“Why?”

“I think they think I’m incapable of commitment.”

“Is that true?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I’m very careful about who I commit to. Don’t you think you’re blaming too much on your work?”

“I tried to explain this before: it works better if we’re both in the service. We are the only people who understand us. Say I married some barrister or stockbroker. There would be a constant schedule of work-related social events, and I would make very few of them. I work all hours, and men get lonely, just as women do. Men are not understanding when you tell them nothing about what you do. It drives them crazy.”

“I suppose I can understand that, but you’ve told me quite a lot tonight.”

Felicity laughed. “If, say, the Chinese or the North Koreans captured you and you told them everything I’ve told you, they would kill you because you told them nothing.”

“See,” Stone said, laughing. And then their dinner arrived.

11

Stone was at his desk the following morning when Herbie Fisher appeared at his office door, unannounced. The phone buzzed, and Stone picked it up. “Yes?”

“Mr. Herbert Fisher to see you,” Joan said drily.

“Thank you so much,” Stone said, and hung up. “What can I do for you, Herbie?” he asked.

Herbie came in and took a seat across the desk from Stone. “I know who’s trying to kill me,” he said.

Stone held up a hand, a stopping motion. “Herbie, think back a couple of years: someone was trying to kill you then, remember? Dattila the Hun?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that.”

“We sued him, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“And what happened?”

“Uh, I shot him.”

“Right.”

“It was easier than suing him.”

“Easier for you,” Stone said, remembering what he had had to do to keep Herbie from being tried. “If you kill somebody else you think is trying to kill you, the DA is going to remember that little incident with Dattila. You understand?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Don’t guess, Herbie, know it. You can’t make a habit of that sort of thing and stay out of prison.”

“All right, I know it.”

“Now, who’s trying to kill you?”

“My bookie,” Herbie said.

“And what is his motive?”

“I stopped betting with him.”

“You got a new bookie?”

“No, I just stopped betting. I went into the bar he works out of, put a hundred and forty-eight grand on the bar—that squared me with him—and told him I wasn’t betting anymore.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He didn’t take it very well,” Herbie said.

“He didn’t take it very well how?”

“Well, first he shook my hand and slapped me on the back and offered me a credit line of a quarter million.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Stone said.

“When I told him I wasn’t betting anymore he backhanded me across the face and told me if I tried betting with anybody else he would kill me.”

“He assumed you would change bookies?”