Dirt by Wood Stuart

Author:Wood, Stuart [Wood, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Harper
Published: 1996-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Stone worked late on a memo advising a Woodman & Weld client how to handle a drunk driving charge for an employee’s wife. It was nearly eight when he had finished the memo and faxed it to Bill Eggers, and he had just turned out his office light when the phone rang. He switched the light on again and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Stone, it’s Dino.”

“Hi, Dino.”

“Can you meet me at Elaine’s in half an hour?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” The detective lieutenant hung up.

Dino could be curt when under pressure, Stone remembered; he wondered what was going on. He felt grungy, so he had a quick shower and changed into some casual clothes before leaving the house and hailing a cab uptown.

Dino was already at a table along the right wall when Stone entered, and he looked grim. Stone’s immediate thought was wife or father-in-law trouble, but he was wrong. He sat down, ordered a bourbon, and looked at his former partner. “So, what’s going on? You look a little down.”

Dino nodded. “Down is a good word for it. Somebody wasted Arnie Millman around six this evening.”

Stone stared at Dino. “Jesus, I saw him only this morning.”

“Not since then?”

“No, not since nine-thirty, ten, I guess. This is terrible; has somebody called his wife?”

“I drew that duty,” Dino said glumly. “I sent a policewoman out there to be with her until some family could be rounded up.”

“What happened, Dino?”

“Was he working on something for you?”

“No.”

“Stone, your check for sixteen hundred bucks was in his pocket.”

“He was working on something; we finished up this morning, and I paid him.”

“Any loose ends?”

Stone thought about Martha, but dismissed the idea. “No; he checked two people out for me, gave me his report this morning, and that was it.”

“Anything about these two people that could have hurt Arnie?”

Stone shook his head. “It was a straightforward surveillance, a background check. Both people were no problem to my client, so that was it.”

“Any chance either of them could have known Arnie was following them?”

“You know Arnie better than that, Dino; he was good.”

“Yeah.” Dino opened his notebook and showed Stone an address in the low Nineties. “That address mean anything to you?”

Stone shook his head again.

“Yeah. You sure this address doesn’t match up with either of your people?”

“Absolutely; one lives in the West Fifties, the other in the East Village. Who lives there?”

“My guys talked with all the tenants, but nobody admitted knowing Arnie or anything about him. One woman saw him coming down the front steps as she was going up; that was about five-forty-five. Arnie bought it in an alley beside the building shortly after that.”

“How?”

“Small-caliber handgun, looks like. He took two in the head. It wouldn’t have made much noise.”

“Robbery, maybe?”

“Maybe. They took his gun; I remember Arnie using the old standard Smith & Wesson thirty-eight, two-inch barrel. His wallet was beside him and the money was gone, but who knows? That could have been window dressing.”

“Look, Arnie wasn’t the sort of guy to attract a pro hit.

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