Black Dog

Twelve

Stone walked into P. J. Clarke’s and found Dino, half a drink ahead of him, at the bar. The bartender helped him catch up.

“So,” Dino said. “You’ve been abusing my detectives again?”

“Me? Abuse? I was the abusee. I asked you for a good lead detective, and you sent me a jerk.”

“They’re mostly jerks. I can’t pick and choose among them. It would be against my own established policy of whoever is available gets sent.”

“ ‘Available’ is a broad term: Do you mean available as soon as Casey put down his Hustler?”

“I don’t concern myself with my detectives’ tastes in literature,” Dino said. “Did you tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“No, I just answered his questions truthfully. Whatever he forgot to ask me wasn’t covered.”

“Let me ask you a really important question.”

“Shoot.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starved, and that’s the whole truth.”

“Then follow me.” Dino led the way to the rear dining room, where they were warmly received by the maître d’.

“You know,” Stone said, glancing at a menu, “we weren’t quite so warmly received by the maître d’ before you were the commissioner.”

“And the maître d’ was just a headwaiter,” Dino said. “Everybody wins.”

“What about me?”

“You didn’t get arrested this afternoon, did you?”

“That’s because Casey, for the life of him, couldn’t come up with a probable cause.”

“Casey didn’t like it that nobody saw you leave.”

“Casey can go fuck himself.”

“I thought that’s what you were doing with the late Mrs. Charles. Did you know that people referred to her, earlier in her career, as ‘Apple Annie’?”

“Yes, but I don’t know why.”

“Because everybody had a bite of her.”

“And delicious it must have been,” Stone said. “She still looked terrific at sixty, and she was still eager.”

“I thought she was, maybe, forty. And how do you know she was still eager?”

“Because she had my zipper down in a flash, and I had to cite the legal ethics code to get out of there before she could do whatever it was she was going to do to me.”

“How did you manage to get out?”

“I rezipped and fled the premises with a cheerful, over-the-shoulder wave. It was the last I saw of her.”

“It was the last anybody saw of her.”

“Don’t point that thing at me. If I could get out of there unseen, then somebody could have gotten in there unseen.”

“A fair point for a shyster lawyer but not for a homicide detective.”

“Casey wouldn’t know a fair point if it reared up and bit him on the ass.” Stone snorted. “And who are you calling a shyster?”

Dino looked around. “Who else is here?”

“There are half a dozen lawyers in the room. Which of them are you impugning?”

“I could throw a dart blindfolded and hit one.”

“Let’s order before I use a steak knife on you,” Stone said. He waved down a waiter and ordered another round and two steaks.

Dino sliced and bit into his, talking around it. “Okay, who inherits? Junior?”

“Nope. Annetta had carved him out of her will. And neither of them had any other kids.”

“Who, then? The ASPCA?”

“They didn’t even own a dog or a cat.”

“So, who’s going to get Ed Charles’s ill-gotten gains?”

“My secretary.”

“Joan? How did she manage that?”

“Annetta was Joan’s mother’s younger sister: her aunt.”

“How much?”

“Just between you, me, and the bar association, north of a hundred million. A lot more if we can find it.”

“Holy shit!”

“That’s approximately what Joan is going to say. She typed up the will, but I withheld that part from her and typed it myself.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because I didn’t want her mooning about, dreaming of how, someday, she would be a rich woman. It would have interfered with her work, and, anyway, who knew it was going to be so soon?”

“What did you mean there’s more, if you can find it?”

“Let’s just say that Ed Charles’s relationship with the Internal Revenue Service was, well, distant. Oh, I’m sure he has an upright accounting firm that, each year, produces a plausible tax return. But there are rumors of an offshore bank account and, locally, an oversized safety-deposit box, crammed with cash.”

“And where did all this cash come from? Was he stealing from his investors?”

“I don’t think Ed had any investors that he didn’t invent out of thin air. A private investment company makes a wonderful money laundry, wouldn’t you think?”

“I would think,” Dino replied.

“I hear that Ed was banking three bookies and taking his vigorish in cash.”

“What are you going to do when the Feds come sniffing around?”

“Absolutely nothing. I don’t have anything to give them. They’ll have heard the rumors I’ve heard, but I’m not in a position to substantiate them. After all, I’ve only been his estate’s attorney for less than a week, and Annetta is no longer in a position to confide in me. The Feds will turn up with a search warrant right quick, and I’m not going to get in their way. My guess is that Ed was clever enough to conceal his assets, but he didn’t do it on my watch or on my advice. I’m clean, and I’m going to remain clean. It’s the Woodman & Weld way.”

“And what are you going to do, if you find some of Ed’s money?”

“What money?” Stone asked. “I don’t know anything about any money.”