Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

a table somewhere sumptuous for dinner tomorrow evening.”
    “I thought I was going to be dinner.”
    “You are going to be a very rich dessert.”

Herbie Fisher and Harp O’Connor were having dinner in the back room at P.J. Clarke’s, a regular hangout for them since they had met there at the bar.
    “Herb,” Harp said, “how come you set me up for that sweep at Jim Rutledge’s place, then pulled me off?”
    “I’m sorry. Did I mess up your day?” He began to think about lying to her.
    “Just answer my question.”
    Herbie made up his mind. If he started lying to her about the little stuff, it would soon spread to bigger stuff. “Stone Barrington asked me to pull you off.”
    Harp chewed in silence for a moment. “Do you know why?”
    “No, I don’t,” Herbie replied.
    “You didn’t ask?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “I find that very peculiar.”
    “It’s like this, baby: there are only two or three people in the world that I trust completely, and Stone is one of them.” He almost stopped there but caught himself. “You are another.”
    “I know why you trust me, Herb, but why do you trust Stone?”
    “Because I have a long experience with him, and he has always been worthy of my trust.”
    “Before I met you and heard you talk about him, I’d heard that he was just some kind of sleazy fixer for Woodman & Weld.”
    “Stone likes to say that he handled cases for Woodman & Weld that the firm didn’t want to be seen to be handling. That doesn’t mean they were sleazy cases, just sensitive ones.”
    “Well, I have to admit that he went way up in my opinion when we were in L.A. and found ourselves having drinks and dinner with the president of the United States. How’d that come about?”
    “Well, I’ve never had a substantive conversation about that with Stone, but I’ve picked up fragments here and there.”
    “Gimme some fragments, I love fragments. I make my living on fragments.”
    “Did you meet Holly Barker at that dinner?”
    “Tall, auburn hair, good body?”
    “That’s the one. Holly works at the CIA, for the director. The first lady?”
    “I got that. I read the papers when she got the appointment.”
    “Holly got Stone and Dino involved with some CIA business or other down in the islands a few years back. I’ve never known what it was about. I think Stone met the president about that time. Then there was that thing when he and Dino went to Washington at the president’s request a year or two ago to investigate some old murders that a friend of the president’s, now dead, had been accused of.”
    “Yeah, that one made the papers.”
    “That’s it.”
    “That’s not all that much.”
    “It’s all I know,” Herbie said. “I don’t think Stone would like it if you asked him about it.”
    “Okay, next time I have a couple too many, I’ll try not to ask him. What I want to know is why he wouldn’t want me to sweep Rutledge’s apartment.”
    “Like I said, I trust Stone, and he asked me.”
    “Maybe he—or Holly Barker—didn’t want me to find any bugs.”
    “And why would they want that?”
    “Maybe because the Agency planted them?”
    “Jim Rutledge is an architect and interior designer, who used to be the executive art director for Architectural Digest . Why would the Agency want to bug his apartment?”
    “Maybe because he lives with that Kelli Keane person, who is a journalist? We met her in L.A., too.”
    “That’s right, we did. But the CIA isn’t allowed to operate domestically—that’s FBI territory.”
    “And you believe the Agency sticks to that? Come on, Herb.”
    “I don’t have any personal knowledge that they don’t stick to it.”
    “Did something happen when we were at The Arrington that I don’t know about?”
    “If you don’t know about it, it’s because I don’t know about it either.”
    “So we’re both in the dark?”
    “I don’t even know if there’s any dark,” Herbie said.
    “In my experience, which is extensive for a woman who is as young as I am, there’s always dark.”
    “You, young lady, are a cynic.”
    “There’s a lot to be cynical about,” Harp replied. “Is Jim Rutledge your client?”
    “Yes. I set up his business structure for him.”
    “So you have attorney-client privilege with him?”
    “Yes, but so far, you haven’t intruded on that.”
    “Are you friends?”
    “We have a cordial personal relationship.”
    “Could you set up a dinner with us and him and Ms.