Stuart Woods: Insatiable Appetites

“ What? ” Mary Ann spat, sitting up straight.

“I know who you mean,” Dolce said. “It’s that little girl who used to come to lunch with her mother. What was her name?” She thought for a moment. “Carla!”

“That is correct,” Stone said, amazed that she had figured it out so quickly.

“What are you two talking about?” Mary Ann demanded.

“Many years ago, after your mother died, Eduardo had an affair for some years with a woman named Anna de Carlo Fontana. Together, they made a child, Carla.”

“You’re out of your mind!” Mary Ann said.

“No, he isn’t,” Dolce said. “I think I figured it out at the time, but I didn’t say anything. I kept waiting for Papa to say something, but he never did.”

Stone was surprised; for some reason, he had expected Dolce to refuse to accept the news, but it was Mary Ann who was resisting it. He held up the paper in his hand. “This is written in Eduardo’s own hand and properly witnessed.” He read it aloud to them. “So you see, Carla will have the same inheritance as you two and Ben.”

“You mean we have to give part of our inheritance to this girl?” Mary Ann asked, horrified.

“No, Eduardo’s will explicitly said that all bequests would be made after taxes were paid, and that the residue would go to the foundation. This just means that the foundation will get a smaller residue, but it will still have more than sufficient funds to operate as Eduardo wished.”

“Well, then,” Dolce said, “all is well, isn’t it?”

“Do we have to meet her?” Mary Ann asked.

“Only if you wish to.”

“Is she some penniless waif who will now be rich?”

“No, she is the New York Times ’s bureau chief in Washington — a very substantial person.”

“I think it’s funny,” Dolce said.

Then there was a loud crash from the kitchen, and men were shouting.

Dolce reflexively picked up her steak knife, stood, and faced the door.

“Dolce, it’s all right,” Stone said.

“Shut up!” Dolce commanded, holding the knife in a defensive manner.

Oh, shit, Stone thought, it’s now or never.

Stone reached into his briefcase, opened the small plastic box, and removed the syringe. He uncapped it, squirted out a little of the liquid to get rid of the air bubbles, and moved quickly toward Dolce, who still stood, facing the kitchen door, the knife out in front of her.

Stone reached around her shoulders and held her still. “Relax, Dolce, just relax.” He stabbed the syringe into her upper thigh and emptied it into her. At the same moment, he felt a searing pain in his upper left arm. Dolce pulled away from him; Stone looked and found his left arm gushing blood down his sleeve and onto the floor. She had cut right through his suit.

“Holy mother of God!” Mary Ann shouted.

Dolce looked dazed and swayed on her feet.

Mary Ann ran to Stone, grabbed his necktie, and in one motion, tore it off him. She wrapped it twice around his upper arm and pulled it tight. “Hold this in place,” she said. “She’s cut a major artery. If you don’t keep the tourniquet tight, you’ll bleed out in no time.”

Stone kept the necktie tight. Dolce started for him with the knife, but she was unsteady on her feet. Then she stopped, her eyes wide, and fell forward like a tree onto her face.

“What was that?” Mary Ann asked.

“Thorazine,” Stone replied. “The gift of a friend.” He sat down heavily on a chair, dizzy.

Then Pietro burst into the room, a knife in his hand, and ran toward the hallway doors at a dead run, with two SWAT officers in hot pursuit. Stone heard the front door slam and looked out the windows toward the front lawn. Pietro disappeared into the heavy rainstorm, running like a deer, with the cops hard on his heels.

Mary Ann ran into the kitchen. “Dino!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

An officer came to her. “The commissioner isn’t here. What is it?” he asked.

“Mr. Barrington needs an ambulance right away — he’s had an artery severed.”

“We have a medical team on the way,” the man said, and he spoke into a handheld radio. “They’ll be here in one minute.”

“Tell them they’re going to need two gurneys,” Mary Ann said.

Stone was impressed with the way she had taken charge, saving his life into the bargain. “How’d you know about the artery?” he asked.

“I was a Girl Scout — we took a first-aid course.”

Four people in hospital scrubs burst into the room, one of them pushing a gurney.

“Treat him first,” Mary Ann said, pointing at Stone. “He’s got a severed artery in his arm.”

Two of them went to work on Stone, cutting off his sleeve and tending to the wound. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” one of them said. “He’ll need surgery to repair the artery.” He turned back to Stone. “Do you know your blood type?”

“O positive,” Stone said. The two men helped Stone onto a gurney.

Two more people appeared with another gurney and lifted Dolce, now semiconscious, onto it. They made a little procession toward the front door. When they opened it the rain was still pouring. They grabbed Stone’s two umbrellas from the stand and sheltered the two gurneys as they got them both into a large ambulance. Mary Ann and an EMT got in with them, and the doors were closed.

“Let’s get this guy to the hospital first,” the man shouted at his driver.

“No!” Stone said. “Get to Floyd Bennett first. I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t feel fine, but he wanted Dolce on her way.

“I guess it’s okay,” the nurse said. “It’s on the way to the hospital, and he’s stable.” In minutes they were at Floyd Bennett Naval Air Station, a former base in Brooklyn that was little used these days. The Strategic Services G-650 waited on the tarmac with one engine running.

“How long is the flight?” Mary Ann asked.

“Nine or ten hours — it’s a good forty-five hundred miles. The mother superior will meet you with an ambulance and her own medical team, and these guys will be with you all the way.

“Once there, you’ll have a few words with the mother superior, so that she will have an official request from a family member of Dolce’s, then you’ll take off for Rome, where the aircraft will pick up some passengers for the trip back. That way, you only have to pay for the leg to Palermo.”

“Thank God for that,” she said.

The doors to the ambulance opened, and they made to remove Dolce and her gurney. But Dolce was hanging on to Stone’s remaining coat sleeve.

“You!” she managed to say. “You!”

“Somebody had to do it, Dolce,” Stone said. “You are a danger to yourself and others.”

“You!” she said again, then the gurney was out of the ambulance. Mary Ann ran alongside it toward the big jet. The rain had let up considerably, and there was no more thunder.

Stone sat up, braced on his good elbow, and watched through the open ambulance doors as the EMTs loaded Dolce’s gurney onto the airplane. They already had her strapped down and an IV running as she disappeared into the aircraft. The door was closed, and the second engine began to spool up with a loud whine. In a moment the airplane was taxiing.

“Now you can get me to a hospital,” Stone said, then he fainted.

He was out until the following morning, and sun was streaming through the windows of his room as his eyelids fluttered. A nurse sat by his bed, and Carla sat on the other side.

“Just take it easy,” the nurse said. “You’ve been sedated. The doctor will be here in a moment.”

“Dino called me,” Carla said, looking at her watch. “I’ve got to be at a meeting in my publisher’s office in forty-five minutes. There are rumors that the executive editor is retiring, and I expect it’s about that.”