Distant Thunder

10

Stone and Vanessa Morgan met in the reception room at Patroon, then found Dino and Viv already at their table. Introductions were made.

“Funny,” Dino said to her, “I thought your last name would be Collins.”

“I declined that opportunity at the time of our marriage,” Vanessa replied.

“As many women do,” Viv said, “though not I.”

“Any more questions related to Collins,” Stone asked, “before we put that subject aside permanently?”

“Thank you, Stone,” Vanessa said.

“Don’t mind Dino,” Stone replied. “He’s a policeman, and he feels he has a God-given right to know everything about everybody.”

“Are you saying that I don’t have that right?” Dino asked.

“I am.”

“Then you’re under arrest, and I’m taking you in for further questioning.”

Everybody laughed.

“See what I mean?” Stone said. “And he’s known me for twenty-odd years.”

“Yes, and they’ve certainly been odd,” Dino reposited.

“I can’t promise you that it won’t be like this all evening,” Stone said to Vanessa.

“What kind of policeman are you, Dino?” she asked. “Do policemen specialize, like doctors in a hospital?”

“Many officers should repose in the psychiatric wing,” Stone said.

“Are you including Dino in that group?”

“Certainly not. I’d never hear the end of it. And since Dino is being shy about answering your question, I will tell you that he is the police commissioner of New York.”

“And I specialize in everything,” Dino added.

“That means that there is no one’s business that Dino’s nose wouldn’t be stuck into.”

Mercifully, a waiter appeared and they gave their drinks orders and accepted menus.

“Viv, what do you do?” Vanessa asked.

“I’m a retired cop, and now I work for Strategic Services, the world’s second-largest security company.”

“Don’t ask which is the largest,” Stone said. “You’ll never get a straight answer.”

“We never speak its name,” Viv said.

“See?”

They all ordered the chateaubriand and a big plate of onion rings, and a Caesar salad to start. Stefan, the headwaiter, did his conjuring act with the Caesar and served them from a giant wooden bowl.

“I hear Lance visited you today,” Dino said to Stone.

“Oh, he wanders in and out, when he doesn’t have anything else to do, which is often.”

“Did everybody see John’s death notice in the Times today?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes, did you place it?” Dino asked.

“No, I expect John’s former employer must have.”

“That’s why it said so little,” Viv commented

“I didn’t know that he was at NYU Law when I was,” Stone said, “until today. Lance accused me of being close to him in those years and not telling him.”

“And Bill Eggers told me,” Dino said, “that Collins was selling grass to the entire student body in those days.”

“That was news to me, too,” Stone said.

“It’s also news to me,” Vanessa said. “But it explains why he seemed to have quite a lot of money when we married. A lot for someone so recently out of school, I mean. We bought furniture, we bought a car, and paid cash for everything.”

“He must have been a saver,” Dino said. “At least he wasn’t smoking all his own product.”

“He was abstemious in that regard,” Vanessa said. “He hardly even drank.”

“That’s my cue,” Dino said, “to tell you that I saw the Maine ME’s report on him today, and he was stinking drunk when he was shot.”

“I’m stunned to hear it,” Vanessa said. “He was afraid of getting drunk. That’s why he drank so little.”

“Now that is something that two former homicide detectives would be interested in,” Viv said. “I refer to Dino and Stone.”

“That’s interesting,” Stone said, and Dino nodded.

“He would have had to have been forced at gunpoint to get drunk,” Vanessa said.

“Maybe someone wanted information,” Dino said, “something that the killer couldn’t get out of him sober.”

“People are forced to get drunk only in the movies,” Viv said. “I’ve never known a single case of somebody being forced to drink.”

“Neither have I,” Stone said.

“Okay,” Dino said, “neither have I. That makes it unanimous.”

“Well,” Vanessa said, “I’m glad we’re all of one mind, but what does it mean?”

“It’s a mystery,” Stone said. “Maybe, if we’re patient, information will come to light in the future that will explain everything.”

“If you and I had followed that rule,” Dino said, “we’d never have cleared a homicide.”

“I was trying to give you a way out of explaining it,” Stone said, “but having declined to accept my reasoning, go ahead and explain it to us.”

“Maybe he got some bad news,” Dino said. “Is there a bar on that ferry?”

“I’ve taken the ferry so rarely that I don’t remember,” Stone said. “I nearly always fly onto the island. But having a bar for people who are only going to be on board for twenty minutes doesn’t seem like a working idea.”

“Okay,” Dino said. “You’re a working stiff who toils away on the mainland every day, and you get on the ferry to go home, and there’s a bar. You’re going to turn down a drink?”

“All right, that’s conceivable,” Stone said, “but only just. The kind of people who live on the island are not working stiffs.”

“And that kind of people don’t like a drink at the end of the day?”

“If they do, they have it at home or, maybe, at the yacht club. We need a better story.”

Nobody said anything.