Dirt

The cyclist followed the car down Lexington Avenue; traffic was heavy. The car stopped for two lights, but the cyclist wasn’t happy with the layout of traffic. Then something good happened. The chauffeur double-parked in front of a drugstore, put his emergency blinkers on, got out of the car, and went into the store. Perfect.

The cyclist maneuvered to the right of the car, where the woman was sitting, her head against the headrest, her eyes closed, mouth slightly open. He checked the door lock button; it was up. He stepped off the bicycle, leaned it against a parked car, and reached under his jacket. His hand emerged holding an icepick. The chauffeur’s absence made his pistol u

Quietly, he opened the rear door of the Mercedes. The woman seemed to be sleeping. He took a wad of Kleenex from his jacket pocket, then, holding her head back with his left hand on her forehead, he drove the icepick up her nose and into her brain. Her eyes opened wide, but she didn’t have time to cry out, or even to move. He jerked the handle of the icepick back and forth, in order to do as much damage as possible. She slumped, and a trickle of blood ran from her nose. He stanched it with the Kleenex, and she stopped bleeding. Her heart was no longer pumping blood.

He closed her eyes, then noticed the diamond necklace. He gave it a short, sharp jerk, and it came away in his hand. Then he shut the car door, got onto the bicycle, and pedaled away down Lexington. At the next corner he turned east, stopped, and looked back. The Mercedes passed him; the driver did not look alarmed. The cyclist smiled to himself and moved off.

The big car rolled to a stop in front of the Plaza. It was a gala benefit evening, and limos crowded the front door area, depositing their gorgeously dressed passengers. The hotel’s doorman stepped up to the Mercedes and opened the rear door.

Amanda Dart’s body rolled slowly out of the car into the gutter, now nothing but dirt.

Chapter 60

Stone was lying on Arrington’s living room sofa, a damp washcloth across his forehead, when Dino walked into the room.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked.

Stone opened his eyes. “Do I really have to get up and talk to you?”

Dino looked around at the carnage. “I think maybe that would be a good idea,” he said. The sound of approaching sirens came, muffled, through the walls.

The last of the bodies was wheeled out of the apartment. Stone and Dino stood in the kitchen. Stone reached into the printer tray and handed Dino the sheet. “I thought you might like to read the final edition of DIRT,” he said.

Dino read the document twice, then Stone handed him a Federal Express packet. “This is addressed to your department,” he said, “so I didn’t open it, but I expect it contains some backup for the charges in the scandal sheet.”

Dino opened the packet and leafed through a dozen sheets. “Well,” he said, “Mr. Richard Hickock has been a bad boy, but there’s nothing in here for me. Federal income tax evasion isn’t against the laws of New York State. I’ll forward it to the FBI. Eventually it’ll find its way to the proper law enforcement agency, I’m sure.”

“Hickock could grow old while that happens,” Stone said.

“Oh, they’ll get around to it.”

“You think you’ll be able to get anything out of the wiseguy I wounded?”

“Who knows? We’ll see what’s on his yellow sheet, see what we have to bargain with. Maybe he’ll hand me somebody.”

“My bet is that a bullet from the nickel-plated twenty-five with the silencer killed Arnie Millman.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll see.”

They made ready to leave. “Arrington!” Stone called out.

“Coming,” she called back from the bedroom.

“How’s the new apartment?” Stone asked.

“We’re moving in in a couple of weeks,” Dino replied. “Mary A

Arrington appeared with a suitcase, walked over to Stone, set down the case, and leaned against him. “I don’t want to live here anymore,” she said.

“You don’t,” he replied.

They made their way slowly downtown in a taxi.

“Pull over here for a minute, will you, driver?” Stone said. The cab pulled over to the curb. Stone reached into Arrington’s bag, retrieved the two packets, got out of the car, and dropped them into a Federal Express bin.

“What was that?” Arrington asked when he was back in the cab.

“Oh, just jump-starting the wheels of justice,” he replied.

“So it’s over?” Arrington asked.

“It is,” Stone said.

“No loose ends?”

“Well, yes. There’s the murder of Martha McMahon, Amanda’s secretary.”

“Murder? You think Amanda pushed her?

“That’s my best guess, but nobody will ever be able to prove it. Amanda will get away with it.”

She took her hand in his. “Stone, my darling,” she said, “if I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that nobody gets away with anything. Ever.”

He turned and kissed her lightly. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to every gossip columnist in the business, for giving me such good material.

I am also grateful to my editor, HarperCollins Vice President and Associate Publisher Gladys Justin Carr, and her staff, for all their hard work; and to my literary agent, Morton Janklow, his principal associate, A

“We Are Very Different People”:

Stuart Woods on Stone Barrington

An Interview by Claire E. White

Stuart Woods was born in the small southern town of Manchester, Georgia on January 9, 1938. His mother was a church organist and his father an ex-convict who left when Stuart was two years old, when it was suggested to him that, because of his apparent participation in the burglary of a Royal Crown Cola bottling plant, he might be more comfortable in another state. He chose California, and Stuart only met him twice thereafter before his death in 1959, when Stuart was a senior in college.

After college, Stuart spent a year in Atlanta, two months of which were spent in basic training for what he calls “the draft-dodger program” of the Air National Guard. He worked at a men’s’ clothing store and at Rich’s department store while he got his military obligation out of the way. Then, in the autumn of 1960, he moved to New York in search of a writing job. The magazines and newspapers weren’t hiring, so he got a job in a training program at an advertising agency, earning seventy dollars a week. “It is a measure of my value to the company,” he says, “that my secretary was earning eighty dollars a week.”

At the end of the sixties, after spending several weeks in London, he moved to that city and worked there for three years in various advertising agencies. At the end of that time he decided that the time had come for him to write the novel he had been thinking about since the age of ten. But after getting about a hundred pages into the book, he discovered sailing, and “…everything went to hell. All I did was sail.”

After a couple of years of this his grandfather died, leaving him, “…just enough money to get into debt for a boat,” and he decided to compete in the 1976 Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Since his previous sailing experience consisted of, “…racing a ten-foot plywood dingy on Sunday afternoons against small children, losing regularly,” he spent eighteen months learning more about sailing and, especially, ocean navigation while the boat was built at a yard in Cork.