“Whew!” Eggers said. “I’m relieved to hear it. I’m glad you didn’t tell him you’d handle it yourself.”
“I’m young, Bill, but I’m not crazy.”
“Do you have any idea if he’s referring to a real lawsuit?”
“My guess is, yes. He described it as ‘dangerous.’”
Eggers frowned. “I’m not aware of anything like that looming in Bentley’s future.”
“Perhaps it hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps he’s thinking of suing, not being sued.”
“I’m going to have a word with our litigation department and see what we can find out. If Bentley comes to us with this, I want to be ready.” Eggers got to his feet and wandered out.
Cookie came in with a brown envelope and handed it to Herbie. “This just came by messenger.”
“Thanks, Cookie. You performed brilliantly in putting together that closing.”
“Thank you, kind sir.”
“You’re getting a fifteen percent raise, starting with your next paycheck,” Herbie said. “And it is richly deserved.”
Cookie smiled broadly, revealing small, beautiful teeth. “Thank you again.” She curtsied, then went back to her desk.
Herbie opened the envelope and removed the contents. It was a statement of his ex-wife’s brokerage account, with a letter saying that it had been released to him. He flipped through the pages, looking at the investments, then he called Cookie back in and handed her the statement. “Write a reply to the signatory of this letter, to be hand delivered, thanking him and instructing him to immediately liquidate all the shares, except the Apple stock, and to wire the proceeds to my checking account. Then write another letter to my banker, telling him that upon receipt of the funds he is to issue a cashier’s check for three million dollars, payable to Mark Hayes, and have it hand delivered to me.”
“It will be done,” she said.
“And when those are done, I’ll dictate a document transferring some of High Cotton Ideas stock to me, for Mark Hayes’s signature.”
“I shall return,” she said.
Herbie sat back and reflected that things were going very well indeed for him, and that it had been his experience that whenever things were going very well for him he always found a way to screw it up. When he had won sixteen million dollars, net, in the lottery, he managed to blow six million of it in three months, and all he had to show for it was an apartment, a car, and some clothes. He resolved that henceforth he would devote himself to making his fortune grow, instead of blowing it. Now that he had money in Marshall Brennan’s hedge fund and an investment in High Cotton Ideas, he was off to a good start.
22
Stone met Dino for dinner at P.J. Clarke’s.
“Are we ever going to have dinner anywhere else?” Dino asked.
“I’m game,” Stone said. “Suggest somewhere.”
“I mean, I’ve always liked Clarke’s, but none of the regulars from Elaine’s are ever here.”
“That’s because, like us, they don’t know what else to do with themselves.”
“I miss them,” Dino said.
“Why? You didn’t spend a lot of time with them.”
“Yeah, but I miss them anyway.”
“Dino, I’ve got news for you: Elaine is dead, and Elaine’s is closed for good. Get used to it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Are you seeing the dancer, Rita?”
“Oh, yeah, but the hours may be more than I can deal with. Right now, she’s available in the evenings, because she rehearses in the daytime, then, after tomorrow night, she’ll only be available in the daytime, when I’m working, because she’s performing at night. You going to the opening?”
“I think we’re sitting together.”
“Okay, and there’s the party at Sardi’s afterward. It may be the last time I see Rita.”
“Cheer up, maybe the show will close after the first performance.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on her. How much have you seen of Marla?”
“Only the once. Fortunately, unlike Rita, she’ll be available in the evenings once the show has opened.”
“Good for you. If I can’t see Rita, then I’m going to start thinking about Shelley again.”
“Have you heard from her since you booted her out of your bed?”
“I had a postcard with a picture of the Port Authority bus terminal on it. No signature.”
“What did she have to say?”
“‘See you around.’”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I hope you burned the postcard. You don’t want that lying around the house.”
“I’ve been a cop all these years, and you think I don’t know how to destroy incriminating evidence?”
Stone laughed. “I was getting worried about you.”
“I was getting worried about me, too. You know, there’s this female detective in my squad named Vivian DeCarlo, nice Ital-ian girl.”
“Dino, the next worse thing to fucking Shelley Bach is fucking somebody in your squad.”
“Unless we can get away with it,” Dino replied.
“Oh, shit,” Stone said. “You’re determined to destroy your career, one way or the other.”
“So what if I do? I’ve got the money from my divorce settlement, and a pension waiting for me.”
“Retirement would be an unnatural act for you. What would you do with yourself?”
“I don’t know. What do other retirees do?”
“Play shuffleboard and wait to die.”
“I could travel.”
“You hate travel, unless I’m there to fly you.”
“I could buy a place in Italy and go live there.”
“You’re a New Yorker, not an Italian.”
“With a name like Bacchetti, I’m not Italian?”
“You live and breathe New York. What would you do in Italy? You speak about as much Italian as I do.”
“I used to speak Italian, with my grandmother, when I was a kid. It would come back to me.”
“You’d end up sitting in some bar in Rome, trying to pick up American tourists, so you could talk to somebody.”
“That’s pretty much what I do here, except they’re not tourists.”
“What you do here is be a cop. I hope you’re not stupid enough to give that up before they boot you out.”
Dino sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to quit.”
“If you start seeing this DeCarlo girl, you’ll end up getting one or both of you transferred, probably to the Bronx or the outer reaches of Brooklyn.”
Stone looked toward the door and saw Herbie Fisher standing there.
“There’s Herbie,” Dino said. “At last, a familiar face.”
Stone waved him over. “He wants to be called Herb now-he’s growing up.”
Herbie sat down and ordered a drink. “What a day!” he said. “What a week!”
“Is that good?” Dino asked.
“You bet your ass it is,” Herbie said. “I got promoted to senior associate and pulled in two pieces of new business, maybe three.”
“What’s the third?” Stone asked.
Herbie told them about his dinner with Robert Bentley II.
