Son of Stone

23

K elli Keane was at her tiny desk in a corner of the Page Six offices at the New York Post when she got a call from the young man with whom she had slept the night before, who happened to work on the outer periphery of the mayor’s staff.

She listened through her earpiece while simultaneously typing on her computer keyboard. “Go,” she said.

“Word around the office is that the mayor married somebody yesterday.”

“I thought he wouldn’t do that.”

“Only in exceptional cases, and in this case, secret ones. It happened at the home of Eduardo Bianchi.”

“Who?”

“Big shot, lives way the hell out in Brooklyn; on a lot of boards, corporate and charitable.”

“So, who got married?”

“That’s the mystery. The mayor has had Christmas dinner booked there for weeks, and after the dinner he took all the considerable leftovers to some mission down on the Bowery.”

“Come on, Bruce,” she said, “who are the happy couple? They must be somebody special.”

“You’re right, but it beats me.”

“Who were the other guests for Christmas dinner?”

“I don’t have anything hard on that; I’d have to guess.”

“So, guess.”

“Well, Bianchi has two daughters, but one of them is supposed to be in a loony bin somewhere, so the one daughter must have been there. She used to be married to Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti, who runs the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct, and they have a son, so he must have been there.”

“How about Dino, was he there?” She had seen him often at Elaine’s.

“Maybe, who knows? Bianchi has an old battle-ax of a sister, who acts as his hostess when he entertains. That’s all I can think of.”

“Thanks, Bruce.”

“See you this week?”

“Maybe. Give me a call.” She hung up and thought for a minute, then she got up and maneuvered her long legs toward a bulletin board across the room. There was a photograph, taken at the marriage license office downtown, of a couple standing in line for a license. They were noticeable, because they were so much better dressed than anyone else in the room, but the woman stood behind the man, and her face was visible only from the eyebrows up, while the man’s back was halfway to the camera. A Post-it was stuck to the picture and the words “Who are these people?” were scrawled on it. Kelli unpinned the picture and walked back to her desk with it.

Who, she wondered, was that guy who was always with Dino Bacchetti at Elaine’s? Kelli was new at Page Six, having come up from Philly, so she was new in the city as well. She had been told this guy’s name, but she hadn’t written it down. He was tall and good-looking and always well-dressed, like the man in the photograph. She phoned her friend Gita, who worked in sports.

“Gita,” the woman said. “Speak.”

“It’s Kelli. Remember when we were at Elaine’s last week?”

“Yeah, sure.” The two women had had a few drinks at the bar.

“Remember the cop Dino Bacchetti was there?”

“Yeah; he almost always is.”

“And who’s the good-looking guy he hangs with?”

“That’s Stone Barrington. All the girls at the bar want to screw him.”

“Who is he?”

“Lawyer, sort of a fix-it guy for Woodman amp; Weld.”

“What does he fix?”

“Whatever needs fixing, I guess.”

“Is he married?”

“No, famous bachelor. What, you want to screw him, too?”

“Not that I would mind, but no. We have a picture of somebody who looks like him standing in line for a marriage license the other day.”

“That would definitely not be Stone Barrington; he’d rather be struck by lightning.”

“There were some other people with him and Dino that night-a woman and a couple of kids.”

“One of the kids was Dino’s son-I don’t know his name. No idea who the others were.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Kelli hung up. Her stomach growled; it was nearly eight p.m. She turned to her computer and wrote: “Item: At whose marriage did the mayor officiate at Eduardo Bianchi’s house on Christmas Day? We thought Hizzoner didn’t hitch folks.”

She printed it out and dropped it in the day editor’s in-box on the way to the elevator. She pressed the down button and waited, then the day editor appeared with a sheet of paper in his hand and thrust it at her.

“This won’t fly,” he said.

“Why not? My source is good.”

“You don’t fuck with him.”

“The mayor? We fuck with him all the time.”

“That’s right, you’re new in town, aren’t you? We don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi. Nobody in this city does.” He turned and went back to his desk, and Kelli followed him.

“So who the fuck is Eduardo Bianchi,” she demanded, “that we can’t fuck with him? I thought we could fuck with anybody, if the source was good.”

“Almost anybody,” the editor said, sinking into his chair. “We don’t fuck with Rupert Murdoch, and we don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi.”

She started to ask why, but he held up a hand.

“Don’t ask,” he said. “Ever.”

Kelli walked back to the elevator, fuming, and rode down to the lobby. She went outside and threw herself in front of a cab. “Eightyeighth and Second Avenue,” she said to the driver. All the way uptown she turned the thing over in her mind. By the time she got to Elaine’s she was determined to get to the bottom of this.

She walked in and was greeted by Gianni, one of the two headwaiters. She ordered a drink at the bar, then grabbed Gianni’s sleeve when he came back from seating a party. “Gianni, you know everything; who were those people with Dino and Stone the other night?”

“What people are those?” Gianni asked.

“A beautiful blond woman and a couple of kids, one of them Dino’s.”

Gianni looked at her evenly for a moment. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.

She started to pursue it with him, but he stopped her.

“And let me give you some advice: don’t ask Elaine, either.” He walked away.

She turned away, her cheeks burning. Gianni knew who she worked for, so she was going to have to be careful, if she didn’t want to get eighty-sixed from Elaine’s.

A man came into the restaurant and sat down beside her at the bar. She cased him in the mirror: slicked-back black hair, Italian suit, cashmere overcoat.

“Hi,” he said to her, holding out a hand. “Anthony Cecchini.”

“Kelli,” she said, shaking the smooth hand. The guy was definitely not a stevedore.

“Kelli what?”

“Keane, with an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ on the end.”

“Buy you a drink, Kelli?”

“I’ve got one, thanks.”

“The next one, then.”

“Sure, why not.” He was kind of good-looking. “I perceive that you are Italian,” she said.

He laughed. “You’re very perceptive.”

“Tell me, Anthony, does the name Eduardo Bianchi mean anything to you?”

He froze. “Where did you hear that name?” he asked.

“Oh, around.”

He turned to the bartender. “Kevin, her next drink is on me,” he said, then he got up and moved to the other end of the bar.

Kelli was flabbergasted, and she didn’t flabbergast easily. What the fuck was going on here?