Standup Guy

BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

FICTION

Doing Hard Time

Unintended Consequences
^†

Collateral Damage
^†

Severe Clear
^†

Unnatural Acts
^†

DC Dead
^†

Son of Stone
^†

Bel-Air Dead
^†

Lucid Intervals
^†

Strategic Moves
^†

Santa Fe Edge
^§

Kisser
^†

Hothouse Orchid*

Loitering with Intent
^†

Mounting Fears
^‡

Hot Mahogany
^†

Santa Fe Dead
^§

Beverly Hills Dead

Shoot Him If He Runs
^†

Fresh Disasters
^†

Short Straw
^§

Dark Harbor
^†

Iron Orchid*

Two-Dollar Bill
^†

The Prince of Beverly Hills

Reckless Abandon
^†

Capital Crimes
^‡

Dirty Work
^†

Blood Orchid*

The Short Forever
^†

Orchid Blues*

Cold Paradise
^†

L.A. Dead
^†

The Run
^‡

Worst Fears Realized
^†

Orchid Beach*

Swimming to Catalina
^†

Dead in the Water
^†

Dirt
^†

Choke

Imperfect Strangers

Heat

Dead Eyes

L.A. Times

Santa Fe Rules
^§

New York Dead
^†

Palindrome

Grass Roots
^‡

White Cargo

Deep Lie
^‡

Under the Lake

Run Before the Wind
^‡

Chiefs
^‡

TRAVEL

A Romantic
’
s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (1979)

MEMOIR

Blue Water
,
Green Skipper

*A Holly Barker Novel

^†
A Stone Barrington Novel

^‡
A Will Lee Novel

^§
An Ed Eagle Novel

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Copyright © 2014 by Stuart Woods

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Woods, Stuart.

Standup guy / Stuart Woods.

p. cm.—(Stone Barrington ; 28)

ISBN 978-1-101-61588-1

1. Barrington, Stone (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.O642S73 2014 2013030289

813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Stone Barrington made it from his bed to his desk by ten
AM
, after something of a struggle with jet lag. Granted, the three-hour time change between Los Angeles and New York was not a killer, but it mattered. As soon as he sat down his intercom buzzed.

“Yes?” he said to his secretary, Joan Robertson.

“You have a visitor,” she said, “name of John Fratelli. Says he’s a friend of Eduardo.”

“Send him in,” Stone said. Any friend of Eduardo Bianci’s was a friend of his.

A vision of the mid-to-late twentieth century appeared in the doorway.

“Mr. Barrington? May I come in?”

“Of course,” Stone said, rising to greet his visitor, who was wearing a boxy, light gray flannel suit, a starched white shirt, and what appeared to be a clip-on bow tie. He was carrying a salesman’s suitcase and a porkpie hat and had a haircut that had probably been accomplished entirely with electric clippers—short
sides and a Brylcreemed top. “Come in and have a seat, Mr. Fratelli.”

“Thank you,” the man replied. “It’s nice of you to see me.” This was delivered in what appeared to be an old-fashioned Brooklyn accent, the likes of which had not been heard for many years from a man as young as Fratelli, who appeared to be no older than fifty. He came in and took the proffered chair across the desk and set down the suitcase.

“How may I help you?” Stone said, hoping the man was not a salesman.

Fratelli stood again, reached into a pocket, and pulled out a wad of bills; he peeled off five hundreds and placed them carefully on Stone’s desk.

“All right,” Stone said, “you’ve paid for a consultation and bought yourself some attorney-client confidentiality.”

“Good,” Fratelli said, sitting down again.

“I should inform you, though, that if you confess to a crime and I end up representing you in court, I will not be able to call you to the stand to testify on your own behalf.”

“Why not?” Fratelli inquired.

“Because I cannot call a witness to the stand who I know will lie under oath.”

“I understand,” Fratelli said. “That’s reasonable, I guess.”

“How is Mr. Bianci?” Stone asked, by way of getting the man to relax.

“Who?”

“Did you not tell my secretary that Eduardo had sent you to me?”

“Oh, I meant Eduardo Buono.”

“Not Bianci?”

“No, Buono.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” Stone said.

“Well, he knows you.”

“How does he know me?”

“He read an article about you in a magazine—
Vanity Fair
.”

That magazine had published an excerpt from a book about Stone’s late wife, Arrington. “I’m afraid I—”

“Eduardo says you’re a standup guy.”

“Well, as kind a characterization as that may be—”

“Eduardo and I shared a living space for twenty-two years.”

“I’m happy for you both, but that still doesn’t—”

“Eduardo was a very smart man, even if he did get caught.”

“Ahhhh,” Stone said. Now he understood. “Where did you do your time, Mr. Fratelli?”

“Sing Sing.”

“And when did you get out?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“How long were you away?”

“Twenty-five years, to the day. I did my whole sentence, no parole.”

“What was the rap?”

“Armed robbery. I did it, no excuses. That’s why I didn’t apply for parole.”

“Then you, not I, are the standup guy, Mr. Fratelli.”

Fratelli actually blushed. “Thank you,” he said softly.

“Now, please tell me, how can I help you?”

“Eduardo left me two million dollars,” he said. “And change.”

“Congratulations, but if you’re looking for investment advice, I’m not—”

“I’m looking for advice on how not to go back to prison,” Fratelli said.

“That’s fairly simple, Mr. Fratelli—don’t commit another crime.”

“Oh, sure, but—”

“Oh, I think I see. Did Mr. Buono acquire your inheritance by extralegal means?”

“Exactly.”

“Did he rob somebody?”

“Exactly, but Eduardo said the statue was done.”

That stopped Stone in his tracks for a moment, then he figured it out. “Do you mean the statute? The statute of limitations?”

“That’s it!”

“Well, the statute of limitations for robbery is five years, so if you and Mr. Buono were cellmates for twenty-two years . . .”

“So it’s mine, then?”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Stone said. “It’s problematical.”

“I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

“Mr. Fratelli, let me put this hypothetically, since you and I do not want to discuss a real crime.”

“Okay, I get that.”

“If prisoner A committed a crime, and the statute of limitations has run out, then he can mention prisoner B in his will.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Fratelli said. “There wasn’t—I mean, in this story prisoner A didn’t have a will, he had a safe-deposit box. He, hypothetically speaking, had a bank account, and every quarter for twenty-five years, the bank deducted the
rental of the safe-deposit box from his account. From time to time, his lawyer deposited funds.”

“And prisoner B has access to the box?”

“Prisoner A told me—ah, him—where to find the key.”

“And has prisoner B visited the box?”

“You could say that.”

“And he emptied the box?”

“About an hour ago,” Fratelli said. “Just as soon as the bank opened, prisoner B was there with the key.”

“Did anyone see what he removed from the box?”

“No, he was in a little closet, and he had brought a suitcase. He just walked out with the money.”

“I see.”

“His question is, what’s he going to do with it?”

“Whatever he likes,” Stone said. “As long as no one knows he has it.”

“Does prisoner B have the money legally?”

“A better question might be, is anyone going to be looking for the money? A widow? A nephew? A bookie?”

“He didn’t have any of those, and nobody knows about the money. Hypothetically.”

“How about the lawyer who made the bank deposits?”

“He died three weeks ago.”

“Then, Mr. Fratelli, prisoner B is laughing.”

Fratelli laughed.

“His first move should be to go to a bank—a different bank—open a checking account with less than ten thousand dollars, then rent another safe-deposit box. After that, he could remove enough money periodically to support himself. Lashing out with
large amounts could get him into trouble, as you might imagine. People will steal, after all.”

“Yes, they will,” Fratelli said.

“Ten thousand dollars is the magic number. If prisoner B banks that much, a form reporting it goes to the Internal Revenue Service, and, although they are said to have stacks of those forms, which they never read, it’s not a good idea to generate such a form. After all, they may start reading faster, or they may teach a computer how to read them.”

“That’s good advice,” Fratelli said.

“One other thing: if you should seek legal advice again, it might be in your interests to go to an attorney who has not heard this hypothetical story.”

Fratelli stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Barrington,” he said, offering his hand.

They shook, Fratelli left, and Stone opened a desk drawer and raked the little stack of hundreds into it.

Joan came in a moment later. “While you were talking to Mr. Fratelli, a secretary to the president of the United States called. You’re invited to dinner tomorrow evening with President and Mrs. Lee at their apartment in the Carlyle.”

Stone had not heard from the Lees in months. “Call back and say that I accept, with pleasure.”

“You may bring a date.”

Stone’s current squeeze, the fashion designer Emma Tweed, had returned to her native London for a few weeks. “Say that I will come alone.”