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“Are you hungry?”
“Starved, and that’s the whole truth.”
“Then follow me.” Dino led the way to the rear dining room, where they were warmly received by the maître d’.
“You know,” Stone said, glancing at a menu, “we weren’t quite so warmly received by the maître d’ before you were the commissioner.”
“And the maître d’ was just a headwaiter,” Dino said. “Everybody wins.”
“What about me?”
“You didn’t get arrested this afternoon, did you?”
“That’s because Casey, for the life of him, couldn’t come up with a probable cause.”
“Casey didn’t like it that nobody saw you leave.”
“Casey can go fuck himself.”
“I thought that’s what you were doing with the late Mrs. Charles. Did you know that people referred to her, earlier in her career, as ‘Apple Annie’?”
“Yes, but I don’t know why.”
“Because everybody had a bite of her.”
“And delicious it must have been,” Stone said. “She still looked terrific at sixty, and she was still eager.”
“I thought she was, maybe, forty. And how do you know she was still eager?”
“Because she had my zipper down in a flash, and I had to cite the legal ethics code to get out of there before she could do whatever it was she was going to do to me.”
“How did you manage to get out?”
“I rezipped and fled the premises with a cheerful, over-the-shoulder wave. It was the last I saw of her.”
“It was the lastanybodysaw of her.”
“Don’t point that thing at me. If I could get out of there unseen, then somebody could have gotteninthere unseen.”
“A fair point for a shyster lawyer but not for a homicide detective.”
“Casey wouldn’t know a fair point if it reared up and bit him on the ass.” Stone snorted. “And who are you calling a shyster?”
Dino looked around. “Who else is here?”
“There are half a dozen lawyers in the room. Which of them are you impugning?”
“I could throw a dart blindfolded and hit one.”
“Let’s order before I use a steak knife on you,” Stone said. He waved down a waiter and ordered another round and two steaks.
Dino sliced and bit into his, talking around it. “Okay, who inherits? Junior?”
“Nope. Annetta had carved him out of her will. And neither of them had any other kids.”
“Who, then? The ASPCA?”
“They didn’t even own a dog or a cat.”
