“Sure,” Dino said. “Anybody hungry?” Without waiting for a reply, he waved at a waiter for menus.
“I need red meat,” Felicity said. “Sirloin, please, medium rare, pommes frites.”
“It shall be so,” Stone replied, ordering two.
“Make it three,” Dino said.
“DO YOU EVER think of retiring, Dino?” Felicity asked when their steaks were ruins of their former selves.
“Never,” Dino said. “I’m going to do the full thirty, and then we’ll see.”
“You’ll have to take a promotion,” Stone said.
“Nah, I have an understanding with the commissioner.”
“Dino doesn’t want to be a captain,” Stone explained to Felicity. “He likes to pretend he’s still a street cop.”
“I don’t pretend,” Dino said. “I am a street cop.”
“Yes, but you never see the street, except from the rear seat of your cop-chauffeured car,” Stone pointed out.
“I understand, Dino,” Felicity said. “Sometimes I wish I were, well, a street agent again.”
“They got you cuffed to a desk?” Dino asked.
“A very good description,” she replied.
“I wouldn’t like that.”
“It has its advantages,” Felicity said.
“Name one,” Dino said.
“I haven’t been shot at for quite some time,” she replied.
“That’s okay if personal safety is important to you.”
“It isn’t important to you?” Stone asked.
“Nah, I don’t mind an occasional bullet in my direction.”
“This is news to me,” Stone said to Felicity. “I’ve never heard of Dino’s fondness for flying lead.”
“I understand what he means,” she said. “One remembers the occasions when death was near but passed one by.”
“You bet your sweet ass one do,” Dino said.
“I remember getting shot in the knee,” Stone said. “I didn’t find anything to like about it.”
“Not even survival?” Felicity said.
“Oh, well, yes,” Stone said. “That and not getting shot higher up.”
She squeezed his thigh. “I’m grateful for that, too.”
14
Stone and Felicity got out of the ambassador’s old Rolls-Royce in front of his house. As the car pulled away, the opposite side of the street was exposed, and Stone, standing on his doorstep, fumbling for his key, saw her.
He hustled Felicity inside, locked the door, picked up the nearest phone and pressed the intercom and page buttons. “Willie, pick up any phone.”
“I’m here,” Willie said.
“Where?”
“In the kitchen.”
“She’s across the street.”
“I’m on it.”
“Watch your ass.” Stone hung up.
“Your former lady friend?” Felicity asked.
“I wouldn’t describe her that way.”
“How would you describe her?”
“As the insane daughter of a good friend.” They got onto the elevator and started upstairs.
“Isn’t it about time you told me about her?” Felicity asked.
Stone sighed. He ushered her off the elevator and into his bedroom, and they began to undress for bed.
“All right,” he said. “I met her four years ago. I didn’t seek her out; she found me. We saw each other for a while, and it got serious. She suggested we get married, and I didn’t refuse her.”
“A reluctant bridegroom?”
“No, just one with reservations. She is the daughter of a man named Eduardo Bianchi, an Italian-American of some note.”
“The name is familiar, but I can’t place him.”
“A great many people would say the same thing,” Stone replied. “No one really knows Eduardo’s true history, but the stories are that, as a young man, he became associated somehow with some Mafia figures. There is disagreement about whether he was ever actually a member, but there is disagreement about almost all the details of Eduardo’s life.”
“Very interesting,” Felicity said.
“There is some evidence to support the idea that he was the man behind, but not a member of, the Commission, which was an organization that tried to impose some order on the criminal elements under it and sometimes succeeded.”
“I’ve heard of that.”
“Back in the fifties, when J. Edgar Hoover finally began to believe that the Mafia might just exist, Eduardo is said to have withdrawn even further from the organization, but he is thought to have continued to control it from a distance. Meanwhile, he became a prominent business figure, investing in and serving on the boards of a number of important banks and other financial institutions. Over the years he became a model of respectability in spite of the rumors about his past as well as an important figure in the worlds of the arts and charitable institutions.
“Eduardo lived quietly in a house he built way out in Brooklyn on the water. He maintained offices in Manhattan but did most of his work from home. He entertained judiciously, when it suited him, and sent his two daughters, Anna Maria and Dolce, to fine schools, where they did well. They both worked in various businesses and foundations that Eduardo controlled.
“Anna Maria, who preferred to be called Mary Ann, met Dino at some function in Little Italy, and almost immediately after that she found herself pregnant. It was imparted to Dino that, if he wished his testicles to remain attached to his body, a proposal of marriage would be in order. A boisterous wedding was followed by an even more boisterous marriage, which produced a son, now in a New England prep school.
“A couple of years ago, there was a divorce, and Eduardo insisted on a settlement in Dino’s favor, which has enabled him to live well as a newly minted bachelor.”
“But you digress,” Felicity said. “Tell me about the other daughter.”
“We traveled to Venice, where Eduardo was attending a business convocation allegedly attended by the more important members of both the American and Italian Mafias. Dolce and I were married in a small civil ceremony, which was to have been followed a day or two later by a large religious ceremony presided over by a high-ranking Italian cardinal who was influential in the Vatican.
“The day before the second wedding, the husband of a friend of mine was murdered in Los Angeles. You may remember the actor Vance Calder.”
“Of course,” Felicity said. “You were involved in that?”
“I was involved in the subsequent investigation, and the murderer was identified but never convicted. Dino and I left Venice for L.A., and Dolce began to behave erratically, which was to say, dangerously.
“After a time, the relationship ended, and Eduardo sought psychiatric treatment for Dolce, keeping her in his home. Shortly after that, I received by messenger the torn-out page from the Venetian registry book that Dolce and I had signed. It could only have come from Eduardo.
“The following year, Dolce escaped from her father’s house and found me in Palm Beach, where I was working on a case. At a large party she fired several shots at me, but only one struck. Fortunately it was a nonfatal part of my body. She was immediately returned to her father’s custody and has remained there since.
