Stone blinked. “At fifteen?”

“I’ll be sixteen. I know it’s unusual, but the school said they thought the accelerated program was the best way to keep me interested.”

“Were they right?”

“Oh, yes; it’s been great!”

Stone wondered how he was going to keep this kid interested for two weeks.

When they arrived back at the house Stone took Peter in through the office entrance and introduced him to Joan.

“I’m very glad to meet you, Peter,” she said. “Funny, I was expecting someone younger.” She shot a glance at Stone, who rolled his eyes.

“Stone, your client Herbert Fisher is waiting to see you,” she said.

Stone sighed. “Come on, Peter,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to a New York character.” He led the way to his office.

5

Stone introduced Peter to Herbie Fisher. “Peter, I have some business to discuss with Herbie. Why don’t you go upstairs and get unpacked? We’ll leave for dinner at eight-fifteen.”

“All right,” Peter said, and ran up the stairs.

Stone turned and looked at Herbie. “What’s going on, Herbie?” he asked. “You look kind of soggy.”

“That’s because I went for a swim in New York Harbor.”

“In December?”

“It wasn’t exactly my choice.”

Stone went into the little bathroom off his office, got a towel, returned and handed it to Herbie. “Have a seat and tell me about it.”

Herbie took off his sodden overcoat, draped it over a chair, and sat down, running the towel over his hair. “Well, I went on a singles lunchtime cruise,” he said.

“They do cruises in December?”

“Singles don’t care if it’s cold; it’s warm inside the yacht.”

“Yacht?”

“These are expensive cruises. They use a seventy-foot yacht, and they serve a good lunch and wine. It’s two hundred fifty a head.”

“Sounds profitable. Any likely women?”

“Yes, a number.”

“So why did you decide to get off before the yacht reached the dock?”

“There was an altercation,” Herbie said.

“What started it?”

“There were these two guys, dressed well, but kind of beefy. They had knives.”

“For this they charge two-fifty a head?” Stone asked.

“I don’t know what they were doing there. Well, no, that’s wrong; I have a very good idea what they were doing there.”

“Which was?”

“Stephanie.”

Stephanie was Herbie’s sort of ex-wife. She and her brother had, according to news reports, stolen nearly a billion dollars from their father’s asset management firm and skipped to a Pacific island nation with no extradition treaty.

“She sent me some divorce papers a couple of times, but I just threw them away,” Herbie said.

“Never a good idea to throw away legal documents,” Stone pointed out. “Then what?”

“I was standing near the rear of the yacht’s saloon, talking to a girl, and these two guys appeared and said they needed to talk to me. They shoved me out on the afterdeck, and one of them said, ‘You should have signed the papers.’ Then both of them produced switchblades.”

“And how did you handle that?” Stone asked, fascinated now.