Her eyebrows went up. “What are you talking about?”

“You may have to take a transfer to deal with it. Dino will want to do the right thing.”

“Whatever it takes,” Viv said.

Stone gave her a hug. “You go home and get some sleep. That’s what Dino is doing.”

57

STONE WAS at his desk the following morning when Joan buzzed him. “FBI Deputy Director Kerry Smith to see you,” she said.

“All right,” Stone sighed, “send him in, and you’d better get him some coffee, too.” He stood up and waited for Kerry to enter his office, then shook his hand and sat him down. “Good to see you, Kerry. What brings you to New York?”

“Was that supposed to be funny?” Kerry asked.

“It was funny,” Stone replied. “To anybody but a DD of the Bureau.”

“I’m going to see Dino, at the hospital, but first, I want to know what happened, and I’m sure you know.”

“You didn’t read the Times this morning?”

“Wasn’t much in the Times.”

“Well, it was right at their deadline, I guess. The Post will have a fuller account this afternoon.”

“It won’t have what I want to know.”

“You mean, you want to know why Dino didn’t call the Bureau before he met Shelley.”

“A good place to start,” Kerry said.

Joan brought in a small tray with a china coffeepot and a mug and set it on the coffee table, then left.

“He didn’t call your people because they’d have had big black vans with flashing lights in the street and a SWAT team in the Carlyle lobby.”

“Oh, come on!”

“You know that’s true. The Bureau is incapable of doing anything small, even when the situation demands it. Also, Shelley probably knew three-quarters of the New York field office by sight.”

“You have a point there,” Kerry admitted.

“Dino was smart enough to take only two detectives with him—both of them women.”

“I heard, and it was smart, I’ll give Dino that.”

“That’s mighty white of you.”

“I saw photos of Shelley’s body. She was unrecognizable—nose job, hair color, lots of new dental work. I swear, I wouldn’t have known her if I had been there, and I spent a couple of years in bed with her.”

“Nobody ever said Shelley was stupid,” Stone said.

“She was smart as a whip, and if she hadn’t been a woman, she’d have been in my job, and I in hers.”

“I expect that’s what made her so hard to nail,” Stone said. “I think her weakness was Dino.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. The whole time we were in D.C. last year, she spent every night with Dino.”

“Well, of course, she was crazy, or she couldn’t have done what she did.”

“You mean Dino?”

“I mean half a dozen murders.”

“I’m sure the Bureau shrinks have had a wonderful time trying to figure that out.”

“You should see the reports—you can’t see the forest for the psychobabble.”

“Yeah, I’ve read a few of those.”