Стюарт Вудс - Standup Guy

“I’ll make room,” Stone said.

27

Stone was awakened, as the first rays of dawn came through the slatted blinds, by a cool hand on his warm crotch, to which he immediately responded.

At the end of this encounter, Stone asked, “Do you always get up so early?”

“Seven is early?”

“It is around here.”

“I’m usually at work by eight, eight-thirty at the latest.”

“What would you like for breakfast?”

“What’s available?”

“Almost anything you can imagine, in the breakfast line.”

“Two eggs, over easy, sausages, toast, orange juice, and strong black coffee sweetened with a carcinogen.”

Stone called down to the kitchen and ordered for both of them, then retrieved the Times and the Daily News from the dumbwaiter. He raised the head and foot of the bed sufficiently to cradle them while they read and ate. “Tell me,” he said, when they were comfortable, “do you have any remaining friends in common with Mr. Buono?”

“If you knew his friends, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“I was wondering if there’s anyone you know who might be aware of any possible connection between Onofrio and Eduardo Buono.”

“Nope. I should think your best bet for that sort of genealogy would be their respective police files. And I believe you have entrée, do you not?”

“I do, and a very good suggestion that is.”

At eight o’clock, Hank rolled out of bed and into a shower, and fifteen minutes later, she presented herself, dressed and packed. “That was my kind of evening,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “Do you think we might repeat it in the not-too-distant future? I’m assuming you are not the sort of man who easily becomes violent and subsequently forms obsessive attachments to unwilling women.”

“You assume correctly, and I’d love to.”

“You have my number—in more ways than one,” she said. She kissed him on the lips and fled the premises.

• • •

After Stone had finished the crossword, he called Dino.

“Good afternoon,” Dino said.

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“That’s afternoon to someone who has to get up as early as I do.”

“Dino, in your present position, nobody is going to keep a time card on you. Go in later, like a gentleman.”

“I like to be in the office before things happen, not after. It’s good for my in-house reputation.”

“I need a favor.”

“Consider it granted, if I feel like doing it.”

“I’d like you to run a couple of names for me: Eduardo Buono and Onofrio Buono, who has the charming sobriquet of ‘Bats.’”

“What is it you want to know about them?”

“Are they related? If so, how? Were they close? Ever pull any jobs together? Like that.”

“I wouldn’t dirty my hands with that,” Dino said. “I’ll have somebody get back to you.”

“Many thanks.”

They hung up.

• • •

Stone was at his desk, mid-morning, when his phone buzzed.

“A detective Donatello for you on line one.”

“This is Stone Barrington, Detective.”

“Good morning. The chief asked me to get back to you with some info on the Buonos.”

“Thank you for calling. What did you learn?”

“Mostly what I already knew. Eddie is the uncle of Bats. The kid was a teenager when Eddie went away for the JFK heist, and he idolized his uncle. About a year before Eddie died in Sing Sing, Bats started visiting him every week, and a confidential informant told us the kid was bugging his uncle about what he did with the money from the heist. This attention apparently annoyed Eddie, and about a month before he died, when he was a patient in the infirmary, he cut the kid off, had him removed from his list of approved visitors. The kid made a scene on his next visit and got booted into the street for his trouble. Anything else you need?”

“Thanks, no, but I have a tidbit for you, if you don’t already have it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Bats now has a high-end chop shop—Porsches and Mercedeses—in Red Hook. And he makes a practice of driving his merchandise before he chops it.”

“That’s very interesting,” Donatello said. “I and the department thank you. I’ll be sure the chief hears about it, too.”

Stone hung up happy, having both learned something to his benefit and done his duty as a citizen.

• • •

Jack Coulter, née John Fratelli, was lunching at a table at the Breakers beach club with Hillary Foote when he saw a familiar face. He did not like familiar faces, especially since this one seemed to be looking for someone.

He riffled through his recent memories—this face seemed a recent memory—in search of a locale in which to place the face, and finally it came to him. Burger King. On the day that he had received an envelope, fat with new hundreds, from Manny Millman’s messenger, he had seen that face a couple of tables away, and it seemed to be interested in him, and its owner seemed, somehow, familiar.

He cast further back in his memory and attempted to place the face in his pre-prison existence. Ex-something, he decided: ex-cop, ex-FBI, ex-something, he wasn’t sure what. Fratelli’s appearance had changed a great deal since that day at the Burger King: he was slimmer, tanner, and had a mustache and a good deal more hair, gray at the temples. He did not think of himself as recognizable in this setting by someone from his past. Still, he waited until the man’s back was turned, excused himself, and went to the men’s room, stopping to chat with an assistant manager long enough to tell him that he did not believe that man over there was a member of this club. When he came out of the men’s room, he caught sight of the fellow being escorted rapidly toward an exit.

“What are you looking so thoughtful about, Jack?” Hillary asked.

He was trying to put a name to that face, but he had not yet succeeded when the question brought him back to the present. “I was thinking about how wonderful you were last night,” he said. He meant it, too. It had been his first night in bed with a woman in more than twenty years, and the experience had more than lived up to his memories.

“You’re a sweet man in bed,” Hillary said, squeezing his hand.

“Thank you, my dear,” Fratelli said, and he forgot about the familiar face. “I’m going to do some shopping for a car this afternoon. May I borrow your good eye for beautiful things?”

“Of course you may,” she said.

28

Harry Moss’s ears were burning. He had just been rudely escorted out of the Breakers beach club because he was not a member, and it was embarrassing. After all, he was nicely dressed in a shirt he had actually bought in Palm Beach, white trousers, and what he felt was a very attractive porkpie hat in straw, with a colorful band. In short, he was sure he was indistinguishable from any other sixtyish gentleman at the Breakers.

Harry had organized his search for Johnny Fratelli around his newfound fantasies about where he would go and what he would buy if he had suddenly come into seven million dollars. He had driven past the Breakers many times and admired it from afar as an unattainable venue for any part of his own life, and the Breakers had just confirmed that judgment by suggesting that he vacate the premises. He climbed into his Toyota Camry and thought about what to do next.

Harry had already combed the men’s stores—Ralph Lauren, Maus & Hoffman, et cetera, plus the men’s departments of Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, and without success. Perhaps this had been a waste of his time, since when he had seen Johnny Fratelli at the Burger King, the man had been wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and baggy Bermuda shorts. And sandals, for Christ’s sake—sandals with socks!