Stuart Woods - Dark Harbor

“He tried to, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was many years later he told me he thought I might not have been suited for the life. Lance signed me as a consultant, though.”

“That speaks well of you; Lance is a good judge of talent.”

Stone shrugged.

“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.

“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.

“That’s right.”

“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”

“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”

“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.

“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”

“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”

“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”

“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”

“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.

“Well done,” Rawls said.

“Well done what?”

“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”

“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”

“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”

Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of deja vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.

“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.

Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.

“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”

Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”

“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.

The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.

“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”

“Thank God there was only one of their father,” Stone muttered. He could not imagine what his summer in Islesboro would have been like if there had been two of Caleb. But now there were, and he didn’t like the idea much. He decided not to go over and introduce himself as Cousin Stone.

DINO BACCHETTI’S UNMARKED CAR pulled up in front of the Palatine mansion in the outer reaches of Brooklyn, the home of his father-in-law, Eduardo Bianchi. “Wait here,” Dino said to his driver. “My guess is, this won’t take long.”

Dino got out of the car and trudged toward the front door, dreading every step. He had never had lunch alone with Eduardo, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. The meeting with Mary Ann and her lawyer yesterday had been a disaster that had ended in shouting and harsh words, and Dino thought he had probably been summoned here to be disciplined. He was well aware that Eduardo had only to lift an eyebrow and some obedient servant would slip a stiletto between his ribs.

Dino rang the bell, and the front door was opened by just such a servant, Pietro, a cadaverous sixty-year-old who had once had a fearsome reputation as an assassin. But that was back in the days when Eduardo was still taking an active part in the ruling of his Cosa Nostra family, which ran large parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Eduardo had since, over the past thirty years, made himself into an elder statesman of everything: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and nearly every important charity in the city. His Mafia connections had been mostly forgotten by the very few surviving people who knew anything about them. But Dino knew Eduardo still had the power to deal with people in any way he saw fit.

Pietro led Dino through the elegantly appointed house into the rear garden, where Eduardo sat at a table set for two. Eduardo rose and offered his hand, a good sign, Dino thought.

“Dino, welcome,” the old man said. He carried his eighty-odd years lightly, looking trim, even athletic, and there was only a little gray in his hair. “Please sit down and have some lunch.”

Dino sat “Beautiful day,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yes, one appreciates good weather as one grows older,” Eduardo noted.

A waiter came and opened a bottle of Frascati, while another man set before them plates of bruschetta, little slices of bread fried in olive oil, then topped with chopped plum tomatoes, garlic and basil. Dino tried not to eat too greedily, but Eduardo’s younger sister was the best cook he had ever known, and he loved bruschetta.

“I understand things didn’t go well yesterday,” Eduardo said.

“That’s understating the case,” Dino replied.

“You know that I disapproved of your marriage to Anna Maria,” the old man said. He refused to refer to her as Mary Ann, as she preferred to be called.

“Yes, I knew that.”

“I was, of course, upset that Anna Maria was pregnant, but my principal objection was that you were a policeman.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dino said.

“However, as the years have passed I have come to respect your personal integrity. You would never allow me to use my influence to improve your position in the police department, though I could easily have done so, and you would never accept any gift from me, insisting that everything be in Anna Maria’s name. I realize now that you are being divorced, that works to your disadvantage.”

Dino shrugged. “All I want is shared custody of Benito,” he said.

“You will have that,” Eduardo said. “I do not approve of divorce, being a good Catholic, but I understand that people can come to a place in their lives where they can no longer live together, and I see little reason to deny them remarriage at some point. I once put that directly to the Pope, who was unhappy with me for a while, as a result.”

Dino thought that the Pope would have been at a disadvantage, arguing with Eduardo.

“You are aware, are you not, that Anna Maria has worked very hard at investing the money that came to her when she was twenty-one?”

“We never discussed that,” Dino said. “I told her I didn’t want to know.”

“I understand your position, but I assure you that the funds she started with came from entirely legitimate sources, and that that can be documented to the satisfaction of the New York Police Department or even the Internal Revenue Service.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Dino said.

“You have lived a long time in an unhappy marriage,” Eduardo said, “and the law entitles you to an equitable division of property.”

“I don’t want her property,” Dino said, though the thought of existing on a lieutenant’s salary and benefits did not thrill him.