The owner, Ken Aretzky, stopped by and bought them a drink, then continued on his rounds. They ordered the Caesar salad, a house specialty prepared at the table, and the chateaubriand, medium rare, and Stone ordered a bottle of the Laughing Hare Cabernet.

“Laughing Hare?” Dino asked.

“A Cabernet you never heard of,” Stone said. “Honest public servants can’t afford it.” Dino was New York City’s commissioner of police, but the two men had been partners as homicide detectives many years before. “That’s why I’m buying.”

The waiter brought the bottle and poured them a taste. Dino sampled it. “So I should consider this a bribe?”

“Let’s call it a bribe in the bank, since there’s nothing in particular I want from you at the moment.”

“That makes a nice change,” Dino said, and took a larger swig of the wine. “Not bad.”

“You are given to understatement,” Stone said.

“Okay, it’s pretty damn good.”

Stone took a swig himself. “Better than that.”

“So how come you’re alone tonight? Where’s Pat Frank?”

“Who knows?” Stone said. “She has let it be known that she’d rather be alone than with me.”

“What did you do?”

“It’s what you did,” Stone said. “You arrested her boyfriend on a double murder charge and her old friend as an accessory after the fact.”

“And she blames you?”

“I tried blaming you—it didn’t work.”

“So she pulled the plug?”

“Not exactly, she just got really busy.”

“She just started a new business, maybe she is really just very busy.”

“When I hear that excuse twice, I usually pull the plug myself. But the second time I was understanding, then I heard it a third time, and I got the message.”

“I’m sure it’s you, not her.”

“Isn’t that line supposed to be the other way around?”

“It’s always you.”

“What, am I too nice to them?”

“Maybe. They don’t always appreciate that the way you expect them to.”

“You mean I should be less nice?”

“Look at it this way,” Dino said. “Her boyfriend had two arrests for domestic violence, both times against her, once with a gun, and still, she’s upset that he’s in jail. Does that make any sense?”

“None at all.”

“You’ve never been violent, have you? You take her out to good restaurants, you stay in good hotels, you have a jet airplane that you let her fly, because she can fly it better than you.”

“Had a jet airplane,” Stone pointed out. “Her boyfriend and her friend put a bomb in that airplane, which you detonated by pulling a string tied to the master switch.”

“Given the circumstances, I thought it was a better idea to pull the string than just sitting in the cockpit and flipping it to the on position, incinerating myself and, incidentally, you.”

“I’ll grant you that.”