Cover

Contents

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

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9

10

11

12

13

14

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19

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64

Acknowledgments

“We Are Very Different People”: Stuart Woods on Stone Barrington

Stone Barrington: The First Five

About the Author

Praise for Stuart Woods

Books by Stuart Woods

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dedication

This book is for

Elaine Kaufman

1

THE PAIN LAY BURIED SOMEWHERE IN THE depths of Stone Barrington’s upper body; a cross between a slipped disc and a coronary, it seemed. It had begun after a phone conversation early in the previous winter. The call, from Arrington Carter, had ended everything. Now she was the wife of another man, living in his house, rearing his son. He would never see her again, except in her husband’s company, and he would never think of her again without feeling the pain.

He had never believed it would persist into the following spring, but it had. If anything, it was worse. He saw Dino a couple of times a week, always at Elaine’s. Dino was his closest friend—sometimes, he felt, his only friend. Not true, of course. Elaine was his friend, and the evenings in her restaurant, with Elaine and Dino, were the only bright spots in his week. His law practice had lately been boring, a personal injury suit that dragged on and on, a bone thrown to him by Woodman & Weld, because there wasn’t enough meat on it to nourish a firm with thirty partners and a hundred associates. They were ready to go to trial, and the expected settlement offer had not materialized. It was depressing. Everything was depressing. And the pain continued, assuaged only by bourbon, and he had done too much assuaging lately. He sat at table number five, at Elaine’s, with Dino, and ordered another assuagement.

“Let’s go to a party,” Dino said. “Have your next one there.”

“I don’t feel like going to a party with a lot of cops,” Stone said.

“It’s not a cop party.”

“You don’t know anybody but cops,” Stone said.

Dino caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for a check. “I know lots of people,” he said.

“Name three who aren’t cops or Mafiosi.”

“It’s not a Mafia party, either,” Dino said, dodging the question.

“Whose party is it?”

“It’s at a deputy DA’s.”

“Oh. Then we get to bring our own booze.”

“His name is Martin B-r-o-u-g-h-a-m,” he spelled, “pronounced ‘Broom,’ and he’s got some money, I think.”

“Isn’t he handling the Dante trial?” Dante was a crime boss, and his trial was the most important since Gotti’s.

“He got a conviction this afternoon.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“Don’t you watch the news anymore?”

“Not much.”

“The party is to celebrate the conviction.”

“How come I don’t know Brougham?”

“Because he runs with a classier crowd than you’re accustomed to. The only seedy lawyers he meets are in court.”

“Who are you calling a seedy lawyer?”