“Shit!” Sig yelled. Apparently, he didn’t enjoy pain.
Stone saw the gun and dove for it. Sig was struggling toward him by now.
Stone knee-walked toward Sig; the gun lay between them. He got a hand on it as Sig drew back to swing his knife again. Stone had no memory of pulling the trigger, but he remembered the noise. He remembered one other thing, saying, “Mayday, two men down...” Then he fainted.
Stone half woke in the rear of an ambulance and saw a thick wad of bandages on his left arm and an IV in that vein. He fainted again.
Stone slowly came to in a dimly lit place, where there were monitor screens and beeping noises.
“He’s back,” a woman’s voice said. “Mr. Barrington, can you speak?”
“I don’t think so,” Stone said.
“That was speech,” Dino’s voice said. “Take it as a yes.”
“Okay,” Stone muttered.
Dino positioned himself in Stone’s line of sight. “I’ve got two pieces of good news,” he said.
“Give me the good news first,” Stone said.
“You now, officially, have Italian blood.”
“Huh?”
“I know that, because it’s my blood. They ran short, so I gave them a pint.”
“An order of garlic bread, please,” Stone said.
“You want the other good news now?”
“Okay.”
“Sig is missing nearly half of his head. That little .45 of yours removed it.”
“Yeah, but is he dead?” Stone asked.
“No, he’s down the hall, giving a tap-dancing performance,” Dino replied.
“Then go shoot him again,” Stone said, then he felt like a nap.
60
Stone was kept for two nights in the hospital. Finally, after an inspection by two surgeons and the application of a sturdy bandage, his nurse sat him up in bed and carefully got his arm into a sling. “It has to stay this way for a while,” she said, “to keep it from further damage, so don’t get too frisky. A nurse will come around every morning to inspect the wound and change the bandage.” She gave him his cell phone back. “It’s been off since you arrived, so you probably have a few messages.”
He checked, and he had some, but none from Holly.
Dino drove him home and deposited him outside, where Joan waited to walk him in. “Have you spoken to Holly?” Stone asked before he got out.
“Yes, and she knows where you’ve been.”
Joan helped him out of the car. “I’m sure you’ll want to go right back to work,” she said, archly.
“What I’d like is to go straight to my own bed,” he replied.
He woke up in time for a hot supper served in bed by Helene. Still no word from Holly.
The following day a nurse turned up, liked the look of his wound, and bound it again.
“Do I still have to keep it in the sling?” he asked.
“A few more days.”
He made it a point to move around the house and not walk like a cripple.
By Election Day he felt normal, but the nurse still insisted on the sling. Fred took him to his local polling place, where he voted for Holly, then came home.
“What are you doing for dinner?” Joan asked.
“I’m dining at the Carlyle at nine,” he said, retrieving his pass from the safe.”
Joan handed him a gift box from Hermès. “Open this before you go.”
As evening came on he shaved, showered, and slowly dressed in his tuxedo. He seemed to have lost some weight, so he wore his red suspenders to keep his trousers in place. He had to take off the sling to get into his shirt, and he couldn’t reach high enough with his left hand to tie the bow, so he had to call Joan upstairs to do it for him.
She helped him into his waistcoat, then wound his Patek Philippe pocket watch, set and installed it, with its gold chain, in the waistcoat. She got him into his jacket and inspected him. “Good,” she said.
“I’ll need my sling.”
She opened the Hermès box to reveal a beautiful black-and-white silk sling, which she tied and hung around his neck. “There,” she said.
“Glorious!” He pecked her on the cheek.
“Do you ever wear that evening cape you had made?” she asked.
“Not once.”
“This might be a good night for the debut. You’ll look less like an invalid.”
“Good point.”
She draped the cape, which fell to just above his knees, around his shoulders and hooked the silken rope closure.
“Go get ’em. Fred is waiting for you at the curb; you don’t have to sneak in and out of the house anymore.” She hung his platinum pass around his neck, too. “So they won’t throw you out.”
Stone took the elevator downstairs and outside, where Fred was waiting with the Bentley. They drove up Madison Avenue and made the turn onto Seventy-sixth Street, then stopped at the side entrance to the Carlyle. He got out, went through the revolving doors, and entered the lobby, which was filled with people wearing pass cards around their necks.
A Secret Service agent frisked him with a wand. “She’s in 27 A,” he whispered to Stone.
“Thank you.” He walked to the elevator, where he was looked over again by other security men, then got into the elevator.
“Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” the operator said. “Twenty-seven?”
“Thank you, yes.”
The elevator sped upward and disgorged him on the twenty-seventh floor, where two Secret Service agents stood on either side of the door to Suite A. They knew him, so didn’t bother to frisk, then one opened the door for him. Holly stood before him in an emerald-green gown that set off her red hair, looking like a star from Hollywood’s golden years. She came toward him, arms out, then stopped. “Which arm?” she asked.
“The left,” he replied.
She reached for his right arm and placed her other hand on his cheek and kissed him. “Good evening,” she said.
“Can you help me out of this cape?” he asked.
She unhooked the closure and swept it away. “Beautiful sling,” she said.
“Joan supplied that.”
She led him to the sofa and sat him down in front of a glass of Knob Creek, then she sat down beside him and picked up a phone. “I don’t want to be disturbed until all four networks have called it,” she said, then hung up.
“How are you feeling?” Stone asked.
“Strangely calm, yet nervous,” she said, picking up her martini and taking a sip. “I expect to be calmer still after this goes down. Dinner is in fifteen minutes.”
They dined close to the windows, with the view of Manhattan to the south spread out before them. She cut his meat for him. They chatted like the old friends they were.
“How are Ham and Ginnie?” Stone asked of her father and his girl.
“Wonderful. They’ll join us later in the evening.” She sighed deeply. “I’m so glad this election is over. It’s been exhilarating, but exhausting.”
“I can imagine,” he said.
“No, you can’t. You would have to live through it.”
They demolished a large part of a porterhouse steak, with béarnaise sauce, new potatoes, and haricots verts, followed by crème brûlée. They ate slowly and it was after eleven by the time they moved to the sofa for a glass of port.
As they sat down, the phone rang. Holly set down her glass and picked up the receiver. “Yes?” She listened for a moment, and the expression on her face changed from neutral to pained. “Thank you,” she said, and set down the phone. She convulsed once, and tears spilled down her cheeks.