Stuart Woods - Dirt

“Name three.”

“Well, the Collegiate School is probably one of them.”

“Wanta bet?”

“I don’t think so,” Dino said resignedly.

“Good move,” Stone chipped in.

Arrington moved over to the stove and pretended to watch Stone work on the clam sauce. “Who is Mary Ann’s father?” she whispered.

“Why?” Stone whispered back. “You want somebody in cement shoes?”

“Oh.” She went back and sat down at the table. “Smells wonderful,” she said.

“I’m having a hard time with this,” Mary Ann said.

“With what?”

“With this extremely white-bread person over there making me Italian food.”

“I’m pretending to be a guinea,” Stone said.

“I hope it works.”

“We’re about to find out,” Stone said. He drained the pasta and dumped it in with the sauce, moving it around with a fork and spoon. He set the steaming platter on the table, where a salad and garlic bread already rested.

Everybody watched as Mary Ann expertly twirled some linguine around her fork and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Not enough garlic,” she said.

“There’s twelve cloves in there,” Stone said, sounding hurt.

“Just kidding,” Mary Ann said, “my mother couldn’t have done it better. Well, not much better.”

Everybody pitched into the pasta. A commercial interrupted the game, and Dino switched to New York One, the all-news local channel.

“Don’t do that,” Mary Ann said.

“Why not? There was a commercial on the game.”

She turned to Stone and Arrington. “He turns on New York One in the hope that he’ll learn about a recently committed crime and he can leave his dinner and rush out to solve it.” She turned back to her husband. “You can do that at home, but not when you’re at somebody else’s house.” She picked up the remote control and switched back to the game.

“Wait!” Arrington cried. “Turn it back!” She grabbed at the remote control and started changing channels desperately.

“Channel ten,” Dino said helpfully.

She found it.

“What’s going on, Arrington?” Stone asked.

“I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“He’s there, look for him!”

“Look for who?”

“Shut up.”

Stone shut up and watched. Arrington turned on the sound.

“…the biggest benefit of the year,” a woman reporter was saying as a crowd swirled around her. “The Shubert Theatre is completely sold out at prices of up to a thousand dollars a seat, and some of the biggest stars on Broadway will be performing tonight.”

“There,” Arrington said, pointing. “The man just behind the reporter. You can see the back of his head.”

“So?” Dino asked.

“That’s Jonathan Dryer,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

The crowd was moving slowly toward the doors of the theater. Just as the head was about to move off the top of the screen, it turned.

“There, it’s him!”

There was a brief glimpse of a face before the camera zoomed in on the reporter. “The crowd is just returning from intermission, and there’s been a rumor circulating that Barbra Streisand is going to make a surprise appearance. We’ll let you know.” There was a cut to the studio, and the anchorman began to talk about a fire in Queens.

“Are you sure?” Stone asked.

“That’s him.”

“Could you tell who he was with?”

“No, but that was Jonathan.”

“Who’s Jonathan?” Mary Ann asked.

“A guy Stone is interested in,” Dino said.

“You’re not interested?” Stone asked him.

“Yeah, sure, but I’m not going to worry too much about him until we have some more evidence.”

“And you’d like me to come up with it?”

Dino shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Dino, he may be involved in a cop killing; doesn’t that mean anything anymore?”

“It does, if there’s any evidence tying him to it. All you’ve got right now is a lot of supposition. Okay, he went to parties at some people’s apartments that later got burgled. So did a lot of other people, including Arrington here. Should we take her to the precinct and beat a confession out of her?”

“Come on, Dino; for the first time we actually know where the guy is.”

“What do you want me to do? Send a SWAT team into a theater crowded with a black-tie audience of celebrities and people who can afford to pay a thousand bucks a seat? The mayor’s probably there; my chief is probably there.”

“Then have him picked up on the way out.”

“Stone, maybe you don’t read the papers anymore, but there are four cops in the city under indictment right now for arresting and, in some cases, leaning on people with no evidence, and two of them are uniforms at the Nineteenth. You think I’m going to wade into that crowd and create yet another incident at a time when we’ve got a full-blown commission investigating the department?”

“You can’t ever find a cop when you need one,” Mary Ann said. “Especially when he’s stuffing his face with linguine.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Dino said. “That’s all I need, is you weighing in.”

“Any time,” she said sweetly.

“I got an idea,” Dino said. “Why don’t you call your daddy and have him send a couple guys over to the Shubert and blow the guy away? Then we won’t even have to think about this anymore.”

“I’ve heard worse ideas,” Arrington said.

“Eat your dinner, Arrington,” Dino said. “ Please, everybody just eat the white-bread pasta and forget about it just for tonight. We’re celebrating getting this apartment, which, believe me, may not be worth celebrating.”

“It’s worth it,” Mary Ann said.

“You’re trying to turn us into Wasps, aren’t you?” Dino demanded. “I can’t even wear my own clothes to meet these people; neither can you, come to think of it.”

“Dino,” Mary Ann said, “don’t look a gift horse, you know? We’re taking the apartment; we’re getting out of Brooklyn. Try and be happy about it.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Dino said.

“Try harder.”

“Tell you what,” Stone said. “Dryer is going to be in that theater for at least another hour. Let’s finish our pasta, eat our dessert, drink our coffee, and then wander over to the Shubert and tail this guy home. I’d really like to know where he lives, wouldn’t you, Dino?”

“Fuggeddaboudit!” Dino screamed.

By the time they got out of the cab it had started raining, and the two women ran into the theater lobby. Dino turned up his collar. “This is just great,” he said. “I might as well be back on the beat.”

“A little beat work will do you good,” Stone said. The four of them huddled in the lobby until Stone could find an usher.

“Should be over any minute now,” the man said.

“You planning to do this on foot?” Dino asked Stone.

“Ah, maybe not. You want to get us a cab?”

“We just gave up a cab, and it’s raining. It’s a known fact that all New York City cabs go off duty the minute it starts to rain, and on top of that, a couple of thousand people are going to come pouring out of this theater in a minute, and they’re all going to be trying to hail the same cab.”

Arrington spoke up. “There are two entrances to this theater,” she said. “This one and one in Shubert Alley. We’d better cover both, don’t you think?”

“I don’t want Dryer to see you,” Stone said. “Do you think you could try hailing a cab for us and just wait in it until we come out?”

“You’re sweet.”

“Here, take my hat.” He placed his fedora on her head; it came down over her ears. “Best get one going east on Forty-fourth.”