the job,” Stone said. “As much as you can anyway.”

“There are the usual things,” she said. “Agents get themselves killed, sometimes for little or no reason. Last month I had two die in a car crash in Rome. Of course it was on that racetrack the Italians call the Piazza del Popolo. It’s insane.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I have to make the phone calls and write the letters, and even in the case of the car crash, the spouses don’t want to believe there wasn’t foul play. They’ve spent years worrying that a husband or wife will be taken out by the opposition, and I think it’s something of a letdown when they’re lost to a simple accident.”

“Is running the firm more fun than working in it?”

Felicity thought about that for a moment. “Marginally,” she said finally. It’s more fun to know everything instead of just about your own assignment; it’s fun to put the pieces together when you have all the information, or at least all of it that’s available.”

“You don’t always have it all?”

“Of course not. Even in my position I can’t know everything, and Whitehall and Downing Street are insatiable; they have an almost religious belief that their service is all-seeing, all-knowing. We could be closer to that if they would triple our budget, but that’s not going to happen unless there’s another war.”

“What about terrorism?”

“MI-5 does all the domestic stuff; we’re the foreign service, and we did get about a twenty percent bump in the years after 9/11, but inflation has eaten that up. I still have to send one agent out when I’d rather send two or three. Deciding where to allocate the resources is the hardest part of the job.”

“Is there anything fun about it?”

“The equipment is fun. We’ve long since surpassed that Q fellow in the Bond films.” She leaned close to his ear. “I have a pen in my purse that can administer a drug without your feeling it. Then I could walk out in the middle of dinner, and you’d be dead of cardiac arrest before you got to dessert. And the autopsy would reveal nothing.” She smiled. “We call it the toe tag.”

“Is that the sort of information Stanley Whitestone was selling?”

She grimaced. “He was selling everything but, thank God, not the toe tag; that was after his time. If word got out about that, there would be husbands dropping dead every day in their dozens, and not a few wives, too.”

“That reminds me,” Stone said. He produced his iPhone, pressed a couple of buttons and showed her a minute or so of the Seagram footage. “I don’t know if this is the guy,” he said, “but we eliminated all the other candidates. This one has the virtue of dressing British and walking funny.”

“The quality is very good,” she said. “Amazing, in fact. Where did you get the equipment?”

“The cameras are high-definition, off-the-shelf stuff; the iPhone comes from the Apple Store at Fifty-ninth and Fifth.”

“Let me see it again,” she said, and she watched closely as he reran it.

“What do you think?”

“I think he walks funny,” she said, “and I’ve been trying to picture exactly how and why Stanley walked funny. If this is Stanley, then all that weight he has gained has accentuated his gait.” She handed the phone back to Stone. “This is a very good effort,” she said. “It would have taken a lot longer if my people had done it. Can you e-mail me the images?”

“Of course.” Stone tapped a few buttons. “It’s done.”

“Now,” she said, “can you find this man?”

“If he returns to the Seagram Building,” Stone said. “My guy has alerted security there to keep an eye out for him.”

“Have we heard from Dino and the FBI yet?” she asked.

“No, the FBI takes longer than my guys and your guys put together, but it’s a remarkable system for plucking faces out of the files. Do you think Stanley Whitestone might have committed a crime in this country?”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” she said, “but I’d be very surprised if the FBI or anybody else has caught him doing it.”

“Well, if he has been caught at something and his image pops up, the FBI will be all over this.”

“And if he should fall into their hands,” she said, emptying her drink, “he’ll tell them everything he knows about us and all he can make up, just to stay out of prison.”

“Perhaps I should have thought of that before asking Dino to do this.”

“No, I think it was the right thing; it might turn up something, and we might get to him before the FBI does.”

“Whatever you could say. I might still be able to stop Dino.”

“No, this isn’t going to be easy; we’re going to need every resource available. The trail is very cold.”

“As you wish.”

She looked at him closely. “Subject change,” she said. “Why are you still alone?”

Stone blinked. “Why are you?” he asked.

“My work,” she replied. “Now back to you.”

“I don’t know, really. They come and they go. I get dumped a lot.”

“Why?”

“I think they think I’m incapable of commitment.”

“Is that true?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I’m very careful about who I commit to. Don’t you think you’re blaming too much on your work?”

“I tried to explain this before: it works better if we’re both in the service. We are the only people who understand us. Say I married some barrister or stockbroker. There would be a constant schedule of work-related social events, and I would make very few of them. I work all hours, and men get lonely, just as women do. Men are
not
understanding when you tell them
nothing
about what you do. It drives them crazy.”

“I suppose I can understand that, but you’ve told me quite a lot tonight.”

Felicity laughed. “If, say, the Chinese or the North Koreans captured you and you told them everything I’ve told you, they would kill you because you told them nothing.”

“See,” Stone said, laughing. And then their dinner arrived.

11

S
tone was at his desk the following morning when Herbie Fisher appeared at his office door, unannounced. The phone buzzed, and Stone picked it up. “Yes?”

“Mr. Herbert Fisher to see you,” Joan said drily.

“Thank you
so
much,” Stone said, and hung up. “What can I do for you, Herbie?” he asked.

Herbie came in and took a seat across the desk from Stone. “I know who’s trying to kill me,” he said.

Stone held up a hand, a stopping motion. “Herbie, think back a couple of years: someone was trying to kill you then, remember? Dattila the Hun?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that.”

“We sued him, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“And what happened?”

“Uh, I shot him.”

“Right.”

“It was easier than suing him.”

“Easier for you,” Stone said, remembering what he had had to do to keep Herbie from being tried. “If you kill somebody else you think is trying to kill you, the DA is going to remember that little incident with Dattila. You understand?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Don’t guess, Herbie,
know
it. You can’t make a habit of that sort of thing and stay out of prison.”

“All right, I know it.”

“Now, who’s trying to kill you?”

“My bookie,” Herbie said.

“And what is his motive?”

“I stopped betting with him.”

“You got a new bookie?”

“No, I just stopped betting. I went into the bar he works out of, put a hundred and forty-eight grand on the bar—that squared me with him—and told him I wasn’t betting anymore.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He didn’t take it very well,” Herbie said.

“He didn’t take it very well how?”

“Well, first he shook my hand and slapped me on the back and offered me a credit line of a quarter million.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Stone said.

“When I told him I wasn’t betting anymore he backhanded me across the face and told me if I tried betting with anybody else he would kill me.”

“He assumed you would change bookies?”

“I guess.”

“I suppose that would upset him.”

“I explained it to him: I told him I just wasn’t going to bet anymore … with anybody. That really pissed him off, like I had violated his constitutional rights or something.”

“And you think he took it hard enough to want to kill you.”

“Well, if I’m not going to bet anymore, what does he have to lose?”

“Herbie,” Stone said, “that may be the first entirely logical thing you’ve ever said to me. You’ve just had a lucid interval.”

Herbie looked puzzled. “Huh?”

“You paid off your loan shark, too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I only owed him ninety grand.”

“How did he take it?”

“Not very well, either. Of course, he’s my bookie’s brother, so maybe it runs in the family. He told me I would have to go right on paying the vigorish, and I told him to go fuck himself.”

“Who are these people?”

“Joe and Moe Wildstein.”

“That sounds like two-thirds of the Three Stooges,” Stone said.

“Well, it’s not. They’re known around town as the Wild Boys.”

“Tell me, Herbie—not to digress—why did you decide to stop betting and borrowing with the Wildsteins?”

“The Wild Boys.”

“I stand corrected. Why?”

“I thought about it, and I think it’s because when you’re betting with money you don’t have, it doesn’t seem real.”

“Until they try to collect.”

“Well, yeah. But up until that moment, it’s like Monopoly money, you know? But if you’re laying a bet with money you actually have, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. I mean, you could lose, you know?”

“I can guess,” Stone said. “Now let’s get back to your lawsuit against the, ah, Wild Boys. Is it both of them you want to sue?”

“They’re both trying to kill me,” Herbie replied.

“How do you know that?”

“You were in Elaine’s when they fired through the window.”

“Okay, Herbie, the bullets may have had your name on them—I buy that—but they didn’t have Moe and Joe’s names on them. The police would have noticed.”

“I just have a very strong feeling about it,” Herbie said.

“Herbie, being an attorney, as you sort of are, you do understand that your feeling, no matter how strong, is not admissible as evidence in a court of law.”

“Well, it ought to be,” Herbie said, “when I feel
this
strong about it.”

“Let’s go back a minute. Did you say that Moe—he’s the bookie, right?”

“Right.”

“Did he say he was going to kill you?”

“If I bet with anybody else,” Herbie said.

“Have you bet with anybody else?”

“I told you, I’m not betting anymore.”

“Then Moe has no motive for killing you.”

Herbie thought about this. “That’s important, isn’t it?”

“I think you’re getting the picture,” Stone said.

“Then I can’t sue him?”

“Not until you can prove that he has tried to kill you, and if you’re in a position to do that, it would be much faster to let the police take care of it.”

“Why?”

“Because, Herbie,” Stone said with all the patience he could muster, “lawsuits take months or years, but when the police have good evidence, they make an arrest immediately. That’s also cheaper than a lawsuit.”

“But he could get bailed out, couldn’t he?”

“Not if we can prove that he might try again to kill you.”

Herbie nodded gravely. “That makes a lot of sense, Stone.”

“Thank you, Herbie. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other work to do.”

Herbie stood. “Yeah, okay, I understand. But …”

“But what?” Stone asked and was immediately sorry that he had.

“But what if he hires somebody else to kill me while he’s in jail?”

“Herbie,” Stone said, “whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, that’s a chance you’re going to have to take.”

“Okay,” Herbie said, then left.

Stone took deep breaths, trying to compose himself.

12

J
oan came to Stone’s office door. “How’d it go with Herbie?” she asked.

“Joan,” Stone said, “I’m having a great deal of trouble impressing upon you my desire
not
to see or speak to Herbert Fisher.”

“Oh, I completely understand,” she said.

“Not completely; otherwise you would not have allowed him into my office only a few minutes ago.”

“No, I understand completely,” Joan reassured him. “It’s just that we have certain ethical obligations to Herbie now.”

“Ethical obligations?”

“Yes. We’ve taken his money, so we owe him our time.”

“And just how much of our time do you reckon we owe him?” Stone asked.

“Well, your time, really. About a year: all day, every day, five days a week.”

“So you think I should spend all of the next year with Herbie?”

“It’s what he’s paid you for,” she said.

“He didn’t pay me, he paid you,” Stone pointed out, “and you rashly put the money in the bank and paid all my bills. I’m innocent of this, really.”

“You think it’s
rash
to put money in the bank, pay taxes and pay bills?”

“Not usually,” Stone admitted. “Just when the money comes from Herbie.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t see the difference between Herbie’s money and that of other clients. I mean, he didn’t print it himself, did he?”