Choppy Water
- Автор: Вудс Стюарт
- Серия: Stone Barrington #54
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-593-18829-3
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Choppy Water». Краткое содержание книги:
Sykes got a drink from the bar and turned to find the judge at a nearby table. He strolled over. “Good evening, Judge,” he said.
“Hello there, Sykes. Join me?”
“Thank you, I will.” He sat down. “Can I get you the other half of that?” He nodded at the judge’s nearly empty glass.
“Don’t mind if you do. It’s bourbon. Doesn’t matter what kind.”
Sykes raised a finger to a waiter. “A Knob Creek on the rocks for the judge, please.”
The drink was there in a flash, and the judge took a sip. “Why, that’s remarkable. What is it again?”
Sykes told him, and the judge made a note.
There was a copy of the club newsletter on the table between them. Sykes picked it up and pretended to scan it. “I see there’s a Rutledge who has been proposed for membership. Any relation?”
“Yes, my nephew, Carter. He’s just moved up from Richmond to take a job at State. Doesn’t know all that many people in town.”
Sykes slid his card across the table. “E-mail me his CV, and I’ll be glad to put something together.”
“That’s very decent of you, Colonel.”
“Not at all. Someone I didn’t know was kind enough to write a letter for me, some years back. Now I can pass on the favor.”
They chatted on amiably for a few minutes. Sykes had hoped the judge might bring up the case, but he didn’t. So he made his own move. “Didn’t I see in the Post that you heard the case of this young man, Simmons?”
“Yes, a tragedy at his age.”
“It read like nothing more than a young man’s high jinks,” Sykes said. “Has he been sentenced?”
“Next Monday. The DA wants eight to twelve.”
“Whew! That’s mean! Does the prosecutor have some personal interest in the case?”
“I don’t believe so, but he came to Justice from the ACLU. I had the feeling he was personally offended by what the boy had done.” The judge looked around to be sure they were out of other members’ hearing range. “The attorney general is Jewish, you know.”
Sykes nodded sagely. “What a shame. I know some of the boy’s folks down in my neck of the woods, and they’re fine people to a man. He’s the sort of young fellow I’d offer a job to when he’s out.”
“Really?”
“Really, Judge. I think justice should be merciful, when possible, not just mean.”
“That’s my philosophy, too. I’m going to read his record again, see what I can do.”
“God bless you,” Sykes said. “You’re a humanitarian, Judge.”
The judge waved off the compliment. “One does what one can.”
A few days later, Sykes asked Bess to dinner again.
“Did you see the papers today?” she asked.
“No.”
“The Simmons boy got time served and four years of probation. My boss was beside himself!”
“Sometimes justice does prevail,” Sykes said.
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I ran into the judge at a club we both belong to, and we had a drink. I offered to write a letter to the admissions committee on behalf of his nephew, who is a candidate for membership. The judge asked if there was anything he could do for me.” He shrugged. “I guess he wasn’t just saying that.”
“You are wonderful,” she said, squeezing his arm.
18
Holly had spent a week in New York with Stone when they were dining with the Bacchettis at Rotisserie Georgette, an East Side restaurant specializing in roasted fowl.
“I’ve got to stop living as if I’m on the lam,” Holly said, broaching a new subject.
“Is that how you feel at my house?” Stone asked.
“It’s nothing to do with you or your house,” she replied. “When I’ve taken office I’ll be surrounded by all the security my government can manage. But right now I’m a president-in-waiting, and I don’t want to make presidential demands. Also, from now until my inauguration, I don’t want to be seen as hiding from the public. It would seem cowardly somehow, and that is just not in my nature. I’m my father’s daughter.”
Holly had been raised as an Army brat by a mostly single parent, a rawhide-tough master sergeant whose wife had died young, moving every few years and attending a dozen schools. She had never allowed anybody to bully her, and she wasn’t going to start now.
Dino spoke up. “How are those two Secret Service agents at the table behind you going to take that?”
“I don’t mind them two at a time,” Holly replied, “but the other six scattered around the restaurant and in the vehicles outside are just too much. I’ve already gotten six of them killed, and I don’t want their replacements living in danger because of me.”
“All right,” Stone said. “If that’s how you’re going to handle this, there are some things you need to do.”
“Tell me,” she replied.
“The Secret Service will take care of that. They’ll explain why they are necessary to your continued survival.”
“I’m not really that vulnerable,” she said.
“What would have happened if you and I had not been out sailing when the attack on Islesboro occurred?”
“We would have shot it out with them.”
“I remind you that two of the dead were guarding the front and rear doors of my house. A couple of armor-piercing rounds would have taken us out as we stood by the living room fireplace, warming our hands. Fortunately, they didn’t know how hardened the house was.”
“What else? And don’t dump it on the Secret Service.”
“I don’t want you moving out of my house,” Stone said. “I know that’s greedy of me, but where you’re concerned I don’t have any trouble being greedy. But sooner rather than later, someone in the media is going to figure out that we’re shacking up, and seconds after they do, the world will know. I don’t want that news competing with the reportage on your transition, and I don’t want that information coloring your character.”
“Then where should I live? I have an apartment in New York, but it’s rented. I can’t go back to Washington, because my transition office is here, and here is where I need to be.”
“Move back into the Carlyle. I’ll surreptitiously pay for the suite, if your transition budget can’t handle it. And there are lots of ways for both of us to sneak into or out of the hotel.”
“My budget can handle it,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can.”
“You’re sweet,” Stone replied, “but we’ll manage.”
“What about after the inauguration?”
“I’m going to let you handle those arrangements,” Stone said, “since you will have all the strings to pull. I can always be across the street at the Hay-Adams Hotel. I’ve already arranged for a long-term suite there.”
Holly smiled. “I like good planning,” she said. “What name is it in?”
“Well, I was going to put it in Dino’s name, so if anybody found out, then he, not I, would be saddled with the attention of the media.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Dino said.
“From me, too,” Viv added, “though it pisses me off that you would even consider that.”
“It’s registered to a Delaware corporation. That’s the most security I can get without being appointed New York City’s police commissioner or elected president.”
“Are you going to have a tunnel dug to the White House?” Holly asked.
“That, too, would require presidential powers. The government has all the shovels.”
“I’ll look into whether I’ll have the authority to call in the Army Corps of Engineers.”
“We’ve still got Maine and Key West,” Stone said, “when you can get a weekend off — as long as you don’t make the trip in Air Force One. At least you don’t play golf. I read somewhere that it costs three million dollars every time a president has to travel to a golf course.”