Cold Paradise (Stone Barrington 7)

“I didn’t say it to her,” Dino pointed out. “You think I have a death wish?”

“But she must know what you think of her.”

“I don’t know how she could. I’ve certainly never told her.”

“What about Mary Ann?”

“Mary Ann and I have not yet come to the point in our marriage where she wants me dead. Someday, maybe, but not yet.” Dino drove the ball, and they got back into the cart.

“What is it with Sicilians, anyway?” Stone asked.

“Well, speaking as a scion of the more elegant north of Italy, it has always been my opinion that all Sicilians are totally batshit crazy. I mean, the vendetta thing would be counterproductive anywhere else but Sicily, but they’ve made an art of it. Do you have any idea how many more Sicilians there would be in the world, not to mention in this country, if there were no vendetta? If you took all of them who’ve been knifed, shotgunned, garroted, blown up, and poisoned, married them off and had them produce, say, four point five children each? Millions.”

“And you’re saying that’s not counterproductive?”

“Nah. It just concentrates more ill-gotten wealth in fewer hands, and it prevents a Sicilian population explosion. And that can’t be a bad thing.”

“But you married a Sicilian.”

“How do you think I know all this? It’s been an education, I can tell you.” Dino curled a thirty-foot, breaking, downhill putt into the cup.

“How’d you do that?” Stone asked, astonished.

“I just thought about how a Sicilian would do it, if the ball would kill somebody.”

Stone laughed. “How can I make it up with Dolce, without getting killed?” he asked, serious again.

“Make it up? You mean marry her again?”

“No, no, no,” Stone sputtered. “I mean just make peace with her.”

“You don’t make peace with Sicilians, unless there is a threat of death on both sides. You know, like the nuclear thing: mutually assured destruction. Where do you think the Pentagon and the Kremlin got the idea?”

“There has to be another way.”

“Eduardo could call her off.”

“Yeah? He could do that?”

“If she wasn’t crazy. Nobody can call off a crazy person, not even with a threat of death.”

“You’re such a pleasure to be around, sometimes, Dino.”

“I’m just telling you the way things are. No use kidding yourself.”

“I guess not,” Stone said glumly. They were on a tee that faced the road, now, some four hundred and fifty yards away. Stone hit his first true drive, now, two hundred and sixty yards straight down the fairway.

“Everybody gets lucky sometime,” Dino said.

“That’s the thing about this game,” Stone said, getting into the cart. “Even the worst duffer can go out and, maybe two or three times in a round, he can hit a shot that’s the equal of anything a pro could do under the circumstances. And it gives you the entirely irrational hope that, if you worked at it, you might get pretty good at this game.”

“That’s what keeps us coming back,” Dino said. He hit a good drive, too, but short of Stone’s.

“I like you keeping a respectful twenty yards back,” Stone said. “Shows a certain deference.”

Stone chunked his second shot, hitting the ground before striking the ball. It fell short, some forty yards from the green.

Dino hit the green. “Sorry about the lack of deference,” he said.