Dirt

“Wouldn’t her daddy kick in for a place on the East Side? I mean, doesn’t he love his little girl?”

“You bet your ass he would, but I can’t take that from him. Next time we get some commission looking into corruption on the force, they’d have me by the balls.”

“Not if the place is in her name, paid for with her money.”

“Shit, you think he’s just going to write her a check and say, ‘Here, honey, buy yourself a co-op’? Nah, he’d have to screw somebody out of the place, or he wouldn’t feel right about it, you know? I mean, he’d find some schmuck with a nice apartment who owes him a hundred grand on the book, and he’d take it away from him. That’s how the goombahs operate.”

“I guess you’re right. Still, if you’re living in Manhattan, Mary Ann wouldn’t have to see so much of her family, would she?”

Dino brightened at the thought. “You got a point there, pal. Anything I could do to get out of those family dinners would be fine by me. I walk into the house and everybody stops talking, you know? It’s like they been talking about burning down a building or clipping somebody, and now I’m there, and they have to talk about the weather. It’s uncomfortable, you know?”

Stone shoved a menu at him. “Want to start with some calamari?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Stone waved a waiter over.

They were on coffee when Elaine came their way, clutching a sheet of paper and laughing heartily. “Stone, you made the papers,” she said, handing him the paper. Dino leaned over to read along with him.

DIRT

Flash, earthlings! Our favorite bitch queen, Amanda Dart, has hired herself a shamus to track us down! Don’t you love it? No kidding, she’s retained ex-cop, now an East Side shyster, Stone Barrington, to find out how we know so much. You remember dear Stone: He was the cop who broke the Sasha Nijinsky disappearance case a few years back. For his trouble, the department shipped him out. Now he’s supposed to catch us at our work! Lotsa luck, Stone!

“What’s going on, Stone?” Dino asked.

“I don’t believe it,” Stone said. “This happened only this afternoon, what, five hours ago?”

Elaine was loving it. “I love it!” she crowed.

“Tell me,” Dino said.

Stone told him.

“You got nothing better to do with your time than to track down somebody for an old dame who got caught with her knickers down?”

“She’s an important client of Woodman and Weld, or maybe just an important person; I’m doing it as a favor to them. And she’s not so old.”

Dino shook his head. “Give me a good homicide anytime.” He drained his coffee cup and set it on the table, glancing at his watch. “I gotta be somewhere,” he said.

“Oh?” Stone asked, looking at his own watch. “You’re going home to Brooklyn so early?”

“Not directly home, no.”

“Dino.” Stone shook his head. “You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“What’re you talking about, trouble?”

“I know you; this unscheduled stop has something to do with a lady.”

“So?”

“So, if your father-in-law should hear about it, you won’t have anything to offer the ladies anymore.”

“Stone, don’t say stuff like that,” Dino said, shivering.

“You know I’m right.”

“The old man has too much to worry about that he should take an interest in my social life.”

“Don’t be so sure, pal.”

“I’m always careful,” Dino said, slipping into his coat.

“I hope you’re right,” Stone said.

Chapter 11

On the West Coast, as Dino left Elaine’s, Allan Peebles arrived at his Beverly Hills home after a long editorial board meeting at the “newspaper” he edited, The American Infiltrator. His editorial board consisted of a dozen writers and editors who had failed at real newspapers and magazines and had ended up, as Peebles had, at the last stop for a journalist, a seamy tabloid. They were consoled by the fact that they were considerably better paid than their counterparts at real newspapers.

Peebles was an androgynous Scot who had fled his native Glasgow, pursued by rumors about his sexual orientation, for London, where he had acquired an English accent, an English wife, and, apparently while holding his nose, two English daughters. When the marriage failed, his father-in-law, who owned a London tabloid, had sent him to America to found a similar organ there, on the condition that he not return to England until his daughters were of age.

To his father-in-law’s surprise, Peebles had succeeded in putting together a highly profitable, if highly disreputable, publication, which specialized in exposing those parts of the lifestyles of the rich and famous that they had hoped would remain secret. Peebles did this with some glee, while, in the permissive atmosphere of La-La Land, indulging his own rather specialized appetites. Tonight, Peebles was hungry for pizza.

Upon entering his empty house, he shucked off his jacket, picked up a phone, and pressed an unlabeled speed-dial button.

“Jiffy Pizza,” a whiskied female voice said.

“It’s number two zero two; how are you, sweets?”

“Fine, baby; what’s your pleasure tonight?”

“I’m in the mood for the special.”

“’Round-the-world?”

“You bet.”

“With sausage?”

“Lots of sausage.”

“That’s going to run you twenty,” she said. Twenty meant two hundred.

“And cheap at the price, I’m sure it will be.”

“Half an hour, sweets. Your order is in the oven.”

“The sooner the better. Bye.” He hung up and walked into the kitchen. Opening the freezer door, he extracted a bottle of lemon vodka and poured himself a double. He always had to be a little drunk for pizza.

Three miles away, Sheila consulted her book and dialed a number.

“Hey, talk to me,” a husky male voice said.

“It’s the pizzeria,” Sheila said. “I’ve got an order for a ’round-the-world, with lots of sausage; I thought of you.”

“Of course you did, baby.”

“You available immediately?”

“How much?”

“Ten; you won’t be there long, believe me.”

“I can do it.”

She gave him the address. “Oh, and pick up a pizza on the way; we want this to look good, don’t we?”

“Sure we do.”