Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 21

Arrington said.
    Stone spoke up. “I think it’s a good idea that they go to college together.”
    “I’m for that, too,” Dino said. “I suppose you dealt with Peter’s birth certificate.”
    Stone nodded. “Bill Eggers did it through an L.A. judge with whom we both went to law school.”
     
     
    Later, Stone had an opportunity to talk with Eduardo.
    “I’m very impressed with your son,” the older man said.
    “To tell you the truth, so am I,” Stone replied. “He surprises me every day.”
    “Benito has told me of their plans to work together after Yale,” Eduardo said. “I think it’s good that he has a friend with a good head on his shoulders.”
    “I’m glad Peter has such a good friend, too, Eduardo,” Stone replied.
    He was going to have to ask Peter about this plan he had, since he had heard nothing of it.

23
    K elli Keane was at her tiny desk in a corner of the Page Six offices at the New York Post when she got a call from the young man with whom she had slept the night before, who happened to work on the outer periphery of the mayor’s staff.
    She listened through her earpiece while simultaneously typing on her computer keyboard. “Go,” she said.
    “Word around the office is that the mayor married somebody yesterday.”
    “I thought he wouldn’t do that.”
    “Only in exceptional cases, and in this case, secret ones. It happened at the home of Eduardo Bianchi.”
    “Who?”
    “Big shot, lives way the hell out in Brooklyn; on a lot of boards, corporate and charitable.”
    “So, who got married?”
    “That’s the mystery. The mayor has had Christmas dinner booked there for weeks, and after the dinner he took all the considerable leftovers to some mission down on the Bowery.”
    “Come on, Bruce,” she said, “who are the happy couple? They must be somebody special.”
    “You’re right, but it beats me.”
    “Who were the other guests for Christmas dinner?”
    “I don’t have anything hard on that; I’d have to guess.”
    “So, guess.”
    “Well, Bianchi has two daughters, but one of them is supposed to be in a loony bin somewhere, so the one daughter must have been there. She used to be married to Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti, who runs the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct, and they have a son, so he must have been there.”
    “How about Dino, was he there?” She had seen him often at Elaine’s.
    “Maybe, who knows? Bianchi has an old battle-ax of a sister, who acts as his hostess when he entertains. That’s all I can think of.”
    “Thanks, Bruce.”
    “See you this week?”
    “Maybe. Give me a call.” She hung up and thought for a minute, then she got up and maneuvered her long legs toward a bulletin board across the room. There was a photograph, taken at the marriage license office downtown, of a couple standing in line for a license. They were noticeable, because they were so much better dressed than anyone else in the room, but the woman stood behind the man, and her face was visible only from the eyebrows up, while the man’s back was halfway to the camera. A Post-it was stuck to the picture and the words “Who are these people?” were scrawled on it. Kelli unpinned the picture and walked back to her desk with it.
    Who, she wondered, was that guy who was always with Dino Bacchetti at Elaine’s? Kelli was new at Page Six, having come up from Philly, so she was new in the city as well. She had been told this guy’s name, but she hadn’t written it down. He was tall and good-looking and always well-dressed, like the man in the photograph. She phoned her friend Gita, who worked in sports.
    “Gita,” the woman said. “Speak.”
    “It’s Kelli. Remember when we were at Elaine’s last week?”
    “Yeah, sure.” The two women had had a few drinks at the bar.
    “Remember the cop Dino Bacchetti was there?”
    “Yeah; he almost always is.”
    “And who’s the good-looking guy he hangs with?”
    “That’s Stone Barrington. All the girls at the bar want to screw him.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Lawyer, sort of a fix-it guy for Woodman & Weld.”
    “What does he fix?”
    “Whatever needs fixing, I guess.”
    “Is he married?”
    “No, famous bachelor. What, you want to screw him, too?”
    “Not that I would mind, but no. We have a picture of somebody who looks like him standing in line for a marriage license the other day.”
    “That would definitely not be Stone Barrington; he’d rather be struck by lightning.”
    “There were