Carrie.
“No.”
“Is there another entrance besides the front door?”
“Yes. There’s a rear door from the kitchen and stairs down to a garden.”
“Excuse me for a minute,” Stone said. He walked into the empty dining room next door and made a call to Bob Cantor, an ex-cop who did many jobs for him.
“Cantor.”
“Bob, it’s Stone.”
“Hey, Stone. What’s up?”
“I need a bodyguard for a woman first thing tomorrow morning at my house. Her name is Carrie Cox; she’s at Elaine’s with me. Are you free right now?”
“Yeah, but I’ll put somebody else on guard duty.”
“She needs a security system: double front door, kitchen door leading to a garden, the usual windows, front and rear.”
“You got a key?”
“You can pick it up here.”
“I’m on it.”
“Listen, on the bodyguard, not too much of a gorilla-she travels in polite circles-but somebody who can handle a man with a knife and deal with an angry ex-husband.”
“Gotcha. I’ll be there in half an hour.” Cantor hung up, and Stone returned to the table.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning there will be somebody with you, and they will be until it’s no longer necessary. Give me the key to your apartment.”
She took a small ring from her purse, took off one of two identical keys, and handed it to him. “What for?”
“My friend is going to install a security system; it’s probably going to take all night, because he does these things right, so you should come home with me tonight.”
“All right.”
Stone handed her a cocktail napkin and his pen. “Make a list of what you need from your apartment for the weekend; my friend will put it together and bring it to you.”
Carrie began writing and filled up one side of the napkin, then the other.
Bob Cantor walked into the restaurant and stood at the front, waiting. Stone waved him over and introduced him to Carrie.
“Hi, Bob,” she said. “Let me explain this list to you, where everything is in the apartment.” She took him through it, item by item, and told him where to find a suitcase.
“Got it,” Cantor said, pocketing the list. “Do you have a photograph of your ex-husband?”
“No, I threw all of them away.”
“What’s his name and address?”
“Max Long, Atlanta. I don’t know his street address.”
“Your protection is named Willie Leahy. He’ll be at your house with his brother Jimmy at nine tomorrow morning. You want them to rent a car? I think it’s best; you can be a target while trying to get a cab.”
“They can use my car,” Stone said.
“Good idea, with the armor and all.”
“You have an armored car?” Carrie asked.
“Lightly armored,” Stone said. “It came that way, and it’ll stop a bullet.”
“You,” Carrie said, putting her hand on his and squeezing, “are the second-best thing to happen to me in a long time.”
7
CARRIE SLEPT IN STONE’S ARMS for most of the night, and neither of them was much interested in sex. Stone took a handgun out of his safe and kept it in the bedside drawer.
Carrie didn’t wake up when he gently disengaged from her. He put on a robe, went down to the kitchen, and made them bacon and scrambled eggs, English muffins, coffee, and orange juice, then sent it upstairs in the dumbwaiter. He got the Times and went back upstairs to find Carrie sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray in her lap, bare-breasted, which was all right with him.
“Your dumbwaiter woke me,” she said. “A little bell went off.”
Stone took his own tray from the dumbwaiter and got in bed with it, adjusting the back with the remote control. “I’m glad you’re feeling better this morning,” he said. She was digging into the breakfast with enthusiasm.
“I am, and I’m starved,” she said.
Breakfast finished, he put their trays back into the dumbwaiter and sent it downstairs. He poured them both some more coffee and got back into bed. “I need to know a lot more about your ex-husband,” he said, “if I’m going to be able to help.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked, sipping her coffee.
“How long were you married?”
“Nine years.”
“What was the character of the marriage?”
“At first, okay, then increasingly distant, then finally violent.”
“You beat him up?”
She laughed. “I got in a couple of good licks,” she said, “but I got the worst of it. I moved in with a girlfriend and got a lawyer.”
“Tell me about the settlement.”
“He wouldn’t settle, so it was really an award by the judge. I got the house on Habersham, which I sold immediately, half his brokerage account, which I put into a municipal bond fund, and one million dollars in cash, most of which I invested conservatively.”
“Did the house have a mortgage?”
“No; times were good when he bought it. He paid a million two, and I sold it for four and a half million.”
“So, you’ve got several million dollars squirreled away.”
“Winter always comes,” she said.
“What is he so mad about?” Stone asked.
“The fact that I left him and the size of the award. It amounted to half of what he had.”
“He was surprised that you divorced him after he beat you up?”
“Not surprised, I think, just angry. It made the papers, and that made him look bad. He’s angry about the award, because he wouldn’t have given me a dime, unless he had been forced to. He’s mad, too, because he knows that he could have settled for less than the judge gave me. That really got him angry. That and the fact that, in the real estate crunch, he’s lost most of what he had left.”
“Does he have anything to gain by killing you? Insurance, maybe?”
“No.”
“So, it’s just irrational anger?”
“That’s what he’s good at.”
“You said you don’t know his address in Atlanta?”
“That’s right.”
The doorbell rang on his phone, and Stone pressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
“It’s Bob. I’ve got Carrie’s luggage, and the Leahys are here.”
“Take the Leahys to the kitchen. There’s coffee already made and Danish in the fridge. We’ll be down in a few minutes.” He pressed the button again and turned to Carrie. “We’d better get dressed; Bob is going to want to brief you about your security.”
