“Maybe Pat should have screens installed in the three apartments.”
“Pat doesn’t know her renters yet, and she’s uncomfortable with asking them to have a screen installed in their apartments. She doesn’t want to frighten them. I offered to frighten them for her, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“Maybe I’ll write them a letter saying that someone has been troubling the landlord and not to admit anyone unless they know for sure who’s at the door.”
“Good idea, if you can talk her into it.”
“She’s coming over to dinner tonight. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good luck, buddy.”
Stone’s bell rang at the stroke of seven. He tapped a code into his computer, and the screen showed Pat, in color and high definition, waiting at the door. He pressed a button to start a video, then he pressed another button. “Yes? Who is it?”
“How many people could it be?” she asked.
“There are eight million stories in the naked city,” he replied. “You could be any one of them.”
“Would you rather I go home and sulk?”
“I’m in the study.” He pressed the buzzer, and she came in. A minute later, she appeared in the doorway, and he motioned her over to his desk and played the video, with sound.
“Wow,” she breathed. “Can I do that with my system?”
“If you take the trouble to read the manual. I can do that with any outside door and inside the garage, as well. And the three people who live in the house next door — my secretary, my housekeeper, and Fred — can do the same thing. You should give your renters the same equipment, or one night they’ll inadvertently buzz in somebody who’s not delivering Chinese food or pizza.”
“You’ve been talking to Bob Cantor.”
“I certainly have.” He got up from his desk and poured them both a Knob Creek.
“I just don’t want to spend the money to put the equipment in the rental apartments.”
“You’ve been given a free building, but you don’t want to spend a few grand to secure it? If you don’t, then one fine night one of your tenants will buzz in the wrong person, and all the money you’ve spent on Bob Cantor’s services will be for naught. And worse, you’ll probably end up shooting the guy, and you will not believe how much trouble you’d be in and how much it would cost you to get out of it.”
“Are you going to give me the lecture about my gun?”
“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, you’re in the Emerald City, where the local powers frown on the possession of firearms.”
“And I can’t get a carry license here?”
“Nope, not unless you can demonstrate that you regularly walk around in possession of large sums of cash or a briefcase full of diamonds. I can help you get a license to take your weapon to a firing range in the city, which is also a license to have it in your apartment, but you can’t carry it anywhere, except to the range. How about that?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll have Joan get the application sent to you, but remember this: the first thing you have to learn about possessing a firearm is to never, never shoot anybody.”
“What if he’s shooting at me?”
“Maybe if he’s already hit you.”
“Oh, great!”
“All right, let’s say you shoot the guy under perfectly legal circumstances: you then call nine-one-one, ask for the police, tell them there’s been a shooting and to send two ambulances.”
“Why two?”
“One for him and one for you. You must remember that you’re going to be in terrible, terrible shape, knowing that you’ve shot another human being. Spend at least one night in the hospital getting over it. That will impress the assistant DA, who will be assigned to decide whether to prosecute you.”
“Okay, I’ll remember that.”
“And your second call will be to me. I’ll get there before the ambulance takes you away. And, in the unlikely event that the cops arrive before I do, I want you sitting down with the gun unloaded and the slide locked back and at the other end of the coffee table from you. Cops don’t really want to shoot people — not many of them, anyway — but they know that if they enter a room and see a person dead on the floor and another person holding a firearm, they can pretty much shoot first and ask questions later, and you don’t want to put armed cops in that position.”
Pat took a swig of her bourbon. “And why are you going on and on about this?”
“Because I’ve had a look at Kevin Keyes’s arrest record.”
“You mean that incident when I threw him out of the house and he objected?”
“That incident and the two before it with other women.”
She set down her glass. “What other women?”
“Does it matter? You were his third strike, and he’s still not out.”
“Good God.”
“And now, it’s time you told me all about him.”
16
Stone cleared away the dinner plates and poured them both a glass of old Armagnac. She had been telling him the sorry details of her relationship with Kevin Keyes — his drinking, womanizing, and tendency to get physical when angry.
“Okay,” Pat said, “now you get to ask the question.”
“You mean the one about how a smart woman can get so involved with such a sorry shit?”
“That’s the one. Only he wasn’t a sorry shit all the time. We had fun together: he was smart and witty and had great charm, on his good days.”
“And I’ve already heard about the bad days. My concern is that you haven’t seen his worst days yet — those are yet to come.”
“Why do you think that?”
Stone’s cell phone rang, and he checked the caller ID before answering. “Excuse me, this is about you. Evening, Bob.”
“Sorry to call at dinnertime,” Cantor said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“I did a little under-the-table computer searching this evening, and Kevin Keyes is registered at a hotel in Times Square. He’s been here for three days, and he booked in for a week. He’s also got a rented Nissan Altima in the hotel’s garage.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it for the moment. How did she take the lecture?”
“Better than I had hoped. You can go ahead and install the video equipment in the tenants’ apartments. You’d better drop them a note to let them know when you’re coming.”
“Will do. See ya.” Bob hung up.
“I’m sorry, you asked me a question,” Stone said.
“Why do you think Kevin’s worst days are yet to come?”
“Ah, yes, that question. Here’s your answer: old Kevin has checked into a Times Square hotel, booking in for a week, and he has a rental car at his disposal.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. Was he in the same armed pilots program as you?”
“Yes.”
“And he still has the gun.”
“He has several guns.”
“Swell.”
“Maybe he has some perfectly good reason for being in New York,” Pat suggested.
“Is that why he spent yesterday evening parked a couple of doors from your house? For some perfectly good reason?”
“Why must you put the worst possible slant on every little thing Kevin does? You don’t know him.”
“I know him better than you do,” Stone said.
“Oh? How’s that?”
“I’ve known half a dozen women with exes who didn’t like getting dumped, no matter how badly they had behaved. These men tended to think of themselves as being in the right, and the women, always, in the wrong. They thought of themselves not as husbands or boyfriends, but as owners of their women. Does that have a familiar ring?”