Class Act
- Автор: Вудс Стюарт
- Серия: Stone Barrington #58
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-593-33166-8
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Class Act». Краткое содержание книги:
As Stone sets out to unravel a tangled web of crime and secrets, his mission becomes even more complicated when he makes an irresistible new acquaintance. In both the underbelly and upper echelons of New York, everyone has something to hide — and if Stone has learned anything, it’s that history has a way of repeating itself...
“What did you do?”
“Well, I told my date to remove all her jewelry and give it to me, and I put it in my coat pocket.”
“Didn’t she think that odd?”
“I expect so, but I think there was enough urgency in my voice to make her think I was serious. Then I kissed her.”
“Why?”
“Well, first of all, she was very kissable. Second, I thought it would distract the robbers, when they got around to us.”
“Did it?”
“Only momentarily, then they asked for her jewelry. She smartly said, ‘I don’t wear jewelry,’ then I explained that I had only a wristwatch, and it had my name engraved on the back and possession of it might cost him a prison term, so he went away and left us alone on the terrace.”
“So her jewelry didn’t get stolen?”
“No, they never frisked me.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well, I gave her jewelry back, then the police were called, dinner was served, I think in that order. All of the jewelry was recovered when the police arrested one of the robbers the next day.”
They were interrupted by Jack Coulter, and Stone introduced them. Jack seemed to take a great interest in her, it seemed to Stone.
Later, when Hilda was visiting the powder room, Jack took Stone aside. “How long have you known Hilda?” he asked.
“Only a few days. Why do you ask?”
“I once knew her father very well.”
“Where and how?”
“At what was my upstate residence, at the time. Joe Rossetti, his name was, and we had adjoining suites. He had the better river view, though. I used to see Hilda, who was in her teens, when she came on visitors’ days, to see her father.”
“What was he in for?”
“Robbery. But Joe was known to be mobbed up, and he had a reputation for the high quality of his work.”
“As a robber?”
“As a hitman. He got out sooner than I did. Last I heard, he was retired, living in Florida somewhere.”
“When she comes back, don’t bring up her father,” Stone said. “I’ll tell you why some other time.”
“As you wish,” Jack said.
Hilda returned. “You two look as if you’ve been telling each other dirty jokes,” she said reprovingly.
“Not a bit of it,” Stone said. “You were a long time in the powder room.”
“On the way back I ran into somebody I knew, and we had a chat.”
“Who was that?” Jack asked.
“Forrest, your pianist. We’ve worked together a few times.”
“Hilda is a singer,” Stone said. “Fortunately, this is her night off.”
“Perhaps you’ll sing something for us after dinner,” Jack said.
“Of course. I’d be happy to.”
Jack excused himself.
“Does that happen a lot?” Stone asked.
She shrugged. “Now and then. I’m happy to oblige.”
They got another drink and sat on the terrace. “Where did you grow up?” he asked
“In Florida,” she replied.
“Where?”
“Always near a racetrack. My father was an inveterate player of the ponies. He did well at it, too; supported the family. There were times when it seemed he was getting a winner or two a week.”
“He must have been a hell of a handicapper,” Stone said, and let the subject drop. He knew next to nothing about horse racing.
After dinner, Jack introduced Hilda, and she sang two Cole Porter numbers for them, then sat down to much applause.
“Thank you,” Stone said. “It’s always nice to have a date who can earn her dinner. Hillary and Jack will always ask you back now.”
“What a good idea,” she said.
On the way home afterward, Stone nearly asked about her father, but stopped himself. Maybe she really did think he had earned his living as a handicapper.
27
Vinnie sat in his luxurious new trailer and watched his assistant, Maria, count the money. She could count a hundred grand in hundreds in a flash; her fingers flew, and Vinnie could never keep track, but she didn’t make mistakes. It took a couple of days before Vinnie caught on. The reason Manny had loved his job so much was that Maria did all the work, while he watched old movies on satellite TV and occasionally ambled down to the track and watched a few races run, just so he wouldn’t forget what a horse looked like.
What’s more, Vinnie was making nearly three times what he had in his old job. On his third day on the job, he gave Maria a big raise and got her to promise not to retire while he was still alive.
Maria was a pretty, quite buxom woman who hadn’t gained a pound since she was sixteen. It didn’t take Vinnie long to discover that she had a keen interest in sex. Apparently, her husband had forgotten how, and after all, she was entitled to a sex life, wasn’t she? He took it upon himself to see that she got the attention she craved, and she craved him, too. If he had known about this, he would have knocked off Manny years before.
It was obvious to Vinnie that Manny had not taken retirement and run off to an island somewhere, and his suspicions were confirmed when Manny’s house burned down with him in it. The medical examiner had taken one look at his remains and diagnosed lead poisoning.
Those were the rules of the game, Vinnie figured: you pissed off somebody higher up the ladder than you, and you got your brains scrambled. Vinnie tried never to piss off anybody.
Stone and Hilda were having lunch at La Goulue, in the East Sixties.
“How long have you known Jack Coulter?” Hilda asked.
“I don’t know, a while. A client who was a friend of his recommended him to me.”
“He reminds me of somebody I once knew,” she said, “but I can’t place him. What do you do for Jack, exactly?”
“Jack is one of those clients who has the whole firm of Woodman & Weld at his disposaclass="underline" He wants to buy a house somewhere, we find him a Realtor to write the offer and close the sale. He gets himself a new wife and wants his will rewritten, it’s done. He’s looking at an investment and wants the seller investigated, the man is gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and so is the deal. Why does Jack interest you?” He thought it better to encourage this than to appear to be withholding information.
“As I said, he looks familiar, something about the way he moves around, the broad shoulders. Not the face, though. Maybe somebody my father knew: Does he spend time in Florida?”
“I told you: Palm Beach. He and Hillary have a big apartment at the Breakers.”
“My father wouldn’t know anybody at the Breakers, unless he was collecting a debt for a bookie.”
“Your father did that sort of work?”
“He was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, I guess you’d say. Somebody wanted something done, my dad saw to it.”
“Was he mobbed up?”
“He certainly knew people in that milieu,” she said, “but he wasn’t a member of anything.”
“A freelancer then.”
“Exactly.”
Stone took a deep breath. “Did he teach you things?”
“He taught me to play every card game available and showed me what a fast horse looks like. That was about it.”
Stone exhaled. He didn’t want to be seen shying away from her background, but he wanted to know about it anyway. He changed the subject. After all, she wasn’t going to tell him how her father had taught her to shoot people in the head, not just once, but twice.
After lunch, he turned Hilda loose in Bloomingdale’s with a credit card, then went home. Dino was waiting for him, and he almost never dropped by the house in the daytime. Something was up.
“Is it too early for Scotch?” he asked Dino.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Dino replied.
Stone handed him the drink.