Stuart Woods - Son of Stone

“I thought we had a deal,” Keener said.

“This is an easy one: Mr. Fisher insists that his soon-to-be-former wife stop trying to have him killed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Fisher has already experienced an encounter on a yacht in New York Harbor that required him to choose between being knifed by two thugs or taking a swim in December. The thugs are still following him.”

“I have no knowledge of anything like that,” Keener said.

“That’s what I would say, too, in the circumstances. Would you be kind enough to mention the situation to Mrs. Fisher?”

“If you insist, but I still maintain she has nothing to do with thugs following Mr. Fisher.”

“Let me know what she says, will you?”

“Sure, I will.”

Stone hung up. “I’m afraid that’s all we can do to put an end to it. In the meantime, may I suggest that you carry a roll of quarters in each coat pocket?”

“You think I can buy them off with quarters, Stone?”

“No, but holding them will more than double the weight of your fists and greatly enhance the effects of a punch in the nose. And if the cops ask, you can say you carry the coins for the parking meters.”

Herbie got up and with a little wave departed Stone’s office. “For this I pay five hundred bucks an hour?” he called out from down the hallway.

S tone attended a partners’ meeting at Woodman amp; Weld in the afternoon, and afterward he asked for a few minutes with his old friend and law-school classmate Bill Eggers, the firm’s managing partner.

“What’s up, Stone? You look like a man with a problem.”

“Nothing life-threatening,” Stone replied, “just a little thorny. But I think that addressing some issues now will greatly smooth things for the future.”

“Tell me about it.”

“For a start, you correctly assessed the resemblance between the photograph of my father and Arrington’s son, Peter.”

“Ahhh,” Eggers said. “So you’re finally willing to cop to that?”

“I’ve always been willing, but Arrington was slow to come to that point. Recent events have changed things.”

“Changed them how?”

“Well, Peter arrived in town a couple of days ago, a day ahead of his mother, who was under the weather. She arrived yesterday. Peter saw the photograph of my father and, apparently, considering some past suspicions, put the whole thing together in a flash. The boy is extraordinarily bright.”

“Every father thinks that, Stone, trust me.”

“Not every father has a son who is graduating from high school at sixteen and is already writing and directing his first feature film.”

“Oh, that kind of bright.”

“Yes. He’s big for his age, mature as most people get in their midthirties, and very well-spoken and well-mannered.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

“You will, in due course,” Stone said. “But now some steps have to be taken to regularize his life.”

“Regularize?”

“He’s been in a prep school in Virginia for a few months, and is now way ahead of not just his peers, but the seniors. He’s also saddled with Vance Calder’s name, and he doesn’t like the treatment he receives because of it.”

“And what’s your solution for handling it?”

“Not my solution, entirely, but Peter’s, and his mother has fully bought into it.”

“Go on.”

“Peter wants to attend a performing-arts prep school on the Upper East Side called Knickerbocker Hall, doing college-level work and attending their film school.”

“Sounds good.”

“And he wants to change his name to Barrington before he applies.”

“I see.”

“And he wants them to think he’s eighteen.”

Eggers blinked. “And how does he plan to do that?”

“Just by telling the school that he’s eighteen. When you’ve met him you’ll see that nobody will doubt him.”

“He’s currently a resident of Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll have an associated firm in Virginia do a straightforward change of name in the courts down there. They can also notify his school of the change and request that all his records there be changed to Barrington.”

“This has to be done in such a way that no one in the media catches it.”

“Legally, it will have to be advertised locally, but there are always obscure publications that can satisfy that requirement. We have to have a reason stated for the change of name in the petition to the court. What do you want to say?”

Stone thought about it. “Damned if I know.”

“How about: ‘Petitioner wishes his surname to be that of his natural father’?”

“He’s too young to be a petitioner; I suppose Arrington will have to fill that role.”

“I thought he was going to be eighteen.”

“Well, to all intents and purposes-except for legal ones, of course.”

Eggers tilted back in his chair, rested his feet on his desk, and pressed his fingertips together in a thoughtful pose. “Where was he born?”

“In Los Angeles.”

“How about we get his birth certificate reissued and his old one removed? That should solve the problem.”

“How the hell are you going to do that? You can’t just hire some clerk to steal a public record and replace it with a forgery.”

“Well, I suppose you could, but that’s messy. All we need is a judge to order a reissuing of the certificate, for the same reason as we give in Virginia, and along the way, to correct a typographical error with regard to birth date. We should still do the name change in Virginia, because of his school.”

“And what kind of judge are you going to get to do that?”

“One that you and I went to law school with. Remember Carling Steadman?”

“Steadman is a judge in L.A.? I didn’t know that.”

“Then you must not read the alumni journal.”

“I guess not.”

“The firm has had some dealings with him the past few years; he’s always ruled in our favor. And I had dinner with him and his wife when I was in L.A. a few weeks ago. Carling has started a foundation dedicated to the defense of indigents in L.A. County. He doesn’t know it, but I’m going to make a twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation at a fund-raising dinner they’re having next week.”

“The media are going to be a bigger problem in L.A. than they would in Virginia,” Stone pointed out.

“We’ll petition that the boy’s old birth certificate be permanently sealed. No reporter is going to be looking for one belonging to a Peter Barrington.”

“Good point.”

“Leave it with me. How do you want the name to appear on the certificate? You don’t want Calder there, do you?”

“No.” Stone thought for a minute. “Make it Malon Peter Barrington.”

“Your father’s name, as I recall. A happy coincidence.”

“Correct. Better make it Malon Peter Barrington the Second.”

Eggers wrote it down, along with Peter’s new birth date. “I’ll get on it,” he said. “Will Peter need any help with getting into the school? I’ll see if anybody here has a connection.”

“Thank you, yes. I can get Leo Goldman to write a recommendation, too, based on what he’s seen of a film Peter is working on.”

“At a film school, that couldn’t hurt.”

“And he wants to go to Yale Drama School after Knickerbocker.”

“I can get half a dozen letters to back him there. Just tell him to make outstanding grades, join some school organizations, and do some charity work.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“I’ll call you when I have a grip on this,” Eggers said. The two men shook hands and Stone headed for home, a ten-minute walk.

As Stone walked into his office Joan called out, “Bill Eggers on line one.”