Stuart Woods: Family Jewels

She pointed at him. “Don’t tell me... you’re Joe Pesci, the actor!”

Stone burst out laughing.

Dino flashed his badge. “I’d like to see the manager, please.”

She made the call. “He’ll be right out.” She pointed to Dino again. “Burgess Meredith!” she said.

“Mr. Meredith is a hundred years old, and a foot shorter than I am,” Dino replied.

The manager appeared. “May I help you? Oh, Commissioner, good day to you.”

“Good day.” Dino exposed a corner of an envelope in his inside jacket pocket. “This is a warrant,” he said. “Are Mr. and Mrs. David Bannister in their suite?”

“No, sir,” the desk clerk said, “they went out for some lunch.”

“Then I’d like a key to their suite, please.”

“Do it,” the manager said to the young woman, and she printed out a key card.

Dino put it in his jacket pocket. “Half a dozen other men will be joining me in just a minute,” he said.

“The elevators are there,” she replied, pointing.

Stone and Dino rang for an elevator; it arrived shortly, and they got in. As the doors began to close, a hand stopped them, and a couple got in. The doors closed, and the elevator started up.

Stone suddenly realized who they were. “Derek, Alicia,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s Stone Barrington.”

They didn’t miss a beat, and for a moment it was old home week. “Are you staying here, Stone?”

“Visiting friends,” Stone said. The elevator doors opened and Stone followed them out. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “let me introduce my friend Dino Bacchetti.” Hands were shaken and smiles exchanged. “Dino,” Stone said, “is the police commissioner of New York City, and he has a warrant for your arrest.”

Derek/David put his key card in the door to his suite and opened it. “Come in, and let’s chat. After you, Commissioner.”

Dino entered, followed by Stone, and the door slammed behind them.

“Shit!” Dino yelled, yanking on the door. It wouldn’t open.

“He’s jammed it,” Stone said, trying to help. They were still working on it when there was a sharp rap on the door. “Police! Open up!”

“Put your shoulder against it!” Dino yelled. A couple of tries, and the door burst open.

“A handkerchief,” Stone said, pointing to it on the floor. “I didn’t know you could jam a door with a handkerchief.”

“Everybody downstairs!” Dino commanded. “You guys take the stairs.” He pressed the elevator button as the four cops headed down the stairs.

Dino got on the radio. “The subjects are on their way downstairs!” he yelled into it. They got onto the elevator, rode down, and emerged into the lobby. All was perfectly peaceful. A moment later four plainclothes cops burst out of the door to the stairs, pistols drawn.

“Find ’em!” Dino yelled.

Stone and Dino hurried to the street and looked both ways. Nothing.

Stone looked at his watch. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got an appointment with a United States senator in half an hour. Let me know how this turns out.” He ran for a cab, leaving Dino fuming on the sidewalk, shouting into his radio.

Stone passed a limo parked outside his house and hurried into his office. “She’s waiting,” Joan said. He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and went in.

Senator Marisa Bond sat in a leather chair in his seating area, her surprisingly long legs stretched out before her. Bob sat beside her, his head in her lap. “Good afternoon, Mr. Barrington,” she said, offering her hand.

Stone took it: firm grip, long fingers. “I see you and Bob have become acquainted.” He studiously avoided looking down her cleavage and suppressed all carnal thoughts, which wasn’t easy, since she was more beautiful than she looked on TV.

“We’ve had a very nice conversation,” she replied.

“May I offer you some coffee?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “Or something more medicinal?”

“It’s been a long day,” she replied. “Do you have a bourbon-flavored medicinal?”

“I do,” Stone said, grateful for the opportunity to have a drink himself. He poured them both one, picked up her file from his desk, and sat down on the sofa, opposite her. They raised their glasses and drank.

“I should have been the senator from Kentucky, instead of Virginia,” she said.

Stone laughed. “Have you been in town long?”

“Only since this morning. I took the shuttle up to do some fund-raising. I don’t get to come to New York often enough to suit me. Next time there’s a vacant Senate seat here, I’ll give some thought to changing states. You aren’t recording any of this, are you?”

“Not a word. The President asked me to meet with you.”

“And me to meet with you.”

Stone glanced at her curriculum vitae: “Smith College, valedictorian. Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review , then a doctorate in constitutional law. And I see that in your years of private practice you pled cases before the Supreme Court more than a hundred times before being appointed solicitor general by Will Lee, and in that position you appeared before the Court another sixty-odd times.”

“I sound so well qualified when you say it like that,” she replied with a chuckle.

“Tell me, are your views on all the hot-button issues well known, or have you been terribly discreet about that?”

“I’m a Democrat,” she replied. “I think that about covers it.”

“So, if I asked you how you would vote on a particular case, how would you reply?”

“I would decline to reply, since the subject might come up if I were on the Court. I think the President is well aware of how I think.”

“As are the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee?”

“Oh, yes. I serve on that committee.”

“How do you get along with the Republican members?”

“I flatter them at every opportunity,” she said. “I’d show a little leg, if it would help.”

Stone laughed. This wasn’t going the way he had imagined it would. “Is there anything in your views that might surprise the President, not to mention the committee?”

Senator Bond thought about that. “You may have noticed that when I mentioned guns, I referred to ‘gun safety’?”

“I did notice that.”

“It wouldn’t bother me if every qualified American went around armed, if I could choose who was qualified. What I mean to say is, I’d let eighty or ninety percent of the population carry a concealed weapon after serious training, but I’d make it a lot harder to get a carry license, and I’d make them renewable annually, just to see who was serious. Of course, that’s more a legislative view than one from the court, but still, it might surprise the President.”

“Well,” Stone said, “it’s probably better that she hear that from me, instead of when a split decision was announced.”

“I’ll grant you that.”

“Is there anything in your personal life that she should know about?”

“I had a nasty divorce twelve years ago. My former husband is dead, and I didn’t shoot him, but still, he told some hurtful lies about me at the time, and I’m sure that’s in somebody’s opposition research handbook.”

“Have you remarried?”

“No, and if I should decide to do so, I’d have a broad field to choose from, because it could go either way, regarding gender.”

That stopped Stone in his tracks. “And what percentage of the population knows that about you?”

“Exactly two women and one man, including you.”

“And are the two women discreet?”

“One is dead, and you can’t get any more discreet than that. The other is married to a United States senator, has been for twenty-odd years, and I don’t think she’d want her children to know.”