Dirt

They drove back to Manhattan in silence. When they reached Stone’s house, Dino got out of the car with him.

“So, what was Amanda Dart doing at Arnie Millman’s funeral? She his ex-wife or something?”

“Funny. She said Arnie used to be a source for her.”

“For a gossip columnist? I don’t believe it.”

“She apparently has some fairly unbelievable sources.”

“That don’t add up,” Dino said flatly.

“She’s probably got a source or two in every station house in Manhattan,” Stone said. “How do you think these people get the story so fast when somebody of note gets arrested? It makes sense: it’s just funny that Arnie was one of them.”

“Well, I guess he liked a few extra bucks as well as the next guy.”

“I guess so. I gotta run. See you.”

Dino waved good-bye and got back into his car.

Stone put Arnie and Amanda out of his mind and started thinking about his dinner date.

Chapter 24

Stone arrived at Arrington’s building on time and was announced by the lobby man. On the way up he reflected on the fact that he had once known another woman who had lived in this building, and the memory of that experience made him uneasy.

She came to the door wearing an apron over white pants and a white turtleneck sweater, seeming a negative image of the girl in black he had last seen that morning. There was a glass of wine in her hand. “Hi, come on in.”

He followed her into a small apartment, especially small for such a posh building. There seemed to be only a living room and, through an open door, a bedroom. A counter divided the larger room into living and kitchen areas. She waved him to a stool at the counter and poured him a glass of red wine from an open bottle that was already nearly half empty. “Or would you prefer booze?” she asked belatedly.

“This is fine,” Stone said, settling on the stool. “Smells good; what are you cooking?”

“A lamb dish,” she said. “One of a repertoire that includes only half a dozen recipes, all easy.”

“Easy is okay when it smells like that.”

“How was your day?”

“I went to a funeral in Brooklyn, that’s how my day was.”

“Oh. Somebody important to you?”

“Somebody I knew when I was a cop. Another cop, retired.”

“Are you sad?”

“I didn’t know him all that well, but he sometimes worked for me. He was a likeable guy.”

“I’m not sad anymore,” she said. “Again, I’m sorry about last night.”

“Last night had its rewards. And this morning.”

She smiled a little. “I’m glad you think so. Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes; good thing you were on time.”

“I’m compulsively on time.”

“Not I.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She checked something in the oven, then pulled a stool up to face him. “I don’t get you,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t add up.”

“No?”

“No. You’re this extremely polished man; you live in this very impressive house; you dress beautifully; you have something to do with a prestigious law firm, but you don’t actually work there; and yet you’re retired, at an early age, from a blue-collar job that doesn’t produce a whole lot of polished men.”

“I was something of a misfit on the force,” he said.

“That I believe.”

“And I was never allowed to forget it.”

“How so?”

“Well, as my former partner once said to me, ‘Stone, the police force is a kind of mystic lodge, and you never joined.’”

“You didn’t buy into the cop culture?”

“Not really. I found the work fascinating and often rewarding, but, I confess, I was unable to become one of the guys. I knew it, and they knew it. The only cop I was ever really close to was my ex-partner, Dino.”

“Dino Bacchetti?”

Stone blinked. “How did you know that name?”

“I wrote something for New York magazine once, about a case at the Nineteenth Precinct. I interviewed him for it.”

“I’m surprised you got out of his office with your virtue.”

She laughed. “I nearly didn’t; Dino is very smooth.”

“That he is.”

“So you were white bread among the Italians, the Irish, and the Hispanics in the department?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“What, exactly, do you do for Woodman and Weld?”

“Their dirty work, mostly; the odd criminal case, the odd investigation.”

“Now I’m getting the picture.”

“So I add up now?”

“The house doesn’t add up.”

“I inherited it from a great-aunt, my grandfather’s sister.”

“Money, too?”

“Just the house. I did a lot of the restoration myself, but it damn near broke me.”

“I’m glad you’re not filthy rich,” she said.

“I’m not glad,” he replied. “I’ve got nothing at all against filthy rich. My father, God rest his soul, would be deeply ashamed of my attitude.”

“Your father the Communist?”

“Father and mother; they met at a Party meeting. They were idealistic; they had both broken with their families in New England and had been through a depression.”

“Your polish must have come from them.”

“Unlike some of their colleagues in the Party, they had abandoned a lifestyle, but not the manners acquired therefrom.”

“Good for them.”

“You would have liked my mother.”

“I love her work. How about your father?”

“He’d have been deeply suspicious of you.”

“Why?”

“He knew class when he saw it, and he wanted to live in a classless society.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

She went to the oven, removed an iron pot, and set it on a small table in the living room that had been carefully set. “Open another bottle of wine, will you? It’s right there on the kitchen counter.”

Stone found a corkscrew, opened the bottle, and took it to the table.

She poured them another glass of wine and raised hers. “Bon appetit.”