Dirt

by Stuart Woods

  “Of course.”

  Amanda flipped through her address book and wrote down Helen’s and Barry’s addresses. “I really don’t believe that either of them could have anything to do with this; they’ve too much to lose.”

  “Then it will be best if we can eliminate them as suspects. We have to be sure.”

  “You know best,” she said, handing over the addresses.

  He looked at them. “What about Martha?” he asked.

  “Oh.” She scribbled down the information and handed it over. “But believe me, investigating her would be a waste of your time.”

  “Then I won’t bother until I’ve exhausted any other possibilities.”

  Martha appeared in the doorway, clutching a sheet of paper. “Excuse me for interrupting, Amanda, but I thought you’d want to see this.” She handed her boss the paper.

  Amanda read it quickly and handed it to Stone.

  DIRT

  Greetings, earthlings! Check out our dear Allan Peebles in the snaps below! Nice to know, isn’t it, that the fellow who has outed so many folks over the past couple of years is now out himself! This little photo op occurred in Allan’s backyard only last evening. The “rider” was booked by a very discreet Beverly Hills service that provides company for the lonely in the guise of pizza deliveries after dark. Word is, you can order just about any combination of goodies your little hearts desire!

  Allan, who’s been playing the part of a divorced gentleman and father, was married to the boss’s daughter, you know. We hear that in order to get pregnant the lady had to very carefully calculate her moment, then wear a sailor suit to arouse dear Allan’s interest long enough for a transfer of seed!

  Let’s see if this makes the front page of this week’s Infiltrator!

  “Well,” Stone said, “it looks as if this little sheet has coast-to-coast coverage, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” Amanda said, taking back the fax and staring at the photographs, which made her want to vomit, because they were so similar in nature to the one of her that had appeared in the sheet. “Mind you, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “What does this do for your investigation?” she asked.

  “Broadens it considerably, I should think,” he replied.

  Chapter 13

  Arnie Millman waddled into Stone’s office and plopped into a chair. Arnie had been retired from the force for fifteen years, and he looked like half a million elderly Jewish retirees in New York City, making him ideal for surveillance.

  “You putting on weight, Arnie?” Stone asked.

  “Always. It’s my wife’s cheesecake; I can’t help myself.”

  “You up for a little work?”

  “Why not? The money I can use.”

  Stone handed him a sheet of paper. “Two people: Helen Charlson and Barry White. They both work for a client of mine, a gossip columnist type, and some confidential information is leaking out of the client’s office. The girl has a boyfriend, I’m told, and the guy is gay; don’t know who he sees. I want you to find out who their principal social contacts are and run brief checks on those people – employment particularly. I’m especially interested in anybody working in the media, especially entertainment.”

  “When you need it?” Arnie asked, making notes.

  “Soonest; a week, outside.”

  Arnie nodded. “You want me to wire them?”

  “Arnie, I’ve still got a license to practice law, and I want to keep it.”

  “Stone, you know I’d never let it get back to you. I’m just a meddlesome old man who knows a lot of cops who wouldn’t turn him in for something like that.”

  “I’ll leave it to you, then, but we never talked about it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’d like to know whether either of them has a lot of debt, is very short of money, or has been spending beyond his or her means, especially in cash. Let’s extend that to their lovers, as well.”

  “If you want all this that fast, I’m going to need to bring in a couple guys.”

  “As long as they never hear of me.”

  “Budget?”

  “Ample, but not open-ended.”

  “Gotcha.” Arnie got up and sauntered out of the office.

  Stone’s secretary buzzed him. “Line one, here come de judge.”

  Stone picked up the phone. “Your Honor, how are you?”

  “So-so,” she replied. “Can I buy you lunch today?”

  “Sure. Downtown?”

  “Let’s do it in your neighborhood; I’d just as soon not be seen together around the courthouse.”

  “The Box Tree at twelve-thirty?”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll book.”

  The Box Tree was a dark, cozy restaurant not far from Stone’s house. He got there first and ordered half a bottle of wine. It was all the two of them would drink at lunch.

  She came in five minutes later and, once again, he thought how attractive she was – small, blond, pretty, and very fit. He sought her lips, but she offered her cheek. Uh-oh, he thought. “How are you, Sara?”

  “I’m all right.”

  He hadn’t seen her for a week, a long time for them. They usually spent two or three nights a week together. “You look wonderful today.” He poured her a glass of wine and waved at a waiter, who brought menus.

  “I’ll just have the wine,” she said. “I can’t really stay for lunch.”

  “You came all the way uptown for a glass of wine?”

  She looked him in the eye. “It hasn’t been going well, Stone, you and I.”

  “Funny, I thought it was going extremely well,” he replied.

  “You would think that,” she said. “Fact is, I don’t like sneaking around so the other lawyers I deal with won’t know; I don’t like recusing myself from your cases and not being able to say why; and good sex isn’t enough.”

  “I thought we had more going than sex,” he said.

  “I thought so, too, for a while, but I was wrong. We meet each other’s needs, to a point, and that point ends right after sex.”

  “You’ve met somebody, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Haven’t you?”

  “All right, I have; actually, it’s somebody I’ve known for a long time but am getting to know better.”

  “It’s the real thing?”

  “I don’t know about that yet. It might be, if I can devote some time to it.”

  Stone nodded. “And I’m using up a lot of time.”

  “You’re using up a lot of me, Stone, and I’m not getting enough back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry; you’ve always been straight with me. I know you don’t have any interest in marriage, and I thought that was okay, but it’s just not. I need something in my life with a future. I’m thirty-four, and I want kids before I’m forty.”

  “I can understand that,” Stone said into his wine glass.

  “Not really,” she said. “It’s just not something you can empathize with. You’re a sweet man, Stone, in lots of ways, but deep down inside you’re very… contained. I almost said cold, but that would be a bum rap. You’re just not… easy to reach. I’m probably not the first woman to tell you something like that.”

  Stone shrugged. He didn’t want to confirm it, but she was right. “So, who’s the guy?”

  “Tom Bill.”

  “Judge Thomas Bill?”

  “Right. Don’t worry, I won’t ever tell him about us. He’s the jealous type, and he could make your life miserable in court.”

  “That he could. What about you? Are you going to make my life miserable?”

  “Not in court,” she said, allowing herself a small smile. “You’ll be miserable later, when you figure out what you’ve lost.”

  “I’m already miserable,” he said.

  “Not really, but you will be. That’ll be my little revenge for your not taking me serious
ly.”

  “I always took you seriously.”

  “Not seriously enough.” She shrugged. “Your loss.”

  “My loss,” he agreed.

  She sighed. “Well, that’s about it, I guess.”

  “Sure you don’t want some lunch?”

  “I’m due back in court at two; I’d better get going.” She stood up.

  He stood up with her, at a loss for words.

  “See you in court,” she said, and left.

  Stone sat quietly, staring at the tablecloth.

  A waiter approached. “The lady won’t be lunching?” he asked.

  “The lady won’t be lunching.”

  “And what would you like, Mr. Barrington?”

  “Sometimes I wonder that myself,” Stone replied.

  Chapter 14

  On Friday evening Amanda stood naked before her dressing room mirror and regarded her body. She had exercised her whole life, and never more regularly than during the past ten years. The effort showed in her trim figure; what few defects had appeared with age she had had adjusted – a little off the tops of the thighs, a slight lifting and augmentation of the breasts, and she was not all that different from the girl she had been at eighteen, during her first year at Barnard.

  She had been born Ida Louise Erenheim in Delano, Georgia, to a father and mother who had both worked their whole lives at Delano Mills, one of a group owned by the prominent Delano family of Atlanta, who had founded her home town and for whom it had been named. The girl’s earliest memories were of her mother picking lint from her hair after a ten-hour day among the looms.

  Ida Louise had discovered early the importance of her beauty, at first to the girls who were her social betters in the town and later to the boys from the better families. She had also been a very bright child, good in school and mature beyond her years. At a time when her girlfriends were giggling about sex at pajama parties, Ida Louise had been enthusiastically practicing it in various back seats, usually of Cadillacs and Lincolns. Word had quickly spread among the richer boys that Ida Louise responded well to shows of wealth.

  By the time her girlfriends were thinking of offering up their virginity, Ida Louise had acquired a sexual repertoire that had astonished a number of athletic stars and one teacher. The teacher had filled out her scholarship application for Barnard and written his proposal letter while she had knelt under his desk and fellated him to higher flights of endorsement. Shortly after she had foolishly confided this incident to an athlete lover, she had found herself trapped in a locker room with the first string, and, faced with gang rape, had decided to enjoy the experience. She had, indeed, enjoyed it right up to the moment when they had beaten her senseless and left her naked and battered on the cold cement floor, to be discovered by a janitor, who had called the coach. The business had been hushed up, and Ida Louise had missed giving her valedictory address at graduation, departing early for New York and Barnard, caring not who saw her bruises in the day coach of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. For the rest of her life, the smell of sweaty athletic clothing would cause her to have unreasoning panic attacks. She had never again entered any sort of locker room, preferring to exercise outdoors or at home. The event had, though, instilled in her the iron determination that for the rest of her life it would be she who controlled every aspect of her sex life. She had made the mistake of allowing someone else to do that, and she would never make that mistake again.

  Her first act on arriving in New York had been to find a lawyer and legally change her name to Amanda Delano, which name her cooperating high school teacher had already placed in her school records and scholarship application. Amanda had a much nicer ring than Ida Louise, and thereafter she had not disabused her college friends from thinking that she was one of the mill-owning Atlanta Delanos.

  At Barnard, Amanda had remained celibate for a year while pouring her sexual frustration into her studies and the school newspaper, for which she wrote a column on campus social life. When she could no longer tolerate a life without sex, she began to seek out older, often married men – assistant professors, usually, who demanded no full-time relationship and who could recommend her for the best classes and teachers. After graduation from Barnard she got a job on the old Journal-American and, very soon afterward, began an affair with a forty-year-old assistant managing editor, one Robert Dart, who she knew was headed for a top job at the paper. Within a year he had promoted her twice, given her her own column, and divorced his wife of fifteen years to marry Amanda.

  The marriage was hell for both of them, but it had ended well for Amanda when Bob Dart had dropped dead on a squash court and left her his name, a cooperative apartment in a good neighborhood, and two hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. She had hardly been set for life, but now she had a career, a certain respect as the widow of a well-known journalist, and, above all, the column. When the Journal-American had folded, Dick Hickock’s predecessor had recruited her and syndicated the column. Amanda Delano Dart had made herself powerful.

  Amanda pulled on a pair of stockings and secured them to her garter belt. Her legs were too long for most pantyhose, and she felt somehow more alluring in a garter belt anyway. She slipped silk panties over the stockings and stepped into a short, low-cut black dress from her favorite, Chanel, that showed off both her good legs and her firm breasts. She needed no bra, and with the twitch of a shoulder she could give a properly attentive man a glimpse of nipple. A pair of black alligator Ferragamos and a modest diamond necklace and earrings completed her outfit.

  She walked into the living room and gave it a quick once-over. She had long since trained her housekeeper, Bela, to perfection, but knowing that Amanda noticed kept her that way. She strolled into the dining room and checked the place settings, then toured the kitchen to see how the caterers were coming along. The television was on in the kitchen, and she was stopped in her tracks by the lead story on Gossip Tonight, which followed the evening news. An “anchorman” was saying:

  “Word is out around New York and L.A. that two of gossip’s leading figures have figured unflatteringly in a newsletter-by-fax called DIRT, which has been going out to a list of movers and shakers over the past week. The lady was allegedly caught in a most compromising position in a New York hotel, and the gentleman, who has taken part in a number of public outings of gay men and women, was said to have been photographed during a sex act with a pizza deliveryman. Can libel suits be far behind? It will be interesting to see.”

  Amanda kept moving, but her heart was pounding. She glanced at her Cartier watch. Stone Barrington was due for an early drink in fifteen minutes.

  Stone was knotting his tie when Gossip Tonight followed the news and Amanda’s indiscretion was mentioned. Not by name, though, thank God. That would have certainly played hell with Amanda’s dinner party. He didn’t know who all her guests would be, but chances were at least some of them would have seen DIRT.

  He slipped into his jacket and surveyed himself in the mirror. Dark, chalk-striped suit by Ralph Lauren, black baby calf shoes from E. Vogel, an old family shoemaker in Chinatown, a cream-colored silk shirt from Turnbull & Asser in London, and a reasonably sober necktie and pocket square from the same people. His cufflinks were old gold, his wristwatch a Cartier Tank. Perfect East Side dinner party garb, he thought. He gave his hair a final brush, tucked his gold reading glasses into his jacket’s breast pocket, and let himself out of the house, whistling down a passing cab. That loud whistle, learned in boyhood, had served him well in New York City.

  Amanda heard the elevator chime as it stopped in her foyer. She smoothed down her dress and banished nervousness. She was ready for her first guest.

  Chapter 15

  Amanda opened the door, and Stone was very taken with what he saw. Before him was just about the most perfectly turned out woman he had ever seen.

  “Stone, darling, come in,” Amanda said, offering him a cheek to peck. She turned and led him into the living room, a vision of chintz and good pictur
es.

  “What a beautiful room,” Stone said, knowing he was saying the right thing.

  “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “And an even more beautiful hostess.”

  “For that, you get a real kiss,” she said. Amanda took his face in his hands and planted upon his lips a soft kiss, with only a hint of tongue. Her carefully blotted lipstick remained unsmeared. “And now a drink,” she said.

  “Bourbon on the rocks, please?”

  “Jack Daniel’s? Wild Turkey? Old Crow?”

  “Wild Turkey, please.”

  “A man after my own heart,” she said. “You must have southern blood.”

  “No, just southern tastes in some things.”

  “As a Georgian, I thank you,” she said, deftly pouring two drinks at a butler’s tray across the room. “I’m so glad you didn’t wear an overcoat. Gloria is busy in the kitchen, and I hate dealing with coats.”

  “I wear coats only when I am likely to be cold,” he said, lifting his drink.

  “New friends,” Amanda said, raising her glass.

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  They did.

  Amanda took his hand and led him to a soft sofa. “I hope you have nothing to report,” she said.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Good; I’m in no mood to talk business. That is a very handsome suit; who made it?”

  “A Mr. Lauren runs them up for me.”

  “Can’t go wrong there, can you?”

  “Nope. Who’s coming to dinner, besides me?”

  “Bill and Susan Eggers, whom you know, of course.”

  “Bill since law school; Susan only from a few law firm parties.”

  “Dick and Glynnis Hickock.”

  “He owns your paper?”

  “Right, and don’t kowtow to him, whatever you do, or he’ll consider you his inferior forever.”

  “I’ll try not to be impressed. Anyone else?”

  “Vance Calder and some girl or other.”