Eggers nodded. “Go figure.”
A new client did not usually ask for Stone; he first came to Eggers with some embarrassing, awful problem: a private detective in the employ of his wife had photographed him in bed with a bad woman; his son had been accused of the date-rape of his headmaster’s daughter; his wife, drunk, had driven his Mercedes through a liquor-store window. Like that. Eggers then hunted down Stone, whose lot it was to handle the sort of thing that Woodman & Weld did not want to be seen handling. In return for this service, the firm would occasionally hand him a nice personal-injury suit that could be settled quickly.
“What’s his problem?”
“He doesn’t have one, that I know of,” Eggers said. “He’s a rich Texan, which may be redundant; he’s a good-looking guy who attracts women like blackflies on a May day in Maine; and he’s unmarried.”
“What kind of problems could he possibly have?” Dino asked. “Has he killed somebody, maybe?”
“Not that he mentioned.”
“How’d you come by him?” Stone asked.
“He was recommended by another Texan client, a very valuable one, a client you are not to go anywhere near.”
“And he just asked for me, out of the blue?”
“Out of the clear blue. He said, and I quote,” and here Eggers lapsed into a broad drawl, “ ‘I hear you got a feller, name of Barrington, does some stuff for you. I want him to handle my little ol’ account.’ ”
“He must be planning to kill somebody,” Dino said. “Maybe drum up some business for me?” Dino was the NYPD lieutenant in charge of the detective squad at the 19th Precinct, sometimes called the Silk Stocking Precinct because it covered the Upper East Side of New York City. He had been Stone’s partner, back when Stone had been a police detective.
“Here he is now,” Eggers said, nodding toward the front door.
A man of about six-four and two hundred and twenty pounds, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, wearing a western-cut suit and a broad-brimmed Stetson, filled the front door.
“He looks like one of the Sons of the Pioneers,” Dino said.
Stone hated him on sight. “Make sure he orders dinner,” he said to Eggers.
2
THE TEXAN had a bone-crushing handshake. “Hey,” he said to the table, then he started crushing bones. “I’m Billy Bob Barnstormer.”
“That’s Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti of the New York Police Department,” Eggers said, “and that’s Stone Barrington.”
“Did you say ‘Barnstormer’?” Stone asked incredulously.
“Yep,” Billy Bob replied. “My grandaddy was a pilot in World War One, and after that he barnstormed around the country for a while, before he started up Southwest Airlines.”
“I thought Herb Kelleher and Rollin King started Southwest,” Stone said.
“Them, too,” Billy Bob replied blithely. “Like I said, he was barnstorming, and his name was originally Barnstetter, so it made sense to make the change while he was doing that work. He got used to it, I guess, so he had it changed, legal-like.”
Dino looked nervously at Elaine and slid a menu across the table. “Have some dinner.”
“Thanks, me and ol’ Bill, here, already ate.”
“Bill is having dessert,” Dino said.
“I think I’ll have some bourbon for dessert,” Billy Bob replied. He turned to the waiter. “What you got?”
“We’ve got Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey and Knob Creek, but Stone is the only one who drinks that, except for that writer.”
“I’ll have me a double Wild Turkey straight up,” Billy Bob said, then turned his attention to Stone, giving him a broad, pearly smile. “I heard some good things about you,” he said.
“What did you hear?” Dino asked. “We never hear anything good about him.”
Stone shot Dino what he hoped was a withering glance.