Stuart Woods: Worst Fears Realized

Dino got off the parkway at Seventy-ninth Street and charged across the West Side. He turned down Central Park West and raced to Sixty-fifth Street, then turned into the park, driving across a traffic island to break into the traffic. “I wish the hell this thing had a siren,” he said, half to himself. He overtook half a dozen cars at one go, bulling his way through the traffic from the opposite direction, miraculously not hitting another car. Two minutes after leaving the park he drove the wrong way down his block, abandoned the car in front of a fire hydrant, and ran toward his apartment building, with Stone on his heels.

The building’s doorman saw them coming. “There’s two uniforms up there already, Mr. Bacchetti,” he shouted, as they sprinted past him for the elevator. A minute later they were in the apartment, and Dino was holding Mary Ann, who didn’t seem all that flustered now.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Don’t make a big deal.”

Dino sat her down on a sofa. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I got out of a cab at the corner and was walking toward the building. When I was almost to the front door I saw this guy coming down the block in the opposite direction, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was coming at me. He was only a few steps away when I saw him take a knife out of his pocket – a big switchblade – and flick it open. I already had my hand in my purse.” She pointed at her pocketbook, lying on a chair opposite; there was a gaping hole in the bag. “I fired before he could get to me, and the shot spun him around. He could run, though, and he did.”

“Where did you hit him?”

“I didn’t have much chance to aim, but I was going for his head. I think I caught an ear.”

“Which ear?”

“Uh, the left. Yes, that’s right, the left ear. He had his hand on it as he ran, and I saw some blood.”

“You,” Dino said, pointing at one of the two uniforms in the room, “go downstairs and see if you can find some blood on the sidewalk. Don’t let anybody step in it; I want a sample taken.”

The cop left at a run.

“You,” Dino said, pointing at the other uniform, “get on the phone to the precinct and tell them I want a tech over here right now to collect a sample.”

The cop went to a phone and started dialing.

“Are you all right, now?” he said to his wife.

“Perfectly,” she said.

“All right enough to answer an important question?”

“Sure, I’m okay; what do you want to know?”

“What I want to know is, where the hell did you get a gun? ” Dino demanded, his voice rising.

Mary Ann looked away petulantly. “Daddy gave it to me.”

“You took a gun from your father ?”

Stone knew that Mary Ann’s father was an extremely well connected Italian gentleman of the old school with many business interests, licit and otherwise, and a wide acquaintance among people who owned guns.

“Yes, I did,” she said, rounding on him. “I knew you wouldn’t let me have one.”

“Oh, swell,” Dino said. “And, knowing your father, I don’t suppose he bothered with the permitting process.”

“As a matter of fact, he did bother,” Mary Ann replied. “The permit is in my purse, if you don’t believe me.”

“Jesus, you’re lucky you didn’t shoot yourself. You’ve got no business with a gun.”

“Listen, Dino, I go with Charlton Heston on this one, okay? And need I remind you that, if I hadn’t had the gun, I’d be lying down there in the street with a very big knife in me?”

“All right, all right,” Dino said, seeing that he was not going to win this one. “Can you describe the man?”

“Late thirties, early forties, small; I’d say five-seven. Wiry, and he had an Afro.”

“He was black?”

“No, but he had an Afro, kind of. Kind of a Jewish Afro.”

“He was Jewish? How do you know that?”

“No; I mean, that’s what we used to call it in high school, when a Jewish kid had that kind of kinky hair, you know?”

“Did the guy look Jewish?”

“Not particularly. His hair was dark, though, almost black.”

“How was he dressed?”

“He was wearing a raincoat, kind of new-looking, you know? Freshly pressed, no wrinkles.”

“Anything else?”

“No, the raincoat covered everything. It was single-breasted, not a trench coat; I remember that.”

Detectives Anderson and Kelly arrived, then, and Dino brought them up-to-date. “Andy, you get on the phone and get out an APB for this guy. Get a bulletin out to all the hospitals in Manhattan to expect a guy answering the description to come in with a gunshot wound to the head, possibly to the left ear. Be sure and tell them he’s armed with a knife and to exercise extreme caution. I don’t want this guy cutting up a nurse.”

Anderson went to the phone, while Kelly leaned against a wall, saying nothing.

“Thank God the kid was in school,” Dino said. He wrote something on a pad, ripped it off, and handed it to the idle Kelly. “Get over there and pick up my kid at his school. That’s the address.” Kelly left. “Mary Ann, neither of you goes anywhere without a cop for a while.”

“Oh, come on, Dino,” she replied. “The guy’s not coming back. No mugger is that stupid.”

Dino looked at the floor. “You do like I tell you about this, you hear me?”

Stone went and sat on the sofa next to her. “Mary Ann,” he said, “it’s not a mugger.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turned to Dino. “It’s our guy,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Dino replied. “Worst fears realized.”

KELLY RETURNED WITH DINO’S SON, Benedetto, a black-eyed six-year-old who looked like a tiny Sicilian prince, taking after his mother’s line. Dino dismissed Kelly, then gathered up the boy, sat him on his lap, and explained what had happened that afternoon.

“Why don’t you just have the guy capped?” the child asked.

Dino sighed and looked at Stone. “He spent the weekend with his grandfather.” He turned back to the boy. “Because, Ben, I am a police officer, and we don’t have guys capped. We arrest them and put them in jail, remember? Now you go and get washed up for dinner. Uncle Stone is going to join us.” The boy got down from his father’s lap and ran toward his room.

“Thanks, I’d love to,” Stone said.

Mary Ann excused herself and headed for the kitchen.

“Come on into my study,” Dino said. “Let’s have a drink.”

Stone followed Dino into the handsome little walnut-paneled room, where Dino produced Stone’s favorite bourbon and a scotch for himself. It was not the study or the apartment of a New York City police lieutenant, and the books on the shelves, mostly art history, history, and biography, revealed a broader Dino than most people knew.

Stone knew that Dino’s father-in-law had acquired the apartment for his daughter in circumstances that were murky, to say the least. It was in a white-shoe, East Side cooperative building that did not ordinarily entertain applications from people whose names ended in vowels, and Stone reckoned it would sell for somewhere between a million and a half and two million dollars on the open market. Stone knew that the apartment’s purchaser and his daughter’s ownership were protected behind a complex corporate veil, and he doubted if any other member of the NYPD had ever entered the place before today. He wondered what would happen if Dino ever became the target of some in-depth departmental investigation.

“You got any thoughts about all this?” Dino asked.

At first, Stone thought he meant the apartment, then he realized what the subject was. “Oh. Not really. Certainly, Mitteldorfer’s alibi is tight. I think I’d check out the nephew in Hamburg, to see if he’s really in Germany. Might be good to check out Mitteldorfer’s visitors list, too?” He allowed himself a grin. “ If you can get it out of Captain Warkowski.”