Stuart Woods: Hot Mahogany

“I’d like that, Barton,” Stone said, tucking the check away.

On Monday morning in New York, after a good breakfast at Stone’s house, Tatiana called her attorney and spoke briefly with him, then hung up the phone. “Henry has agreed to my settlement terms,” she said, smiling. “I think his night in jail made him more reasonable.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Stone said, kissing her. “You’ll soon be a free woman.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” Tatiana said. “Now, I must go home and get some things done.”

“Dinner tonight?” Stone asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “I’m going to be taking up most of your dinner hours from now on.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Stone replied. He walked her over to her house through the garden and set her luggage in the kitchen, then returned to his own house and went into his office. He read slowly through the Times and stopped at the business section. A headline on the first page caught his eye.

KRAMER COMPANY JOINS DEAL amp; CROW IN REAL ESTATE VENTURE

Abner Kramer, in a fax to this newspaper on Sunday afternoon, announced that he had paid Charles Crow of the new firm of Deal amp; Crow seven million dollars for two hundred thousand of Mr. Crow’s personal shares in the new company, which will have a public offering next month. Observers were surprised at the transaction, since Mr. Crow might have profited by retaining his shares for the IPO.

The rest of the piece didn’t matter. Ab Kramer had extracted his pound of flesh from Charlie Crow’s carcass.

Joan came in with the mail, and Stone handed her Barton Cabot’s check. “Please deposit this,” he said. “Then write Dino a check for two hundred thousand and one to Bob Cantor for fifty thousand. Then give the IRS their share.”

“Good,” Joan said. “What’s left will just about cover the bill on top of your mail.” She went back to her office.

Stone opened the envelope and found the invoice for the conversion of his airplane to a turboprop. Joan was right; what was left of Barton’s money would just about cover it.

The Goddard-Townsend desk and bookcase is real, and the one sold at Christie’s in June 1989 actually brought $12.1 million, at that time the highest price ever paid for a piece of American furniture. I am told that it was bought by a member of a Texas oil family and, indeed, now stands in a house that rests upon the San Andreas Fault in California.

I am grateful to my friend Nick Brown, who sold the desk at Christie’s, for sending me to Dean Failey, the gentleman who was in charge of arranging the sale. Mr. Failey was extraordinarily helpful to me in learning about the piece and its sale.

Before selling the secretary, Nick Brown had a replica built by a very fine cabinetmaker for a rumored price of $38,000. I tried very hard to learn the name and address of the maker, but neither Nick nor Mr. Failey nor Christie’s nor Google was able to help me. Mr. Failey did, however, tell me of the maker’s search in Central or South America for the perfect mahogany tree and of its delivery to the United States disguised as a shipping crate, and I have shamelessly adapted that story to my own ends in this book. Whoever and wherever the gentleman is, I thank him.

I am, once again, grateful to my agent, Morton Janklow, of Janklow amp; Nesbit, and especially to his principal associate, Anne Sibbald, and to all the other folks at J amp;N for their hard work on my behalf over the past twenty-seven years.

I am grateful, too, to my publisher, Ivan Held; to Michael Barson, head of publicity at Putnam, and his hardworking staff (Michael also works hard); and, especially, to my editor, the incredibly light-fingered Rachel Kahan, for her support and guidance.

I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.

However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all of my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.

If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.

Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.

When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I never open these. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.

Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.

Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.

Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-1825.

Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow amp; Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)

If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.

If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Rachel Kahan at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.

A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.