“They think I somehow influenced the description. Anyway, it’s been a while since anything happened, and they’re bored with the investigation. It’s been all I could do to keep them interested this long. After tomorrow night, pal, you and I are on our own. You’d better give some thought to how you’re going to protect Sarah.”

“I’ve hardly thought about anything else.”

“I know it’s tough. I mean, Mary Ann and Ben are okay at the old man’s place, and I can watch my own back, but I don’t envy you, trying to keep a lid on Sarah. She’s not the type to like it.”

“You’ve got a very good point there, Dino. I’ve talked with her about visiting her folks in England for a while, but she’s been out of New York for so long that I think she missed it, and she doesn’t want to leave.”

“I think England is a great idea,” Dino said. “You want me to talk to her about it? Will that help?”

“I doubt it; she’ll just think we’re ganging up on her, and she’ll resist all the more.”

“Women,” Dino sighed.

“Yeah,”

“Here we are.” Dino pointed to a set of wrought-iron gates on the left. The ocean was on their right.

Stone pulled into the drive and stopped at a security box.

“Ring the bell, and tell them who you are,” Dino said.

Stone did as he was told, and the gates swung silently open.

28

STONE HAD BEEN EXPECTING SOMETHING like Don Corleone’s house in The Godfather—discreet, anonymous, hidden, even. What lay before him now was a perfect Palladian mansion behind five acres of closely mown lawn. “I don’t think we’re in Brooklyn anymore,” he said to Dino.

“Just barely,” Dino replied. “There’s all kinds of Brooklyn.”

Stone drove up the winding driveway and stopped at the front door in a circle of crunchy gravel. As they got out of the car the splashing of water from a stone fountain in the middle of the circle reached Stone’s ears. Before they could ring the bell, the front door was opened by a small, gray man in a black suit.

“Good evening, Mr. Bacchetti,” the man said, in Italian-accented English.

“Howyadoin’, Pete?”

He shot a rebuking glance at Dino. “Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” the man said. “I am Pietro. Please come this way.”

Stone and Dino followed Pietro through a marble-floored entrance hall and through a large, elegantly furnished drawing room into a small sitting room, paneled in antique pine. A cheerful fire burned in a corner fireplace. The pictures on the wall were of imaginary, ruined palazzos in the Italian countryside.

“May I get you something to drink, gentlemen?” Pietro asked.

“Scotch,” Dino said. “The good stuff, Pete.”

“You know very well we have no other kind, Mr. Bacchetti. Mr. Barrington?”

“A Strega, on ice, please,” Stone replied.