“Yes.”
“Then I’d take ham seriously and find out what, if anything, he has to offer. How could it hurt?”
“Well, it’s not like I have anything else to go on.”
“You’ll find Ed an entertaining character, full of stories, and he’s very smart. You could do worse than to have him on your side.”
“I didn’t see any evidence of a wife.”
“She bailed out when Ed was arrested, took half of everything and bought a house in Florida. Last I heard, she’d remarried.”
“Tell me, Lance, in what sort of repute is Rawls held by his former colleagues?”
“Some are sympathetic; some hate his guts. Hugh English, whom Dick was succeeding as Deputy Director for Operations, was one of the haters, but he signed off on the pardon recommendation. Incidentally, I don’t know if Ed mentioned it to you, but there are a few other retired spooks living out their years on that island. I understand they do some drinking together and call themselves the Old Farts.”
Stone laughed. “Thanks for the information, Lance.”
“Call me when I can help.” Lance hung up.
It suddenly occurred to Stone that he had a golf date the following morning, and he didn’t have any golf clubs. He saw Seth Hotchkiss working in the back garden, and he walked outside.
“Hey, Stone,” Seth said.
“Hey, yourself. Tell me, Seth, did Dick have any golf dubs?”
Seth nodded. “There’s a big cupboard in the garage, next to the MG.”
“I noticed, but I didn’t look inside.”
“There’s a lot of sports stuff in that cupboard.” Then Seth nodded toward a sailboat resting at the end of Dick’s dock. “There’s that, too, got delivered from the yard this morning, and there’s a picnic boat, ought to be delivered from the yard this afternoon. You’ll get a big bill for the maintenance and storage.”
“What’s the sailing boat?”
“It’s a one-off. Dick designed it himself maybe ten years ago and had it built over at Hinckley’s, in Southwest Harbor. They built the picnic boat, too, but Dick got that last year.”
“Thanks, Seth.” Stone went back into the house and then to the garage, where he opened the large cupboard. It was a veritable sporting goods store: There was a set of titanium Callaway clubs, tennis racquets, a croquet set, fishing equipment and more. Dick was nothing if not well equipped; he had spent his wife’s money well.
Stone went back into the house, opened the safe and read Dick’s will again. The bequest of the use of the house to Stone included outright ownership of all its “appurtenances.” Stone read that to include the cars and boats and whatever else he hadn’t discovered yet.
“Holy shit,” he muttered to himself.
Chapter 12
STONE WAS STANDING in front of the house with his golf clubswhen Ed Rawls pulled into the driveway in a shiny, new Range Rover. Stone put his clubs in the back and got into the passenger seat “Morning.”
“Good morning,” Rawls said. “Looks like we’ve got a good day for it.”
“Yep.”
“I had a call from Lance Cabot last night. We had a nice chat, and he offered me any support I might need in helping you with the Stone murders.”
“That’s good. Take him up on it.”
“He gave me a name at Langley as a liaison. I talked with her this morning, and she’s running down some things for me.”
“You want to tell me about the things?”
“Nah, it would take too long, and it wouldn’t help you. The information she gets might help, though, and I’ll tell you about that when I get it.”
“Okay.”
They drove through Dark Harbor and out to the golf course, where they unloaded their clubs. There was a wait while a foursome teed off before them.
“Let’s give them a good head start,” Rawls said. He looked down at Stone’s loafers. “What kind of golf shoes are those?”
“Oh, Dick’s were too small, and I didn’t have any of my own. I’ll have to send for some, I guess.”
Stone looked around; there were no carts. “We going to walk?” he asked.
“Oh, sure; it’s how I get my exercise.”
They teed off, and Rawls set a rapid pace down the fairway. Stone followed as best he could, but his loafers were not built for this.
TWO HOURS LATER they sat at a table at the Tarrantine Yacht Club, which was a modest building with a big dock and a lot of moorings, waiting for cheeseburgers. Stone took off his ruined loafers, which were soaking wet after a few tramps through the rough, and rubbed his feet.
“You gotta get some better shoes,” Rawls said, sipping his Coke.
“Tell me about it.” He had to replace the loafers, too. It had been an expensive round of golf.
“What did you shoot, finally?” Rawls asked.
“Don’t ask.”
“How’m I going to play you for money, if you
won’t tell me your score?”
“All right, I shot a fifty-two. How about you?”
“Forty, a little off my handicap.”
“Which is…?”
“Six.”
“Jesus, Ed, how the hell are you playing to that kind of handicap at your age?”
“I practice a lot. There’s fuck-all else to do around here, if you don’t sail or play tennis. What’s your handicap?”
“I don’t know, probably around twenty-five.”
“You need to practice more.”
“Well, if I spend enough time up here, I might do that. Golf is tough when you live in the city. I have a place in Connecticut, and I belong to a club there, but I don’t get up there often enough.”
“You going to be spending any time around here?”
“Maybe. Dick left me his house.”
“No kidding? That’s a very tidy inheritance. You know what that place is worth?”
“I get to use it, and so do my heirs, but if it’s sold, the proceeds go to the Samuel Bernard Foundation.”
“You know what that is?”
“Yes. Bernard was a mentor of mine in law school.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t recruit you.”
“He tried to, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was many years later he told me he thought I might not have been suited for the life. Lance signed me as a consultant, though.”
“That speaks well of you; Lance is a good judge of talent.”
Stone shrugged.
“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.
“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.
“That’s right.”
“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”
“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”
“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.
“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”
“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”
“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”
“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”
“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.
“Well done,” Rawls said.
“Well done what?”
“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”
“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”
Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of deja vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.
“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.
Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.
“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”
Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”
“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.
The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.
“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”
“Thank God there was only one of their father,” Stone muttered. He could not imagine what his summer in Islesboro would have been like if there had been two of Caleb. But now there were, and he didn’t like the idea much. He decided not to go over and introduce himself as Cousin Stone.
Chapter 13
DINO BACCHETTI’S UNMARKED CAR pulled up in front of the Palatine mansion in the outer reaches of Brooklyn, the home of his father-in-law, Eduardo Bianchi. “Wait here,” Dino said to his driver. “My guess is, this won’t take long.”
Dino got out of the car and trudged toward the front door, dreading every step. He had never had lunch alone with Eduardo, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. The meeting with Mary Ann and her lawyer yesterday had been a disaster that had ended in shouting and harsh words, and Dino thought he had probably been summoned here to be disciplined. He was well aware that Eduardo had only to lift an eyebrow and some obedient servant would slip a stiletto between his ribs.
Dino rang the bell, and the front door was opened by just such a servant, Pietro, a cadaverous sixty-year-old who had once had a fearsome reputation as an assassin. But that was back in the days when Eduardo was still taking an active part in the ruling of his Cosa Nostra family, which ran large parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Eduardo had since, over the past thirty years, made himself into an elder statesman of everything: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and nearly every important charity in the city. His Mafia connections had been mostly forgotten by the very few surviving people who knew anything about them. But Dino knew Eduardo still had the power to deal with people in any way he saw fit.
Pietro led Dino through the elegantly appointed house into the rear garden, where Eduardo sat at a table set for two. Eduardo rose and offered his hand, a good sign, Dino thought.
“Dino, welcome,” the old man said. He carried his eighty-odd years lightly, looking trim, even athletic, and there was only a little gray in his hair. “Please sit down and have some lunch.”
Dino sat “Beautiful day,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Yes, one appreciates good weather as one grows older,” Eduardo noted.
A waiter came and opened a bottle of Frascati, while another man set before them plates of bruschetta, little slices of bread fried in olive oil, then topped with chopped plum tomatoes, garlic and basil. Dino tried not to eat too greedily, but Eduardo’s younger sister was the best cook he had ever known, and he loved bruschetta.
“I understand things didn’t go well yesterday,” Eduardo said.
“That’s understating the case,” Dino replied.
“You know that I disapproved of your marriage to Anna Maria,” the old man said. He refused to refer to her as Mary Ann, as she preferred to be called.
“Yes, I knew that.”
“I was, of course, upset that Anna Maria was pregnant, but my principal objection was that you were a policeman.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dino said.
“However, as the years have passed I have come to respect your personal integrity. You would never allow me to use my influence to improve your position in the police department, though I could easily have done so, and you would never accept any gift from me, insisting that everything be in Anna Maria’s name. I realize now that you are being divorced, that works to your disadvantage.”
Dino shrugged. “All I want is shared custody of Benito,” he said.
“You will have that,” Eduardo said. “I do not approve of divorce, being a good Catholic, but I understand that people can come to a place in their lives where they can no longer live together, and I see little reason to deny them remarriage at some point. I once put that directly to the Pope, who was unhappy with me for a while, as a result.”
Dino thought that the Pope would have been at a disadvantage, arguing with Eduardo.
“You are aware, are you not, that Anna Maria has worked very hard at investing the money that came to her when she was twenty-one?”
“We never discussed that,” Dino said. “I told her I didn’t want to know.”
“I understand your position, but I assure you that the funds she started with came from entirely legitimate sources, and that that can be documented to the satisfaction of the New York Police Department or even the Internal Revenue Service.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Dino said.
“You have lived a long time in an unhappy marriage,” Eduardo said, “and the law entitles you to an equitable division of property.”
“I don’t want her property,” Dino said, though the thought of existing on a lieutenant’s salary and benefits did not thrill him.
“Anna Maria was able to do so well with her investments because you insisted on supporting her. That way, she could devote all her capital to making more.”
Dino shrugged.
“You are morally entitled to leave this marriage with more than you earn as a policeman,” Eduardo said, “so I have made certain arrangements.”
Dino said nothing but started in on the veal that had been placed before him.
“Anna Maria’s holdings now amount to about eleven million dollars, including the value of the apartment you shared, which was bought with earnings from her money. Tomorrow, a million dollars of her holdings will be placed in the trust that you set up at Benito’s birth and to which you would never allow me to contribute. This will be used as you have specified, for his education, and anything left over can be used to buy a home after he is twenty-five, though surely by that time he will have come into a considerable inheritance from me.”