“I know it’s probably of little consequence to you, but when a beautiful woman gets her head cut off, I would have thought that that would have been the first thing on your mind. Charley Sample called me.”

“Oh, and Dierdre Monahan almost got me into bed, but I was saved by the D.A., the Old Man himself.”

“See? You did it again?”

“I don’t want to even think about it,” Stone said, taking a large pull on his bourbon.

“Stone, if you don’t talk about it, get it off your chest, you’re gonna have nightmares for a year.”

“Do I have to?”

“It’s for your own good, pal.”

“Dino, I want to hunt down Devlin Daltry and kill him slow, to quote Carmine Dattila.”

“I know you do.”

“I mean, I really, really want to do that. At lunch today, I was actually thinking about fucking Dierdre Monahan, after she asked me. I was desperate for something to think about besides Celia sitting in that porch chair without a head.”

“Well, fucking Dierdre Monahan is something you’ve done before, and when in your right mind, something you’d do again in a heartbeat, right?”

“Well, sure, I guess so, but how could I think about that when I was fucking Celia only a couple of days ago? I must be a terrible excuse for a human being.”

“Stone, nothing is more human than sex, expecially with women as beautiful as Celia and Dierdre. Thinking about sex with either of them is a great defense against having to think about Celia with no head.” Dino mopped his brow. “Jesus, I want to kill Daltry myself. Maybe if we go down to his studio he’ll give us an excuse.”

“I’d love to do that, I really would,” Stone said.

“Yeah, but it’s my job not to do that, and not to let you do it, either.”

“I know.”

Stone looked up to see Dierdre Monahan coming through the front door. She gave him a little wave, then stopped and said something to Gianni, the headwaiter, who picked up a remote control and changed the TV channel to New York 1, a 24/7 local news channel, then cranked up the volume.

Dierdre came over and sat down. “Well, hi, guys,” she said. “Who does a girl have to fuck to get a drink around here?”

Stone waved at Gianni, who came over and took an order for a cosmo. Dierdra was still wearing the dress she’d worn at lunch, Stone was pleased to see. He stopped thinking about Celia.

“How was your limo ride back to work?” he asked.

“The Old Man was really sweet, wasn’t he? Either that, or he figured out what you and I were about to do and saved me from a fate worse than death.”

“Probably that one,” Stone said.

“Stone and I were having lunch, Dino, and…”

“He already told me,” Dino replied.