Severe Clear

by Stuart Woods

  Rick said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You all have excellent backgrounds for the jobs to which you will apply, and you must do everything possible to see that you are hired. When you return to the United States, you must obtain throwaway cell phones, set up e-mails in your code names, then send your e-mail addresses to the following website.” Algernon gave them the name, then repeated it. “When you have been hired at the hotel, you will send an e-mail to that address saying, ‘All is well. I am fine,’ signing it with your code name. I will contact you at those e-mail addresses and give you further instructions at a later date. When you go to work at the hotel, you will not give any sign that you recognize each other. Rick, your code name will be Wynken. Hans, your code name will be Blynken. Mike, your code name will be Nod. Everybody understand?”

  The three men nodded.

  “You may receive further instructions from me directly or by phone. I sign my e-mails with the name ‘Algernon.’”

  The three men nodded.

  “Now leave, one at a time; five minutes apart. Don’t leave any fingerprints on the doorknob. Throw the gloves into a public trash bin at least two blocks away from here. Hans, you first, then Rick, then Mike.”

  Algernon sat and waited until all three men had left, then he took out his cell phone and sent an e-mail message to someone who was waiting for it. Two minutes later, he received a reply: “All is well. I am fine.”

  Algernon left the office, locking the door behind him. A few blocks away he discarded the office key and the gloves he had been wearing.

  5

  Stone and Dino met for dinner at Patroon, a restaurant on East Forty-sixth Street. It was the first time they had dined there, and they were still looking for a replacement for Elaine’s. Stone and Dino had been detectives and partners at the 19th Precinct many years before; Dino was now running the detective squad there.

  They settled into a corner table in the handsome, paneled dining room, hung with photographs from the collection of the owner, Ken Aretsky.

  “What do you think?” Dino asked.

  Stone seemed distracted. “Huh?”

  “Of the restaurant.”

  “Oh. I like the look and feel of it.” He opened a menu. “More expensive than Elaine’s, though.”

  A waiter materialized before them and set down two drinks. “Knob Creek for you, Mr. Barrington. Johnnie Walker Black for you, Lieutenant Bacchetti.”

  Stone thanked the man. “That’s a good start,” he said, sipping the drink.

  “How did he know?” Dino asked.

  “Beats me. Did you get famous all of a sudden?”

  A man appeared at the table and introduced himself as the owner.

  “How do you do, Ken?” Stone asked. “Please pull up a chair.”

  Aretsky did so.

  “Your waiter is gifted with second sight,” Stone said, raising his drink.

  “Not really,” Aretsky replied. “Elaine told me to expect you two, though I didn’t think it would take so long.” The waiter brought him a drink.

  “When did this happen?”

  “About a month before she died,” Aretsky replied. “I think she knew she didn’t have long. Elaine said that the restaurant might not make it without her, and that you two were her most loyal customers. She said you’d turn up here eventually, and she told me what you drink.”

  Dino raised his glass. “Elaine,” he said.

  Stone and Ken raised their glasses and drank. They talked for a few minutes about the photographs on the walls, then Ken excused himself to greet another customer.

  “She’s still taking care of us,” Stone said.

  “How about that?” Dino took another sip of his scotch and looked searchingly at Stone. “Something’s going on with you, pal. You depressed about something?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Stone replied. “I had lunch with Kelli Keane today.”

  “The redhead from the Post?”

  “Not anymore. She quit to write a biography of Arrington. She had a lot of questions.”

  Dino looked surprised. “And you answered them?”

  “Most of them. She seems to be doing a conscientious job of research, and I’d rather she had accurate information to work from instead of rumors.”

  “And you trust her?”

  “It’s not necessary to trust her. I don’t think she’ll lie outright, and if she does, I have a recording of the conversation.” He patted his breast pocket.

  “Smart move. Is she going to let you read it before publication?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “If a client of yours was talking to a former Post reporter for publication, what advice would you give him?”

  “I’d tell him to record the conversation.”

  “Yeah, and you’d tell him to demand to see the manuscript before publication.”

  “I don’t want to read it when it’s published, and I don’t want to read it now. There won’t be anything in it that I don’t already know.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Dino said. “So this lunch depressed you?”

  “It forced me to relive things.”

  “Speaking of ‘things,’ how are they with you and Marla Rocker?”

  “Okay, I guess. She’s going to direct Peter’s play, and she’s casting now. She won’t be able to make it to the hotel opening.” Stone and Arrington’s son was a student at the Yale School of Drama, and he had written the play the year before. Dino’s son, Ben, also a student there, had produced it, and now it was being readied for Broadway.

  “You going to take somebody else?” Dino asked.

  “Who? I’m not seeing anybody else.”

  “I’ve never known that condition to last very long,” Dino said.

  Stone sighed. “I don’t know, everything is just kind of . . . flat.”

  “You’ve got the grand opening to look forward to. The kids and their girls are going to be there, and I’m bringing Viv.” Dino had been seeing another detective, Vivian DeCarlo, who had worked for him at the 19th, and whom he had had transferred when he couldn’t stand not going out with her.

  “I’m happy for you,” Stone said.

  “The event sounds like it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun,” Dino pointed out.

  “Oh, there’s something new,” Stone said. He told Dino about the NSA intercept of a mention of the hotel.

  “That’s kind of creepy,” Dino said.

  “It’s more than creepy. We’re going to have Will Lee and the president of Mexico there, you know.”

  “I know. I can see how there might be a little concern.”

  “A little concern? Both the Secret Service and Strategic Services have doubled their manning for those days. Mike Freeman is taking it very seriously, and if he’s worried, I’m worried.”

  Dino picked up a menu. “Let the pros sweat it,” he said. “You and I are out of our depth with that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah,” Stone said, picking up his menu, “and I don’t like being out of my depth. That’s how you drown.”

  They ordered dinner, and after it came, they liked it.

  6

  J. Herbert Fisher, formerly a loser of the Olympic class, but now an ace young attorney at Stone Barrington’s firm, Woodman & Weld, stood at the bar of P. J. Clarke’s, sipped his bourbon, and gazed at his prospects.

  There was a pair of attractive brunettes a couple of bar stools away, but they were both wearing wedding rings, and that made them out of bounds. Herbie, as he had been known formerly, until he had advised those who knew him that he preferred and insisted on being called Herb, had had a semi-long-term relationship with a beautiful associate at his firm, but she had finally told him that she didn’t think an in-house pairing would be helpful to either of their careers. Since that time, it had been catch-as-catch-can, which hadn’t been all bad, but he had had to start seduction from scratch about twice a week, on average, and the experience was wearing thin.

  Herbie caught an elbow in a ri
b and surmised that someone behind him was trying to nail down a space at the bar. He considered elbowing back but decided that the elbower might outweigh him. He peered over his shoulder and found empty space, until he ratcheted his gaze down a few inches and located the top of a blond, female head. Herbie didn’t exactly mind tall women, but he wasn’t all that tall himself, and he found it comforting when he could look slightly down at a female.

  “Pardon me,” he said, “are my ribs crowding your elbow?”

  She looked up at him, revealing a strikingly pretty face. “Not anymore.”

  “Pretty good elbow,” Herbie said to her. “Did you play high school football?”

  “Oddly enough I did,” she said. “I was an ace kicker: thirty-two extra points and eighteen field goals my senior year. Would you like to experience my field goal attempt?” She waved frantically at a bartender who was busy being busy elsewhere.

  “Maybe later,” Herbie said. “May I get you a drink? I have influence here.”

  She shot him a withering glance. “If you can produce a Laphroaig on the rocks right here”—she tapped the bar in front of her—“within sixty seconds, I’ll give you . . . the benefit of the doubt.”

  Herbie made sure his gaze did not leave hers. He raised his right index finger and made a twirling motion.

  A bartender materialized. “What can I get you, Herb?”

  “Sean, this lady would like a Laphroaig on the rocks, my tab.”

  “Sure thing.” There was the sound of ice hitting a glass, then of glass hitting the bar, then liquid striking ice. The result was set down in front of the young woman.

  “I reckon that took about twenty seconds,” Herbie said. “That should get me more than the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “You can ask me two questions.”

  “One: May I have the sixty-second version of your biography? Two: Will you have dinner with me?” He watched her expression, which did not change. “I am reliably informed that there is a restaurant at the rear of this establishment.”

  “Okay,” she said, “here goes.” She took a deep breath: “Born in New York City twenty-nine years and two months ago, educated in the public schools and at Columbia University, followed by one year of Columbia Law School: boring. Joined the NYPD as a patrol officer, served four years, quit when I didn’t make detective, went to work for a security company called Strategic Services for three years, then quit to become a P.I. That’s the twenty-second version—you’ll have to pry the rest out of me over dinner.” She raised her glass, then took a long, grateful swig of the single-malt scotch. “I’m hungry. How long will it take you to get a table?”

  “Follow me,” Herbie said, tossing two twenties on the bar and leading the way aft. A moment later they were wedged into a corner of the crowded dining room. She polished off her drink and raised her glass. “Join me in another?”

  Herbie instructed a waiter, and the drinks appeared. He raised his glass. “I know that single-malt scotch is delicious,” he said, “but it will eventually eat your liver.”

  “You worry about your liver, I’ll worry about mine,” she replied. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with your name.”

  “Harp O’Connor,” she said. “Call me Harpie or Harpo and I’ll show you that kick of mine in a painful place.”

  “I perceive that you are Irish.”

  “You are very perceptive. Both sides. I’m first generation. My mother is a nurse, my father, a bartender who owns the bar.”

  “Why aren’t you drinking in his place?”

  “The surveillance there is intrusive, and the old man won’t let me have more than one drink. And he’ll eighty-six any man I talk to.”

  “All good reasons for drinking somewhere else,” Herbie said.

  “Your turn, Herb.”

  “Fisher, and I don’t like extensions of my first name, either. Born in Brooklyn thirtyish years ago, played hooky from the public schools, followed by NYU Law School.”

  “What happened to college?” she asked.

  “I finessed that.”

  “How’d you get into law school without pre-law?”

  “I passed the bar. That impressed the admissions committee enough to allow me to enter. I finished in two years with a three-point-nine GPA.”

  “Okay, so you’re smart. Are you employed?”

  “I’m a senior associate at the firm of Woodman & Weld.”

  “Do they give you anything responsible to do there?”

  “One of my clients is your former employer, Strategic Services, whose CEO, Michael Freeman, gave me the business.”

  “Mike Freeman is a smart guy,” Harp said. “One of the reasons I left was that I couldn’t get anywhere near him.”

  “You seem to have a history of quitting when your employers won’t give you responsibility quickly enough.”

  “Well put. I decided I’d be happier if I had all the responsibility. That’s what being self-employed is all about.”

  “Why a P.I.?”

  “Because that’s what people were willing to pay me to do. One of Strategic’s clients asked me to investigate a couple of his employees in my spare time. As a result, both employees were fired, and I was hired. Word about me somehow got around that hiring me more than paid for itself, and other work appeared. Now I’m well afloat.”

  “Admirable,” Herbie said.

  They both ordered steaks and onion rings, and Herbie picked out a good red from the list.

  —

  Well,” Harp said, when they had finished dinner and reduced the bottle to half a glass. “I’m not tired, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Show me where you live,” she said.

  “That’s direct.”

  “Saves time. One of the ways I judge people is by how they occupy the spaces they live in. If you live in a rat hole, tell me now, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Herbie signed the check and pulled the table out for her. “Come with me,” he said.

  They took a cab over to Park Avenue, to Herbie’s building. They took the elevator up, and when they walked into his apartment she didn’t take her coat off until she had had a look around. Finally, she handed him her coat. “You’ll do, Herb,” she said.

  7

  Herbie was awakened by the smell of bacon frying. He pried open an eye, stumbled into the bathroom, brushed his teeth and hair, and got into a robe.

  He was salivating as he arrived in the kitchen and found her setting the table by the window. “Good morning,” he said.

  “First kitchen I’ve seen in New York that has a window that doesn’t overlook an air shaft,” she said, raking eggs out of a skillet onto the plates as two English muffins popped out of the toaster.

  “It’s a penthouse,” Herbie said. “The air shaft surrounds the apartment.”

  She recovered the bacon from the microwave, buttered the muffins, poured orange juice, set the coffeepot on the table, and sat down. “Join me?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Herbie sat down and tasted the eggs. “Wow,” he said. “What’s your secret?”

  “If I told you my secrets, they wouldn’t be secret.”

  Herbie was eating too fast to talk.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “Mmmmf?”

  “You’re thinking, as my father would put it, ‘How did I fall into this pot of jam? How could I meet such a beautiful woman, experience the best sex of my life, and have the best breakfast ever, all in such a short time and with so little effort?’”

  Herbie swallowed. “You’re a witch,” he said, then filled his mouth again.

  Harp smiled. “There you have it. Tell me, how did you get rich enough at the age of thirtyish to live like this? Inherited wealth?”

  “I inherited it from the New York State Lottery.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “I kid you not.”

  “So, you blew it on fast living, the wa
y lottery winners always seem to?”

  Herbie shook his head. “I got smart before it was all gone. Now I actually make more than I spend.”

  “A good practice,” she replied, sipping her coffee. “I’m there, myself, and I like it.”

  “Are you getting interesting work?” Herbie asked.

  “I am. I like investigation, especially when people are trying to hide things, which they usually are. I’m a whiz on the computer, and that helps. I’m an urban girl, and I don’t really like fresh air all that much.” She cocked her head. “Ever been married?”

  “Once,” Herbie said.

  “How long?”

  “Let’s say it was counted in months, not years. She and her brother ran off with a huge sum of money stolen from their father’s business and moved to a safe haven in the Pacific.”

  “Didn’t she invite you?”

  “Yes, but I have this thing: I can be sneaky, but I’m not dishonest. I wouldn’t live on money stolen from somebody else. Mind you, I got a very nice divorce settlement, and I don’t mind having that in the bank.”

  “How do you get a divorce settlement after being married only a few months?”

  “By getting it before no-fault divorce was signed into law in New York State. She didn’t really mind signing the money away, since it had already been sequestered by the feds, pending settlement of the firm’s losses. My attorney managed to get it unsequestered. You ever been married?”

  “Yeah. I married a guy I met when we were both at the Police Academy. Lasted a little over two years. We were working different shifts in different precincts and hardly ever saw each other. He was a sweet guy, but not smart. He was on the take a week after he got his shield, and I couldn’t live with that.”

  “You were smart to get out.”

  She shrugged. “I guess. He’s doing time now, along with a dozen other guys who got caught when Internal Affairs busted them. I had to loan him money for a lawyer.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Herbie said.

  Harp shrugged. “I just chalked it up as life experience. I decided to make more objective judgments of people, instead of being hooked on charm.”