Stone stopped moving, and the crowd surged past him. He watched Dino carried along by the crowd to the car, then he was driving away, waving.

Chapter

43

Late in the evening, as Stone was drifting off to sleep, the telephone rang. He fumbled for it. “Hello?”

“Mr. Barrington?” The voice was vaguely familiar.

“Yes?”

“This is Herbert Van Fleet.”

Stone looked at the clock. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “What is it?”

“I know I must have awakened you. I’m very sorry.”

“What do you want, Mr. Van Fleet?”

“I want to retain you.”

“Retain me?”

“I understand that you are practicing law now.”

“Yes, that’s right, but why do we need to talk about this at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night? Can you call my office number tomorrow morning?”

“I’m afraid it’s more urgent than that. I’ve been arrested.”

Stone sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What were you arrested for, Mr. Van Fleet?”

“Please call me Herb.”

Annoyed. “What were you arrested for, Herb?”

“They’re calling it attempted rape. They want to arraign me in a couple of hours, in night court.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in a place called the Tombs. They let me make this one call.”

“You’re going to need to raise bail, Herb. Can you lay your hands on some money?”

“How much money?”

“I should think that, with no previous arrests, the judge might want as much as twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, or you can put up ten percent and some property to a bail bondsman. You won’t get the ten percent back.”

“I’ve got about forty thousand dollars in a money market account,” Van Fleet said.

“That should do it,” Stone said. “All right, Herb, I’ll represent you at the arraignment. My fee for that will be a thousand dollars. If you want me to represent you after that, we can talk about a further retainer.”

“All right, that’s acceptable.”

“I’ll meet you at night court.” Stone hung up, oddly elated. Herbert Van Fleet was a strange person, but this was the first time somebody had asked Stone to represent him, his first client outside Woodman & Weld. It promised to be a fairly lucrative representation too. He began to get dressed.

Night court was a zoo. Every prostitute, vagrant, and petty criminal arrested during the past few hours would be arraigned there, and the crowd was colorful and noisy. From the back of the huge courtroom, Stone could barely hear the judge, who was shouting.