Three Stone Barrington Adventures Read online

  Stuart Woods Three Stone Barrington Adventures

  Lucid Intervals

  Strategic Moves

  Bel-Air Dead

  Stuart Woods

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  ABOUT THE TITLE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  FICTION

  Kisser2

  Hothouse Orchid1

  Loitering with Intent2

  Mounting Fears

  Hot Mahogany2

  Santa Fe Dead4

  Beverly Hills Dead

  Shoot Him If He Runs2

  Fresh Disasters2

  Short Straw4

  Dark Harbor2

  Iron Orchid1

  Two-Dollar Bill2

  The Prince of Beverly Hills

  Reckless Abandon2

  Capital Crimes3

  Dirty Work2

  Blood Orchid1

  The Short Forever2

  Orchid Blues1

  Cold Paradise2

  L.A. Dead2

  The Run3

  Worst Fears Realized2

  Orchid Beach1

  Swimming to Catalina2

  Dead in the Water2

  Dirt2

  Choke

  Imperfect Strangers

  Heat

  Dead Eyes

  L.A. Times

  Santa Fe Rules4

  New York Dead2

  Palindrome

  Grass Roots3

  White Cargo

  Deep Lie3

  Under the Lake

  Run Before the Wind3

  Chiefs3

  TRAVEL

  A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (1979)

  MEMOIR

  Blue Water, Green Skipper (1977)

  G. P. PUTNAM’ S SONS Publishers Since 1838 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2010 by Stuart Woods

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lucid intervals / Stuart Woods.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18697-8

  1. Barrington, Stone (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Attorney and client—Fiction.

  3. Private investigators—Fiction. 4. Lottery winners—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.O642L

  813’.54—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Ted and Barbara Flicker.

  1

  Elaine’s, late.

  Stone Barrington and Dino Bacchetti were sitting at their usual table, eating penne with shrimp and vodka sauce, when a young man named Herbert Fisher walked in with a tall young woman.

  Stone ignored him. Herbie Fisher was the nephew of Bob Cantor, a retired cop with whom Stone had worked many times. Bob Cantor was Herbie’s only connection with reality. Herbie Fisher, in Stone’s experience, was a walking catastrophe.

  Herbie seated his girl at a table to the rear, then walked back and took a chair at Stone’s table. “Hi, Stone,” he said. “Hi, Dino.”

  “Dino,” Stone said, “you are a police officer, are you not?”

  “I am,” said Dino, spearing a shrimp.

  “I wish to make a complaint.”

  “Go right ahead,” Dino said.

  “What’s going on, Stone?” Herbie asked.

  Stone ignored him. “There is an intruder at my table; I wish to have him removed.”

  “Remove him yourself,” Dino said. “I’m eating penne with shrimp and vodka sauce.”

  “You are a duly constituted officer of the law, are you not?” Stone asked.

  “Once again, I am.”

  “Then it is your duty to respond to the complaint of an upstanding citizen.”

  “What kind of citizen?”

  “Upstanding.”

  “I’m not at all sure that the word describes you, Stone.”

  Herbie, whose head was following the conversation as if he were seated in the first row at Wimbledon, said, “No kidding, Stone, what’s going on?”

  Stone continued to ignore him. “Dino, am I to understand that you are ignoring a citizen’s complaint?”

  “You are to understand that,” Dino said, mopping up some vodka sauce with a slice of bread. “Do your own dirty work.”

  “Stone,” Herbie said, “I’m rich.”
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  “That’s rich,” Dino replied.

  “No kidding, I’m rich. I won the lottery.”

  “How much?” Dino asked.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Stone said.

  “Thirty million dollars,” Herbie replied.

  “How much you got left after taxes and paying off your bookie and your loan shark?” Dino asked.

  “I’m warning you,” Stone said. “Don’t encourage him, he’s dangerous.”

  “Approximately fourteen million, two,” Herbie replied. “I want to hire you as my lawyer, Stone,” he continued.

  “Why do you need a lawyer?” Dino asked.

  “All rich people need lawyers,” Herbie said.

  “Could you be more specific?” Dino asked.

  “Dino,” Stone said, “stop this, stop it right now. He’s sucking you in.”

  “Prove you’re rich, Herbie,” Dino said.

  “I’ll be right back,” Herbie said. He got up, walked back to where the girl sat, picked up her large handbag, came back to Stone’s table and sat down. He lifted up the handbag and opened it wide, displaying the contents to Stone and Dino. “What do you think that is?” he asked.

  “Well,” Dino said, gazing into the purse, “that would appear to be approximately twenty bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills each, or two million dollars.”

  “Absolutely correct,” Herbie said.

  “Do you always walk around with that much money, Herbie?” Dino asked.

  “Only since I got rich.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stone, I want to retain you as my lawyer. I’ll pay you a one-million-dollar retainer in cash, right now.”

  Stone stopped eating. “Dino, have you had any recent training at recognizing counterfeit bills?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Dino said. “We had a guy in from Treasury the day before yesterday who gave us a slide-show presentation on that very subject.”

  “Would you examine the bills in the bag, please?”

  Dino dipped into the bag and came out with a hundred-dollar bill. He held it up to the light, snapped it a couple of times and laid it on the table. “Entirely genuine,” Dino said, then he turned to Herbie. “They don’t hand out millions in cash at the lottery office, you know. Where did you get it?”

  “I cashed a check,” Herbie replied.

  Stone flagged down a passing waiter. “David,” he said, “would you please go and find me a good-sized paper bag?”

  “Sure,” David replied. He went into the kitchen and came back with a plastic shopping bag. “No paper bags. Will this do?”

  “Yes,” Stone said, accepting the bag and handing it to Dino. “Will you please put one million dollars of Herbie’s money into this bag, Dino?”

  “That okay with you, Herbie?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Herbie replied.

  Dino held the plastic bag close to the purse and counted out ten of the bundles. He handed the bag to Stone. “There you go.”

  “Just put it on the floor beside me,” Stone said, and Dino did so. Stone looked at Herbie for the first time. “All right, you’ve got my attention; I’ll listen for one minute.”

  “They’re trying to kill me,” Herbie said.

  “Who is trying to kill you?”

  “People who want my money.”

  “Are these people aware that you walk around with two million dollars of it in a woman’s handbag?”

  Herbie shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Herbie, you’ve been flashing this money around, haven’t you?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “The hooker must know about the money, since it’s in her handbag.”

  “What hooker?”

  “The one you walked in here with.”

  “She’s not a hooker.”

  “Herbie, she’s with you; she is, ipso facto, a hooker.”

  “Part-time, maybe,” Herbie admitted.

  “Who do hookers work for, Herbie?”

  “Me?”

  “Besides you?”

  “Madams? Pimps?”

  “And who do madams and pimps work for, Herbie?”

  “They’re self-employed, aren’t they?”

  “They work for or associate with bad people, Herbie. If a hooker knows you’ve got two million dollars in her handbag, then her madam and her pimp know it too, and if they’ve had a moment, they’ve already sold that information to someone who wants to take it from you.”

  “Sheila wouldn’t do that,” Herbie said. “She loves me.”

  At that moment, as if for punctuation at the end of Herbie’s sentence, a fist-sized hole appeared in the front window of Elaine’s, and a loud report rent the air. This was quickly followed by two more shots.

  Everybody hit the floor.

  Stone raised his head an inch. “Are you sure Sheila loves you, Herbie?”

  2

  Dino was up and running at the door, clawing at the gun on his belt. He disappeared into the street.

  People began cautiously to pick themselves up, look around and brush themselves off. Elaine sat two tables down, unmoving, looking unperturbed. The door opened, and a tall woman of Stone’s acquaintance, though not recent, walked in carrying a very feminine attaché case.

  Her name was Felicity Devonshire, though she was not called that by anyone who worked with her. She was, in fact, a high official of British intelligence who had formerly been called Carpenter but more recently, after a big promotion, had been dubbed Architect. A man had preceded her into the restaurant, and another followed her. They stationed themselves at the end of the bar, near the door, and watched the room.

  Stone got up from the floor, dusted himself off, spotted Felicity and waved her over. They embraced casually. He could feel her ample breasts through her coat and his.

  “Stone,” she said, “what is going on? Dino is out in the street waving a gun around and shouting into a cell phone, and this place is a mess.”

  “Just a little after-dinner entertainment,” Stone said, taking her coat and holding a chair for her, not missing the sight of her cleavage as she sat down. He took his seat, picked up the plastic bag with the million dollars in it and stuffed it into the hooker’s handbag. Shoving the bag at Herbie, he said, “Go away.”

  Herbie began to protest, but Stone held up a hand like a traffic cop and then waved him back to his own table and the clutches of the perfidious Sheila.

  Felicity watched him go. “Isn’t that the awful little twit who gave you so much trouble a couple of years ago?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What was in the carrier bag?”

  “A million dollars in cash.”

  “Oh.” There were sounds of the sweeping up of glass from the front of the room, and a waiter appeared.

  “Would the lady like a drink?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” Felicity said. “The lady would like a Rob Roy with ice.”

  Dino came back through the front door, holstering his weapon. “Felicity!” he said. “I thought that was you getting out of the Rolls.”

  “Hello, Dino,” Felicity said warmly, for a member of the British upper class. She allowed herself to be pecked on the cheek. “How are you?”

  “Pretty good,” Dino said. “Sorry about the excitement; somebody put a couple rounds through the front window.”

  “Of course,” Felicity replied.

  Elaine came and stood by the table. “So,” she said, “who’s paying for the window?”

  Stone jerked a thumb toward the rear of the room. “Herbie Fisher, and he’s got the cash on him.”

  Elaine walked back to Herbie’s table and slapped him on the back of the head. Stone could not hear what she was saying to him, but Herbie dipped into Sheila’s handbag and came up with a thick slice of hundreds. Elaine tucked the money into her bosom without a word and moved on to the table of another regular.

  “This has always been such an interesting place,” Felicity said, sipping her Rob Roy.

  S
tone gazed with heartfelt lust at her pale red hair, her unblemished skin, and her very English but nevertheless sexy clothes. “You make it even more interesting,” he said.

  Felicity patted him on the cheek. “Aren’t you sweet.”

  “See anything outside, Dino?” Stone asked.

  “A van, headed downtown,” Dino replied. “I didn’t have a shot. I called it in.” He looked at the floor beside the table. “Where’s the million bucks?”

  Felicity spoke up. “Do you mean that there was actually a million dollars in that carrier bag?”

  “It was Stone’s retainer,” Dino explained. “Herbie Fisher wanted legal representation.”

  Felicity regarded Stone with a curious glance. “And you declined? This is not the Stone I know.”

  “So,” Stone said, changing the subject, “what brings you to town, Felicity?”

  “Her Majesty’s service,” she replied.

  “Oh, come on,” Stone said. “Give us a hint.”

  “We are not in the ‘hint’ business,” she said.

  “Of course you are,” Stone said. “Hints are what you do. I mean, you never come right out and say anything; you just hint.”

  “You may have noticed that I have not hinted. What on earth do you mean by refusing a fee of a million dollars?”

  “You do remember Herbie, don’t you?”

  “How could I forget him?” she asked. “Asked to take a photograph of an assignation from a rooftop, he fell through a skylight and broke both of one my colleague’s legs, as I recall. Of course, my colleague was already dead, but that hardly matters in the circumstances, does it?”

  “It does not,” Stone said, “but you have just illustrated why I didn’t take Herbie’s money. It would have bought me ten million dollars’ worth of trouble.”

  “Quite.”

  “Would you like some dinner?”

  “Yes, please. I couldn’t eat what they gave me at the Saudi UN embassy. I believe it was goat or something very like it.”

  Stone signaled for a menu, and she glanced at it.

  “Order for me, would you?”

  “You’re starved?”

  “Ravenous.”

  Stone turned to the waiter. “Bring her the osso buco with polenta and a bottle of the Chianti Classico,” Stone said to the waiter.