“I liked her, too, and I’m flattered she liked me. How’d you meet her?”

“Back when I was walking a beat, I started stopping in there late for dinner, and we got along. I wasn’t exactly one of her regulars, and I ate at the bar. After I’d been going in there for a couple of years, she’d give me a table, and after I made detective I could afford to go more often.”

“Dino, too?”

“Yep, but he had his own list of favorite places, when pretty much all I had was Elaine’s.”

The owner, Ken Aretsky, stopped by their table. “No Dino and Viv tonight?”

“We’re going to be spending a few days with them in Santa Fe, leaving tomorrow. I bought a house there.”

“Another house? You’ll be like Ted Turner soon. He has, what, ten places?”

“God save me from that fate,” Stone said. “Joan can barely keep up with what I’ve got now. I did sell Connecticut, though.”

“That was brave of you.” Ken continued on his rounds.

Stone turned his attention back to Holly. “How long are you going to stay in your job?”

“Until Kate fires me.”

“She’ll never do that, but White House people tend to burn out after a couple of years. Hardly any of them seem to make it into their president’s second term.”

“I never got tired of working at the Agency,” she said, “and I was there a lot longer than Kate’s two terms will last, if she gets reelected.”

“Are you concerned about whether she will?”

“No, she loves the job, and Will is in charge of keeping her political bridges intact. He’s a big help with Congress, too; he has so many old friends there.”

“I thought he was Babysitter in Chief these days.”

“He likes people to think that, but he has two nannies to back him up, so he’s either on the phone or consulting with Kate most of his days. He sometimes works in the study off the Oval Office, so she can pop in between appointments in the Oval and talk over the meeting she’s just had. It’s a great system for both of them. And every time I’m out of the office for a day, they ask if I’ve seen you, thinking I’ve come to New York.”

“I’d like it if that could happen more often,” he said.

“I’d like that, too, but there are few opportunities. Kate had to practically run me out of the White House to get me to come up here.”

“I’m looking forward to having you with me in Santa Fe,” he said.