“Doesn’t she have to go out right now?” Stone asked.
“She can hold it, don’t worry. You want to take her out?”
Stone rolled over and pulled the covers over his head.
At mid-morning Stone had finished breakfast and was dressing when Holly came upstairs, looking good in a sweater and wool slacks, Daisy at her side.
“Nice neighborhood,” she said. “Why is it called Turtle Bay?”
“There used to be a bay called Turtle Bay here, a long time ago. It got filled in.”
She went and looked out a rear window. “Beautiful garden. Do all the houses get to use it?”
“Yep, it’s a common garden. All the houses open onto it.”
“Nice feature.”
“So what are you going to do today?”
“Start looking for Trini Rodriguez, I guess.”
“Oh? Where?”
“Where do mafiosi hang out?”
Stone slipped his feet into a pair of loafers. “Hang on a minute. Trini is in the Federal Witness Protection Program, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, the Feds usually put people in there when they’re going to testify against the Mafia, when they’re running from the mob, you know?”
“Oh, I don’t think Trini would ever testify against his people.”
“Then who are the Feds protecting him from?”
“Probably me.”
“Holly, that just doesn’t make any sense. Why would they protect him from you?”
“Because he’s theirs, and they don’t want me getting him tried in Indian River County. And they think if he’s theirs, nobody else has a right to him. Well, I have a right to him.”
“You’re a very determined gir. . . woman, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and I don’t mind being called a girl, except at work. So where do the Mafia guys hang out?”
“Well, they used to hang out in Little Italy, but these days they seem to be more scattered. I guess there are some in each borough.”
“Borough?”
“There are five in New York: Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx, and Manhattan. Until the turn of the century, they were separate cities.”
“So where’s Little Italy?”
“Downtown.”
“Will a cabdriver know it?”
“That’s problematical these days,” Stone said. “Tell you what: I’ve got a light day; I’ll drive you down there, maybe buy you some lunch.”