A Delicate Touch Read online

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  F I C T I O N

  A Delicate Touch†

  Desperate Measures†

  Turbulence†

  Shoot First†

  Unbound†

  Quick & Dirty†

  Indecent Exposure†

  Fast & Loose†

  Below the Belt†

  Sex, Lies & Serious Money†

  Dishonorable Intentions†

  Family Jewels†

  Scandalous Behavior†

  Foreign Affairs†

  Naked Greed†

  Hot Pursuit†

  Insatiable Appetites†

  Paris Match†

  Cut and Thrust†

  Carnal Curiosity†

  Standup Guy†

  Doing Hard Time†

  Unintended Consequences†

  Collateral Damage†

  Severe Clear†

  Unnatural Acts†

  D.C. Dead†

  Son of Stone†

  Bel-Air Dead†

  Strategic Moves†

  Santa Fe Edge§

  Lucid Intervals†

  Kisser†

  Hothouse Orchid*

  Loitering with Intent†

  Mounting Fears‡

  Hot Mahogany†

  Santa Fe Dead§

  Beverly Hills Dead

  Shoot Him If He Runs†

  Fresh Disasters†

  Short Straw§

  Dark Harbor†

  Iron Orchid*

  Two-Dollar Bill†

  The Prince of Beverly Hills

  Reckless Abandon†

  Capital Crimes‡

  Dirty Work†

  Blood Orchid*

  The Short Forever†

  Orchid Blues*

  Cold Paradise†

  L.A. Dead†

  The Run‡

  Worst Fears Realized†

  Orchid Beach*

  Swimming to Catalina†

  Dead in the Water†

  Dirt†

  Choke

  Imperfect Strangers

  Heat

  Dead Eyes

  L.A. Times

  Santa Fe Rules§

  New York Dead†

  Palindrome

  Grass Roots‡

  White Cargo

  Deep Lie‡

  Under the Lake

  Run Before the Wind‡

  Chiefs‡

  COAUTHORED BOOKS

  The Money Shot** (with Parnell Hall)

  Barely Legal†† (with Parnell Hall)

  Smooth Operator** (with Parnell Hall)

  TRAVEL

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

  MEMOIR

  Blue Water, Green Skipper

  *A Holly Barker Novel

  †A Stone Barrington Novel

  ‡A Will Lee Novel

  §An Ed Eagle Novel

  **A Teddy Fay Novel

  ††A Herbie Fisher Novel

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Stuart Woods

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Woods, Stuart, author.

  Title: A delicate touch / Stuart Woods.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. | Series: A Stone Barrington novel

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018041585 | ISBN 9780735219250 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735219274 (epub)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction

  Classification: LCC PS3573.O642 D45 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041585

  p. cm.

  Frontispiece: Mikhail Olykainen / Shutterstock.com

  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.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Books by Stuart Woods

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 60

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Skin Game

  About the Author

  1

  Stone Barrington, breathing hard, arrived back at his house after a run with his Labrador retriever, Bob, to Central Park and entered through the ground-floor office door, stopping at the desk of his secretary, Joan Robertson. Stone was out of breath. Bob was not.

  “Pee-ew!” Joan complained. “The shower is four floors up, in the master suite!”

  “All right, all right. Any calls?”

  She handed him a pink slip of paper. “Mary Ann Bianchi Bacchetti, whichever,” she said. “Her cell number.”

  Stone went into hi
s office and phoned Dino Bacchetti’s ex-wife.

  “How are you, Stone?”

  “Just fine.”

  “You sound a little breathless. Maybe you should see a cardiologist.”

  “I’ve been running.”

  “From whom?”

  “An early death.”

  “I hope you don’t have a heart attack on the street,” she said.

  “We share that hope,” Stone replied. “How can I help you, Mary Ann?”

  “Can you recommend a safecracker?”

  Stone’s mind raced. Mary Ann, née Anna Maria, was the daughter of his late friend Eduardo Bianchi, a mysteriously powerful man reputed to have been near the top of the Mafia as a young man, but who later went respectable and served on the boards of major financial institutions and major charities and nonprofits, while living in the style of a Renaissance prince in the far reaches of Brooklyn, in a Palladian mansion on considerable acreage. Stone was executor of his estate.

  “Dare I ask why you need a safecracker?” Stone asked.

  “Why, to crack a safe,” she replied. “I’ve discovered a large old one concealed behind a panel in Papa’s library. I don’t think anyone else ever knew about it, not even Pietro, his butler, or the rest of the staff.”

  “But you don’t know the combination?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Mary Ann, people often conceal the combination of a safe, hidden away in a desk or a drawer somewhere, as a hedge against memory failure. Have you looked around?”

  “I have, and I’ve found nothing. Now, back to my original question: Can you recommend a safecracker?”

  “No, but I may know someone who can,” Stone replied. “What kind of safe is it?”

  “Large and black.”

  “Does it have a trade name on the door?”

  “Oh, yes: ‘Excelsior.’”

  “I’ve never heard of that one,” Stone said, “but I’ll make inquiries.”

  “Today?” Mary Ann asked.

  “Is it urgent?”

  “I’m about to turn over ownership of the house to the board of the museum Papa founded to house his collections. I won’t own the place after today, so yes, it’s urgent.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Soon, please.”

  “Of course. Goodbye, Mary Ann.” He hung up and called Bob Cantor, his source of tech of all kinds.

  “Morning, Stone,” Bob said.

  “Morning to you,” Stone replied. “Bob, I need a safecracker.”

  “Well, I can open half a dozen different brands,” Bob said. “What kind of safe?”

  “It says, ‘Excelsior,’ on the front.”

  “British Excelsior or German Excelsior?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The British Excelsiors are cheap stuff that no one with the need for a fine safe would buy.”

  “In that case, it’s German Excelsior.”

  “Holy shit,” Bob said quietly. “Is it in New York?”

  “Brooklyn, way out. Is there something special about an Excelsior?”

  “You might say that. The last one was made in 1938, in Berlin. The maker was one Julius Epstein. He was in business for half a century, and his safes were in great demand, but he made them one at a time to order, with an assistant or two. So as you might imagine, there aren’t all that many in existence, what with the bombing of Germany during the war. Epstein himself didn’t get out of the country in time. He died in one of the camps and took his secrets with him.”

  “Can you open it?”

  “There are only three people alive who can open an Excelsior without the combination,” Bob said. “All of them were Epstein’s assistants, at one time or another.”

  “And where are they?”

  “Two are in an old folks’ home in Germany,” Bob said. “They survived the Holocaust.”

  “And the third?”

  “In an old folks’ home in Brooklyn. His name is Solomon Fink, and he owned a safe store on the Lower East Side from about 1947 until a couple of years ago. He’s pushing a hundred. In fact, he could be pulling from the other side of a hundred.”

  “Is there any other way to get the thing open?”

  “Not without destroying the contents, and maybe the building it’s sitting in.”

  “Is Mr. Fink in a condition to be able to open it?”

  “I can find out. You know, Sol once gave me a lesson in how to open an Excelsior, but that was more than twenty years ago, and I never had any call to open another one.”

  “Can you remember how to do it?”

  “Probably not, but let me find out if I can get Sol out of the home for a few hours. I’ll call you back.”

  “Bob, the safe needs to be opened today. Otherwise it will pass into other hands.”

  “Where, exactly, is it?”

  “Do you know the Eduardo Bianchi estate?”

  “Sure, I used to bicycle past it all the time when I was a kid, on the way to the beach.”

  “There. Get back to me as fast as you can.”

  “Will do.”

  * * *

  • • •

  STONE WAS JUST getting out of the shower when Cantor called back. “Hello?”

  “It’s Cantor. I’ve sprung Sol Fink for the afternoon. He has to be back in time for dinner at five o’clock.”

  “That early?”

  “They serve the early-bird special every day at the home. I should be able to pick up Sol and make it to the Bianchi place by one o’clock.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Stone said. “I want to witness this.”

  “Wait a minute, Stone,” Bob said. “There’s a little more to this, and it would be better if you hear it now instead of later.”

  “I’m listening,” Stone said.

  “One of the characteristics of the Excelsior is that, if you attempt to open it and get the combination wrong, you get one more try. But if the combo is wrong again, it locks up and can’t be opened except by Julius Epstein himself, or one of his assistants, and Julius is unavailable. When he was alive he charged his clients five thousand Swiss francs, plus travel expenses, in cash, to open a safe. That made people very careful to remember the combination—or to hide it someplace.”

  “Eduardo’s daughter, Mary Ann, is at the house, and she said she’s already looked everywhere she can think of for the combination, so don’t count on that.”

  “Sol may not have opened an Excelsior for twenty years or more, so let’s hope he remembers how.”

  “Shall I pick you up?”

  “I’m working on the Upper East Side. I’ll come to you, and we’ll drive past the home and snatch Sol off the curb.”

  “Right.”

  Both men hung up.

  2

  Bob Cantor showed up on time, stowed a tool kit in the trunk of Stone’s car, and then Fred, Stone’s factotum, drove them to Brooklyn, where they stopped in front of a large old house on a leafy street.

  “Gimme a couple of minutes,” Bob said and got out of the car. Shortly, he emerged with an old gentleman, spiffily dressed in a three-piece pinstriped suit and a homburg, and took hold of his arm to help him down the front steps. The old man snatched his arm away and said something sharp to Bob.

  Stone got out of the car to greet them and was introduced. “How do you do, Mr. Fink?” he said, offering his hand. The hand that gripped his was smooth and firm.

  “At the home,” Fink said, “everybody calls me Sol, and I got used to it.”

  His voice was strong, and he was ramrod straight in his posture. Stone hadn’t expected that.

  “Before you ask,” Sol said, “I’m a hundred and four years old.”

  “Congratulations,” Stone said.

  “It’s not my fault,”
Sol replied, climbing into the rear seat. “I did everything that’s supposed to kill you, except smoking, so I should have been dead fifty years ago.”

  Stone got up front with Fred. “Then from now on, Sol,” he said over his shoulder, “I will adopt you as my personal example.”

  Sol laughed heartily.

  It was a sunny day, and the drive to the Bianchi estate was pleasant. They presented themselves at the front door. To Stone’s surprise, it was opened by Pietro, who had been Eduardo Bianchi’s servant for many decades. Pietro was probably nearly as old as Sol Fink, and had maintained a lifelong reputation for being very good with a knife. He had never liked Stone or, perhaps, anyone else.

  “Mary Ann is expecting us, Pietro,” Stone said.

  Pietro muttered something in Italian and indicated that they should follow him. Progress was slow, but eventually, they entered Eduardo’s study and library.

  Mary Ann got up from Eduardo’s desk to greet them and was introduced to Bob Cantor and Sol Fink.

  “Where is the safe?” Stone asked.

  “See if you can find it,” she said.

  Stone and Bob looked around the study and shook their heads.

  Sol Fink walked to a corner of the room behind the desk and ran his hand over a row of books. He pressed his finger against a leather-bound volume about six books along, and with a little click, the bookcase in the corner sprang open an inch. “There you are,” he said, pulling open the bookcase to reveal a large black safe with gilt decoration. EXCELSIOR BERLIN was lettered at the top.

  “How did you know where to find it, Sol?” Stone asked, astounded.

  “It was the only book there that was upside down,” Sol said. “And,” he said with a twinkle, “I been here before.”

  “I don’t remember you,” Mary Ann said.

  “You wasn’t born yet. I came to service the safe.”

  “Can you open it?”

  “Maybe,” Sol replied. He reached into an inside coat pocket and came up with a stethoscope.

  “Where did you find a stethoscope?” Bob Cantor asked.

  “On a doctor,” Sol replied. “Safecracking isn’t my only sin. I’m a pickpocket, too.” He reached into another pocket, pulled out a wallet, and handed it to Bob. “You dropped this,” he said drily.

  “Mr. Fink,” Mary Ann said, “can you open this safe?”

  “Everybody at the home calls me Sol,” he replied. “I got used to it.”

  “Sol,” she said sweetly, “can you open this safe?”