by Stuart Woods
“Why not? He’s already tried to kill you. Don’t hold back and let him regain the advantage of his height and weight.”
“But you said I should never kill anybody.”
“I said you should never use a gun to kill anybody. If a man has attacked you with a knife, everyone’s sympathy—the police, the DA, the court—will be with you. You’re a defenseless woman who acted in desperation to save your life. A woman with a gun is not defenseless and not so sympathetic.”
He walked her around the room and showed her objects that could be used as weapons: a paperweight, a heavy crystal bowl, a letter opener from the desk. “This has a sharp point, but not a sharp blade. How would you use it against an opponent?”
“With the pointy end,” she replied.
“Where?”
“In the heart?”
“The heart can be difficult to find when you’re under attack. It has a rib cage to protect it, and you might not get a second thrust. Stab him in the throat, here, or here.” He pointed to the Adam’s apple and the jugular. “Anywhere in the neck is going to hurt like hell and bleed a lot. Stab him more than once, if you can. If he’s close to you, stab him in the eye. That will stop anybody.”
“Ugh,” she said.
“When your life is in danger you can’t afford to be squeamish. Get mad at him, that will help.” He took her into the kitchen. “You’ll notice that the knives are not in a drawer,” he said, “but in a wooden block, with their handles exposed. If you’re under attack, you don’t have time to remember which drawers the knives are in and search the drawer. And when you choose your weapon, don’t take the big chef’s knife—it’s unwieldy. You can kill a man with any knife there, even a three-inch paring knife. Keep them all sharp. A dull knife is of little use, whether you’re attacking a man or a tomato.”
He led her back into the living room and faced her. “Now, we’re both unarmed, but he has height, weight, and strength on you. Don’t wait to defend an attack—attack!”
“In the nose?”
“Sure, but that may not be available, and it’s defensible, if he’s quick. So is the crotch, which is greatly overrated as a place to attack, unless you’re wearing heavy shoes and have an open target—from behind is best, that’s where his balls are.”
“So where?”
“The shin is tempting, if you’re wearing the right shoes, but the knee is much better. If you’re wearing heels, your only shot is his foot, and his shoe will help protect him. But his knee has no protection. The kneecap is a painful place to be kicked and may be disabling, but a kick inside the knee outward with your instep will, first of all, knock him down, because the knee will collapse, and if you kick hard enough he won’t be able to stand on it.”
• • •
THEY WORKED FOR another hour, increasing their speed. “You’re doing well,” he said. “That’s enough for today. You deserve a reward. What would you like?”
“Anything I want?” she asked, putting her arms around him.
“Anything,” he said.
She told him, and she got it.
36
STONE AND ANA were having breakfast in bed. She was speaking on her cell to the prospective buyer of a large property in Santa Fe. “No, I’m out of town,” she was saying, “but my associate, Carolyn, will pick you up at your hotel at ten AM and take you to see the house. You may, if you wish, speak to me at any time while you’re viewing the place. Carolyn has a phone with a video link to mine, so we can meet face-to-face. Enjoy!” She hung up, just as the butler came into the room and handed Stone an envelope. “Just hand-delivered from the hotel manager, Mr. Barrington,” he said.
Stone opened the envelope and found an application for the hotel’s private club inside, complete with credit information and a photograph of a man he’d never seen before. He showed it to Ana. “Is this Dax Baxter?”
“Yes, it is. Why do you have his photograph?”
“He wants to join our private club, which gives access to all of our facilities to locals who are not guests in the hotel.”
“And you get to approve or disapprove?”
“It happens when an applicant has a reputation for poor behavior or a bad credit record. According to his credit report, Baxter has both—has been sued half a dozen times by restaurants or clubs for nonpayment. A note from the manager says that he typically offers to pay less than what he owes.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Ana said. “I ran a credit report on him when he was house hunting, to see if he was a good mortgage applicant, and he wasn’t. Fortunately, he paid cash for the house.”
There were two boxes at the bottom of the letter, and Stone checked the one marked “Decline,” and signed it.
“Smart move,” she said. “He’s trouble, especially if he owes you money.” She picked up a copy of Architectural Digest from the bed, opened it to a spread, and handed it to Stone. “You’d think that anyone who lives like this could pay his bills on time. I’ve heard on the real estate grapevine that he stiffed the interior designer for her work on his house, and she had to settle for half her fee to avoid going to court against him. He would have seen to it that her legal costs would have been more than her fee.”
Stone flipped through the pages devoted to the house. “God, it’s twenty-one thousand square feet, and it has only one bedroom!”
“Oh, that’s just the main house. It has a guesthouse and staff quarters, too. I could find a buyer for it in a week, if it came on the market. There are lots of filthy rich out there.”
“This guy gives filthy rich a bad name.” Stone buzzed the butler and gave him the application. “Please send this back to the manager, pronto.”
“Yes, sir.” The man disappeared.
• • •
LATER THAT MORNING, Dax Baxter sat at his desk, flipping through his e-mail. He was confronted with a photograph of himself, the application he had completed for membership in the Arrington Club, and a covering letter:
Dear Mr. Baxter,
Attached please find your application for membership in the Arrington Club, which, I regret to inform you, has been declined by the chairman of our board of directors. State law requires me to give a reason for the declining of a credit application; in your case, your credit record reveals a history of late and/or nonpayment of restaurant and club bills, and of legal action against you for such practices.
It was signed by the hotel manager.
• • •
“THE CHAIRMAN OF their fucking board!!!?” Baxter screamed, sweeping his computer monitor off his desk. Then he looked up to find Chita Romero standing in his doorway. “What the fuck do you want?” he demanded.
“I have the production file you asked for,” she replied calmly.
“Then put it on my desk and get out!”
She did so and closed the door behind her.
• • •
OUTSIDE, AS SHE SAT DOWN at her desk, a colleague asked, “What was it this time?”
“He screamed something about the chairman of the board,” Chita said. “What does that mean?”
“Was he on his computer?”
“Yes, and he knocked the screen off his desk.”
“Let’s see what’s in his e-mail,” she said, and tapped some keys. “Ah,” she said, “here it is. The chairman of the board of the Arrington Hotels has rejected his application for membership in their club—personally, it seems. They cite a poor credit record.”
“How many times has he been sued?” Chita asked.
“I don’t have that many fingers and toes.”
Chita laughed, and just at the moment Baxter opened his office door. “Get a tech guy in here to fix my computer. It’s broken again.”
Chita picked up a phone. “Yes, sir, right away.”
He slammed the door.
“Tech support,”
a young man’s voice said.
“Sammy, you’d better get up here in a hurry. He’s broken his computer again. And if I were you, I’d bring a new monitor.”
“On my way,” Sammy said. He was there in five minutes, with a new monitor on his cart.
Chita buzzed Baxter.
“What?”
“The technician is here to fix your computer.”
“Send him in.”
“Yes, sir.” She hung up and nodded at the young man. “Good luck,” she said.
Ten minutes later, the tech left the office, with the smashed monitor on his cart.
“Thank you, Sammy,” Chita said. Her phone buzzed. “Yes, sir?”
“I want you to do a little research,” Baxter said.
“Of course, sir.”
“Somebody named Stone Barrington is chairman of the board of the Arrington Hotel Group. I want to know everything about him, and I mean, everything.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Grace,” she said to the woman next to her, “pull a Dun & Bradstreet report on a Stone Barrington, chairman of Arrington Hotels.”
“Sure,” Grace said.
Chita started in on Google, and in five minutes she had an inch-high stack of paper on her desk. “Got it?” she asked Grace.
Grace handed her the D&B report. “This guy is very well heeled,” she said, “and he’s a widower. Introduce me, will you?”
Chita laughed and reached for a file folder. She made a label for it and put the printouts inside. “Here we go,” she said. She got up, knocked, and handed the folder to Baxter. “Here’s everything we’ve got,” she said. “For anything more, we’d have to hire a detective agency.”
She set the folder on his desk and got out. Half an hour later, he buzzed her. “Yes, sir?”
“Call that guy, what’s his name, the private eye?”
“Cupie Dalton?” she asked. “Dalton & Vittorio?”
“That’s the one. Tell him I want him in my office now.”
37
CUPIE DALTON SAT in a reclining chair in his office on Venice Beach and gazed out the window at a group of girls in bikinis playing volleyball. Why hadn’t girls dressed like that for volleyball when he was still young enough to play? It wasn’t fair.
Cupie, who had gained his nickname for his resemblance to a doll of the same name, was ex-LAPD, and in the years since his retirement he had run his little agency with a partner named Vittorio, an Apache Indian based in Santa Fe. Between the two of them, they could cover just about anything. His phone rang, and a recording picked up.
“Good day, Dalton & Vittorio. How may I help you?” Her voice was low and British-accented. He had met her in a bar on the beach.
“I’m calling for Dax Baxter,” a woman said. “May I speak to Cupie Dalton, please?”
“One moment,” the recording said, and the phone next to Cupie’s chair rang, as it was programmed to do. “This is Cupie Dalton,” he said.
“Hi, Cupie, it’s Chita, in Dax Baxter’s office. He has some work for you, and he wants you here pronto. Are you up for that?”
Cupie sighed. He wasn’t, but business had been slow. “Sure. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Faster?”
“It takes that long to drive from Venice. I don’t have a helicopter at my disposal.”
“Okay, hit the road.”
Cupie hung up, got into the jacket of his catalog-bought seersucker suit, and went out back to his garage in the alley.
• • •
FORTY MINUTES LATER Cupie parked in a guest spot at Standard Studios; his other five minutes were used up waiting for the elevator, in which he snugged up his necktie while ascending.
He waved at Chita and she picked up the phone and announced him, then waved him through. Without slowing down, Cupie walked through the door.
“Siddown, Cupie,” Baxter said.
Cupie, like most people who’d worked for Baxter, loathed him, but he put on his best smile. “Hi, Dax. How’s it going?”
“Not great. I want to know everything there is to know about a guy.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“His name is Stone Barrington. Ever heard of him?”
“Sure,” Cupie said with confidence. He’d done lots of work for Ed Eagle, and sometimes Barrington had been involved. “He’s a New York lawyer with Woodman & Weld, a top firm, and he’s the chairman of the Arrington Hotel Group. His late wife, Arrington, was the widow of Vance Calder, the movie star.”
“I’m impressed, Cupie. How’d you know that? I’ve never heard of the guy.”
“I know a little about a lot of people,” Cupie replied, “and everything about a chosen few. What’s your angle on this, Dax?”
“What do you mean by that?” Baxter replied with a snarl.
“I mean, do you want to go into business with Barrington or just ruin his day? There’s a spectrum, you know.”
“Well, I don’t want to go into business with him,” Baxter said. He tossed a thick file folder across the desk. “And don’t try to fob off a whole bunch of Google stuff on me—it’s all in there.”
“Okay, an in-depth investigation into him is going to cost you twenty grand, ten up front. I’ve got expenses.”
“How long?”
“Couple of weeks, if you want accuracy.”
“I want accuracy,” Baxter said, “and I want it in three days.”
“That’ll run you twenty-five grand, twelve-five up front.”
Baxter glared at him for a moment, then picked up a phone. “Tell Gladys to cut a check to Cupie for twelve thousand, five hundred dollars.”
“Oh,” Cupie said, raising a finger. “I’m going to need cash. There are palms to be crossed.” He didn’t want to sit around waiting for the check to clear.
“Never mind the check,” Baxter said. “Tell her to draw it from Accounting with a check on my personal business account. They can clear it with me.” He hung up and addressed Cupie. “I’ll tell you what I really want,” he said.
Cupie spread his hands. “I’m at your service, Dax.”
“I want some information that, if it were widely known, would wreck his business dealings and make his life not worth living.”
“Is that all?” Cupie asked. He took a folded, three-page contract from his pocket, filled in the amount, and handed it across the desk.
Baxter signed it without reading it, a sign that he didn’t care if he got sued, and tossed it back at Cupie.
Cupie tucked it away. “Couple of things,” Cupie said. “One, if I’m lucky enough to come up with the kind of dirt you want, this is the kind of guy who’s not going to take it lying down. Two, his best friend in the world is the police commissioner of New York City, who has all of law enforcement everywhere on speed dial.”
“I don’t give a shit whether he takes it lying down or in the ass,” Baxter said, “and I don’t give a shit who his friends are.”
There was a knock at the door, and Gladys walked in with a thick envelope and placed it on Baxter’s desk. He flipped it across the shiny surface toward Cupie, who, after a glance inside to be sure the sum wasn’t in Bulgarian levs, made it disappear.
“See you in three days,” Baxter said, “and it better be good.”
Cupie picked up the Google folder and made his escape. “You have a good one,” he called over his shoulder, as the door slammed behind him.
• • •
BACK IN HIS CAR Cupie laughed out loud. He couldn’t believe he had scored twelve-five off the biggest cheapskate and deadbeat in town, using nothing more than a whisper of a promise. He knew without even thinking about it that any skeletons in Stone Barrington’s closet were female and beautiful and likely had good things to say about him. He wondered if Stone was in town. He called the Arrington and asked, and the extension
rang.
“Mr. Barrington’s residence,” a smooth voice said.
“Tell him it’s Cupie Dalton calling and that I know something he doesn’t.”
A moment later, the phone was picked up. “Cupie? How the hell are you?”
“I’m just great, Stone, and if you buy me lunch, I’ll tell you something that you don’t know yet, but that will vastly amuse you.”
“Sure, Cupie, I’ll leave your name at the gate. They’ll direct you from there. How long?”
“Half an hour.”
“See you then.”
Cupie whistled a little tune all the way to the Arrington.
38
THEY MET OUT at the pool, where Stone was wearing a robe, and Ana was swimming laps. Cupie looked much the same, Stone thought, watching him fanning himself with his straw hat.
The butler approached. “What can we get you?” Stone asked.
“Gin and tonic, mostly gin,” Cupie replied. “Warm day, isn’t it?”
“Take off your jacket, Cupie, and cool down.”
Cupie did so. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“We’re having lobster salad for lunch. That okay with you?”
“Fine, just fine.” Cupie took a long pull on his drink, sat back, and sighed.
“What’s Vittorio up to these days?” Stone asked.
“Oh, you know Vittorio—he’s sitting on a mesa in New Mexico, contemplating the sunrise, or the sunset, or whatever. Work still brings us together, but if he tried to live on Venice Beach, he’d wither and die.”
“I expect he would.”
“I guess you’d like to know what I know,” Cupie said.
“How much is it going to cost me?” Stone asked.
“When you know all and have had a chance to act on it, I will leave my fee entirely to your generosity, Stone.”
“I’ll hope for the best.”
“All right,” Cupie said, “I have just come from the office of one Dax Baxter, a movie producer of some repute, not all of it good. Ring a bell?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He sicced a hit man, known as the Russian, on a friend of mine recently.”
