Unintended Consequences - By Stuart Woods

11





Stone had finished his breakfast and was working on the International Herald Tribune crossword, which is to say the New York Times crossword, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“I’m relieved to find that you are still alive,” Amanda Hurley said.

“So am I.”

“Did you have any further trouble?”

“The car was gone when I left the hotel.”

“Good. Thank you for a lovely dinner. I haven’t been to Lasserre in years, and it’s good to find that it hasn’t changed. Everything else has.”

“I am in complete agreement with both your points.”

“Do you enjoy art?”

“I do.”

“If you’d like to see some, I’ll buy you lunch and we’ll visit some galleries.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do you know Brasserie Lipp?”

“I do.”

“There at one o’clock?”

“You’re on.”

“Bye.” She hung up. His cell phone began ringing.

“Hello?”

“It’s Holly.” Something was strange in her voice.

“Hi. Is something wrong?”

“I just read a cable from our station in St. Marks.” This was a Caribbean island where she and Stone had spent some time a few years back.

“Yes?”

“There was a crash at the St. Barts airport late yesterday afternoon. Our station head’s name was on the passenger list. No survivors.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You knew him. You met him when we were in St. Marks.”

“I remember. I recall that there’s a very short runway at St. Barts.”

“There’s more,” she said. “The names of Mr. and Mrs. D. Bacchetti were also on the passenger list.”

Stone froze, unable to speak.

“They were in St. Barts on their honeymoon, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Stone said. “Do you have any way of confirming this?”

“I’ve dispatched someone from our station in St. Marks to St. Barts to make an identification of our man, and I’ve asked him to confirm the other names, too.”

“Will you let me know?” Stone asked.

“Of course I will. I’m not going to believe any of this until our officer has investigated thoroughly.”

“Thank you for calling,” Stone said. They both hung up.

This was impossible, Stone thought; this couldn’t be happening. He thought about what he should do, and he knew that Dino’s son, Ben, would have to be told. But not yet. Not until the confirmation came in. He called the concierge.

“Concierge desk.”

“This is Mr. Barrington.”

“Yes, Mr. Barrington. How may I serve you?”

“I need a seat on the next flight to St. Barts, in the Caribbean.”

“Of course. There is a flight in the early afternoon. May I call you back?”

“Yes, please.”

Stone was experiencing tiny flashbacks of his friendship with Dino—their time together as partners on the NYPD, their travel together, their hundreds of nights at Elaine’s. It couldn’t end like this.

The phone rang. “Yes?”

“Mr. Barrington, it’s the concierge. The daily Air France flight to St. Martin is fully booked, and there is a considerable waiting list. I took the liberty of booking you on tomorrow’s flight. It departs de Gaulle at two P.M. and arrives in St. Martin at five P.M. You have to take a short flight from there to St. Barts, and I have you a tentative reservation on the first flight the day after tomorrow.”

“Tentative?”

“Apparently, the regular flight to St. Barts crashed yesterday, and the service has been temporarily disrupted because of a shortage of aircraft to cover all their flights. Their spare airplane is out of service.”

“You’d better get me a hotel room in St. Martin, then.”

“I have already taken the liberty of doing that. Will you be returning to Paris?”

Stone thought for a second. “I don’t know yet.” He still didn’t know why he was in Paris, and he wanted to know.

He went and stood in the shower for a long time.





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