Herbie had turned a lighter shade of his usual pallor. “Ghosts? What are you talking about?”
Stone stood up. “Sheila will explain it to you. I apologize for interrupting your evening,” he said, including Sheila. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
He got the hell out of there and went back to his own table.
“Never mind telling me,” Dino said. “I heard it from over here.”
25
Stone awoke the following morning to find Felicity lying next to him.
She opened an eye. “You didn’t know when I came home last night, did you?”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” he said, running a hand up the inside of her thigh. “But this feels familiar.”
“It should,” she said. “It’s wet, too.”
“I notice that. It must be some sort of signal.”
“It must be,” she agreed.
He gathered her into his arms and made the most of things.
LATER, WHEN THEY were lying on their backs, sweating and catching their breath, Stone said. “What do you know about a guy named Jim Hackett?”
“Strategic Services?”
“Yes, that Jim Hackett.”
“I met him once at a dinner party in London; there wasn’t much opportunity for one-on-one conversation. I looked him up after that: owns a very large private security company, is a contractor for the American and British governments and for many corporations, owns a factory that converts ordinary motorcars into virtual tanks, not averse to being paid in cash by foreign clients and stashing the funds in Switzerland or those little islands south of Jamaica.”
“Is he clean?”
“As clean as anyone can be in that business. Nothing outright unsavory about him, as I recall.”
“Has your firm used his company’s services?”
“No,” she replied. “Her Majesty’s government frowns on that sort of thing, except when they do it themselves. Why are you interested in Hackett?”
“I’m playing tennis with him at the Racquet Club this evening. It occurred to me that he’s the sort of person who might have run across Stanley Whitestone at some point, and I thought I might ask him about Whitestone.”
Felicity smiled. “What a good idea,” she said. “He is exactly the sort of person who might know something about Stanley. You see, Stone, this is why I hired you: you are imaginative as well as lucky. I want a complete report tonight when you come home.”
“Does he know who and what you are?” Stone asked.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she replied. “He’s the sort who would make it his business to know.”
“Mind if I drop your name? It might help.”
She thought about that for a minute. “Yes I mind,” she said, “and certainly in the same conversation in which the name of Stanley Whitestone is mentioned. I don’t want him making a connection between Stanley and me. My position is that Stanley is ancient history and nobody at my firm gives a flying fuck about him. Please remember that.”
“How could I forget it?” Stone asked.
“I’m going to have dinner at Elaine’s with Dino,” Felicity said. “Meet us there when you’re done with Mr. Hackett, or vice versa.”
IN TENNIS CLOTHES, Jim Hackett was revealed to have a muscularly gnarled body that appeared to have lived through many difficult moments. His broken nose was a perfect representation of the rest of him. His tennis game was murderous; he thought nothing of aiming a shot between the eyes of an opponent who had come to the net. Stone knew this, because he had been struck between the eyes. It tended to make one more cautious on the court, which was exactly what Hackett intended.
Hackett and his partner, Mike Freeman, an employee of his who appeared to have been hired entirely for his tennis game, defeated Eggers and Stone in straight sets, 6-4 and 9-7. Stone felt as if he had played fifty tiebreakers at Wimbledon.