Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 21

some other people with him and Dino that night—a woman and a couple of kids.”
    “One of the kids was Dino’s son—I don’t know his name. No idea who the others were.”
    “Thanks, sweetie.” Kelli hung up. Her stomach growled; it was nearly eight p.m. She turned to her computer and wrote: “Item: At whose marriage did the mayor officiate at Eduardo Bianchi’s house on Christmas Day? We thought Hizzoner didn’t hitch folks.”
    She printed it out and dropped it in the day editor’s in-box on the way to the elevator. She pressed the down button and waited, then the day editor appeared with a sheet of paper in his hand and thrust it at her.
    “This won’t fly,” he said.
    “Why not? My source is good.”
    “You don’t fuck with him.”
    “The mayor? We fuck with him all the time.”
    “That’s right, you’re new in town, aren’t you? We don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi. Nobody in this city does.” He turned and went back to his desk, and Kelli followed him.
    “So who the fuck is Eduardo Bianchi,” she demanded, “that we can’t fuck with him? I thought we could fuck with anybody, if the source was good.”
    “Almost anybody,” the editor said, sinking into his chair. “We don’t fuck with Rupert Murdoch, and we don’t fuck with Eduardo Bianchi.”
    She started to ask why, but he held up a hand.
    “Don’t ask,” he said. “Ever.”
    Kelli walked back to the elevator, fuming, and rode down to the lobby. She went outside and threw herself in front of a cab. “Eightyeighth and Second Avenue,” she said to the driver. All the way uptown she turned the thing over in her mind. By the time she got to Elaine’s she was determined to get to the bottom of this.
    She walked in and was greeted by Gianni, one of the two headwaiters. She ordered a drink at the bar, then grabbed Gianni’s sleeve when he came back from seating a party. “Gianni, you know everything; who were those people with Dino and Stone the other night?”
    “What people are those?” Gianni asked.
    “A beautiful blond woman and a couple of kids, one of them Dino’s.”
    Gianni looked at her evenly for a moment. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.
    She started to pursue it with him, but he stopped her.
    “And let me give you some advice: don’t ask Elaine, either.” He walked away.
    She turned away, her cheeks burning. Gianni knew who she worked for, so she was going to have to be careful, if she didn’t want to get eighty-sixed from Elaine’s.
    A man came into the restaurant and sat down beside her at the bar. She cased him in the mirror: slicked-back black hair, Italian suit, cashmere overcoat.
    “Hi,” he said to her, holding out a hand. “Anthony Cecchini.”
    “Kelli,” she said, shaking the smooth hand. The guy was definitely not a stevedore.
    “Kelli what?”
    “Keane, with an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ on the end.”
    “Buy you a drink, Kelli?”
    “I’ve got one, thanks.”
    “The next one, then.”
    “Sure, why not.” He was kind of good-looking. “I perceive that you are Italian,” she said.
    He laughed. “You’re very perceptive.”
    “Tell me, Anthony, does the name Eduardo Bianchi mean anything to you?”
    He froze. “Where did you hear that name?” he asked.
    “Oh, around.”
    He turned to the bartender. “Kevin, her next drink is on me,” he said, then he got up and moved to the other end of the bar.
    Kelli was flabbergasted, and she didn’t flabbergast easily. What the fuck was going on here?

24
    A couple of days after Christmas Stone was catching up on his corporate reading, when Joan buzzed him.
    “A Mr. John Ellis, from Knickerbocker Hall, on one.”
    Stone picked up the phone. “Stone Barrington.”
    “Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” the man said. “I’m John Ellis from Knickerbocker.”
    “Good morning.”
    “I run a little office at the school that deals with keeping our budget on an even keel,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    “I’m afraid that running the school on tuition fees just isn’t possible, and we rely on the kindness of our alumni and the parents of our students to help us keep the ship upright.”
    “How can I help you, Mr. Ellis?”
    “I understand that when you took the tour last week you had a look at our film school facilities.”
    “That’s correct, we did.”
    “Perhaps you’ll recall that two of our three cameras were out of service.”
    “My son certainly remembers that,” Stone said.
    “Also, that our editing