Dirt (Stone Barrington 2)

“What did you say?”

“Oh, yeah; the lovely Lou.”

Bruce hit him again, and this time Stone started to go dark. His last memory was Tommy Bruce’s shoe, coming at his head.

He came to in an ambulance, hurting everywhere. He tried to raise a hand to his face and discovered that his arms were strapped down. A paramedic was taking his blood pressure, and a cop dozed on a bench beside the litter. “Hey,” Stone said.

The cop’s head snapped around. “Huh?”

“Where we going?”

“Bellevue,” the cop said.

Stone winced as they hit a bump. “Let’s make it Lenox Hill,” he said. “They know me there.”

Chapter 52

Tommy and Charlie Bruce checked into the Mansfield Hotel on West 44th Street. It was a small hostelry, originally designed as an apartment hotel for well-to-do bachelors, as was its larger counterpart, the Royalton, farther down the block toward 6th Avenue, and It had recently been remodeled.

“I just don’t get it,” Charlie said. “How the fuck could he find us? How could he know who we are?”

This annoyed Tommy, who was accustomed to knowing everything. “He knows Louise, too.”

“You should have let me kill him, talking like that about Louise.”

Tommy whipped out a cell phone and called Rahway.

“Hello?” Sleepy voice.

“Hi, Sis,” Tommy said. “You sound as though you’ve been well fucked.”

“What?” She was awake now.

“You told him where to find us.”

“I most certainly did not. I told him nothing.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. He asked; I didn’t tell him.”

Tommy thought for a minute. “Did you write anything down?”

Her silence answered the question.

“Did you fall asleep after he fucked you?”

More silence.

“He looked around the house, didn’t he?”

Still silence.

“You still meticulously keep your address book, don’t you?”

“All right,” she said, “he looked around the house; I caught him at it.”

“How did he find you?”