“I can,” Hightower said, “and I will have it in your hands by tomorrow.”
“Then I should think that, in a week or so, Woodman amp; Weld will have a draft agreement for you both to review.”
“Thank you, Stone,” Hightower said. “There’s something else: we’ve been with a large law firm downtown for a dozen years or more, but for the past year or two we’ve been feeling neglected. I know you’ve heard this before: we’re not getting the kind of prompt attention to our needs as in the past, and we’re not getting the attention of the senior partners. In short, we’re being taken for granted.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Hank,” Stone said with a straight face, although he was delighted to hear it. “May we be of service?”
“I think that’s a very good possibility,” Hightower said. “I’d like to meet some of your people.”
“I’ll be very happy to arrange that,” Stone said. “I think we should start by having you meet our managing partner, Bill Eggers, and perhaps you might bring your in-house counsel, as well. Bill can give you both a precise description of the breadth and depth of our services and how we might be of help to you.”
“I’d like that,” Hightower said.
They talked further over lunch, and Stone left them with a promise to get back to Hightower with a firm appointment to meet with Eggers.
Stone didn’t go home immediately. Woodman amp; Weld was located in the Seagram Building, upstairs from the Four Seasons, so he took the elevator and went straight to Eggers’s office. The secretary showed him in.
“Afternoon, Stone,” Eggers said. The debris of his lunch was still on his desk, and the secretary cleaned up. “What’s on your mind?”
“New business,” Stone said.
“Glad to hear it. Anybody I ever heard of?”
“Steele Security.”
Eggers’s eyebrows went up. “Are you serious?”
“I am. I just had lunch with Hank Hightower, their CEO, and Mike Freeman. They’ve asked us to put together an agreement between Steele and Strategic Services to cover some joint services they’re going to be offering.”
“Sounds interesting. Could be a wedge to get some more business from Steele.”
“We don’t need a wedge,” Stone said. “Hightower says they’re feeling neglected by their current firm and are looking for new representation. He’d like to bring his in-house counsel to meet with us.”
Eggers placed a hand on his chest. “Be still my heart,” he said. “Set it up. I’ll make time whenever they want to come in.”
Stone dug Hightower’s card out of his pocket, walked over to Eggers’s sofa, sat down, and picked up the phone. Five minutes later he hung up. “Three o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“Done,” Eggers said, making marks on his calendar to block out the time. “And you’ll be there, too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course, though please remember that I don’t know a hell of a lot about insurance.”
“Maybe not, but you know how to tap-dance. I’ll get a couple of department heads in on this, too.”
Stone got up to go. “Bill, thanks for handling Arrington’s will with such dispatch. I’m happy not to have been involved in that process.”
“Have you read the will?”
“No, and I don’t intend to.”
“As you wish,” Eggers said. “If you ever get around to it, I think you’ll be pleased with the way we’ve organized her estate.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“How’s the new school for Peter?”
“He’s eating it up. He’s going to screen the rough cut of his film for them next week.”
“I made a call to Yale on the subject of his and Ben’s applications,” Eggers said, “and learned that Eduardo was in ahead of me.”
“Thanks, Bill. Peter wants Yale badly.”
Stone excused himself and walked slowly back to the house, thinking he had had a pretty good day. He walked into his office and found Arrington waiting for him, and she was in tears.
30
S tone sat down on the sofa next to her. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Arrington grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and blew her nose. “I just had a call from an old friend of Vance’s, Prunella Wheaton?”
“The gossip queen? What did she want?”
“She said she got wind of somebody looking into you and me.”
“Come on, tell me the whole thing.”
“Someone got ahold of a copy of our marriage license.”
“That’s a public record. What else?”
“Well, they’ve figured out that we were married at Eduardo’s house and about the mayor, too, but they’re afraid of printing anything about that for fear of angering some of Eduardo’s friends.”
“So far, so good. Is there more?”
“They’ve figured out that I’m Vance’s widow and that I have a son.”
“None of this is really a secret,” Stone said. “Nobody could make very much of that.”
“They might, if they can count,” she said.
Stone thought about that. “I think we might have that covered with the change of birth certificate.” He thought some more. “Is Prunella Wheaton a friend of yours, too?”
Arrington shook her head. “No. I met her once, when I was lunching with a group of women in L.A. She and Vance had an affair when they were very young, long before I knew him.”
“And Wheaton didn’t say where she heard all this?”
“No, she said it was just a rumor.”
“Did you get the impression that it was somebody at the Post? Because that’s where Wheaton’s column runs in New York.”
“She didn’t say.”
“Apart from sharing this rumor, did Wheaton ask you any questions?”
“Just girl stuff. She congratulated me on the marriage and asked how Peter is.”
“What did you tell her about Peter?”
“She asked where he was in school, but I dodged that one.”
“What else?”
“She asked where I’m living, and I said in New York, then I made an excuse and got off the phone.”
“I think that was a good idea,” Stone said. “I think this rumor may be a fiction and that Wheaton is the one who’s interested. Why would a gossip columnist warn you that another gossip columnist is interested in you? This doesn’t pass the smell test.”
“What should we do?” Arrington asked.
“Let me make a couple of calls,” Stone said, “then we’ll make a plan.”
“What sort of plan?”
“I don’t know yet, but we don’t want to be caught off guard if she calls again, or if someone else does.”
“I see.”
“Did you confirm where and when the wedding took place and that the mayor performed the ceremony?”
“No, but I didn’t deny it, either.”
“For somebody like Wheaton, the lack of a denial is as good as a confirmation. You go upstairs and lie down, and don’t answer the phone for a while. Let Joan deal with it.”
Arrington stood up, and they hugged. “Thank you for being so calm,” she said. She got into the elevator and
