“I wouldn’t be in the least displeased,” Stone replied.
“Do you think he’s old enough to make that decision?”
“It’s your decision, really,” Stone said, “but it needs to be decided, one way or the other, before he gets any older.”
“What would we tell them at the school?” Arrington asked Peter.
“That we’re changing my name from my stepfather’s to my father’s.”
“I suppose that’s accurate,” she said.
“I would be a lot more comfortable in myself,” Peter said.
She looked at her son, then at Stone. “How can I object?”
“Welcome to the Barrington family, Peter,” Stone said, “such as it is. You and I are the only living members.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Peter said.
“He never called Vance that,” Arrington said.
“He asked me to call him Vance,” Peter said.
“Yes, he did,” she admitted. “I wondered why he did that.”
“Because he knew something I didn’t,” Peter said.
The captain came with menus, and the subject was put aside while they ordered. Then, when the menus had been taken away, Peter said, “Next subject: my new school.”
“Oh?” Arrington said. “What about it?”
“I want it to be Knickerbocker Hall.”
“That has a familiar ring,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Right here, in New York,” Peter said. “On the Upper East Side.”
“A boarding school on the Upper East Side?”
“It’s not a boarding school,” Peter pointed out.
Stone intervened. “Peter now has a home in New York,” he said.
Arrington was looking back and forth between them, her brow furrowed.
“It has a performing arts program, including a film school. I want to do college-level work there and then go to Yale Drama School.”
“Was this your idea?” she asked Stone.
“Only the part about his living with me while he’s in school. The rest is entirely his; I didn’t know about Knickerbocker.”
“Let me think about it,” Arrington said.
“And I want to be eighteen,” Peter said.
“You will be, in two years,” his mother pointed out.
“I mean, when I go to Knickerbocker, I want them to think I’m eighteen. I don’t want to be the only sixteen-year-old among a bunch of eighteen-year-olds.”
Arrington looked at Stone questioningly.
“I think he can pull it off,” Stone said. “Look at him; listen to him. I don’t know any eighteen-year-olds that grown up.”
“But I would miss sixteen and seventeen,” Arrington said, plaintively.
“I wouldn’t miss them,” Peter said.
They put all this aside and dined well. When they had finished their entrees and ordered dessert, Arrington sighed deeply. “All right, I agree,” she said.
“Agree to which things?” Peter asked.
“All of them. You’re Peter Barrington, you’re eighteen, and you can go to Knickerbocker what’s-its-name.”
“Hall,” Peter said.
“And to Yale, too. That’s assuming you can get into these places.”
“I can,” Peter said.
“He never lacked confidence,” she said to Stone.
“Sometimes confidence is justified,” Stone said.
They had a birthday cake for dessert. It had eighteen candles.
10
S
tone woke the following morning with someone fondling his crotch. “Is that you?” he asked.
“It had.” better be,” Arrington replied. “And it seems to be working.”
“I can vouch for that,” he said.
She climbed onto him and took him inside her.
“You’re all wet,” he said.
“Normally, I would take that statement amiss, but on this occasion, you’re perfectly correct.” She moved gently up and down. “I liked the way things went last evening,” she said.
“So did I, and I like the way things are going now.”
She laughed, and the contraction was instantly transmitted to Stone. “Keep laughing,” he said. “It feels good.”
And she did.
Joan came into Stone’s office. “I booked Arrington and Peter at Radio City Music Hall for the matinee,” she said.
“Why not me?”
“You have to work for a living these days, and your first client of the day is outside, waiting.”
“Anybody I know?”
There was a rap at the door, and Herbert Fisher stuck his head in. “Good morning. Got time for me?”
“Always,” Stone said, without the usual irony.
Herbie came in and sat down. “You wanted me to sign the documents?”
Stone handed him the stack, with the signature pages flagged, and a blue-ink pen. “You’ll note that Stephanie has already signed them.”
Herbie looked at her signature. “Don’t tell me she’s in New York.”
“Color fax,” Stone said. “Her attorney accepted service.”
“What are the chances we’ll get the feds to let go of the three million?”
“I told you before: two chances, slim and none.”
“I like slim better,” Herbie said, shoving back the signed documents.
He buzzed Joan. “Documents ready for delivery to the court and to Seth Keener.” She came and got them.
“How long before I’m a free man?” Herbie asked.
“You’re a free man now,” Stone said. “The rest is red tape. A couple of months of that, probably.”
“I’ve met a nice girl.”
“Slow down, Herbie; you always move too fast. Employ a little skepticism this time, and you’ll save on legal fees later.”
“I’ve been going to law school at NYU,” Herbie said.
“No kidding?” Stone said, playing straight man. “How come?”
“I was not entirely satisfied with the quality of my Internet legal education,” Herbie said.
“I see.”
“I’m going to pass the bar again, too.”
“Congratulations in advance.”
“Then I thought I might take you as a partner,” Herbie said confidently, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll front the money for expanding the practice.”
“I’m deeply flattered, Herbie, but you may not have heard that, for a year now, I’ve been a partner at Woodman & Weld.”
“I saw the announcement in the
Times
,” Herbie said.
“You’re reading something besides the
Post
these days?”
“The
Wall Street Journal,
too.”
“Well, you’re a man of means; that’s appropriate reading.”
“I managed to increase my net worth this year, too,” Herbie said. “A first.”
Stone laughed. “I believe you. How did you do that in the middle of a recession?”
“I bought a small office building on Lexington Avenue, and I did okay in the market, too.”
“Wow. Who closed on the real estate for you?”
Herbie handed him an envelope. “You. Here’s the sales contract.”
Stone opened the envelope and looked at the document. “That sounds like a very good price. Do you have tenants?”
“I bought it fully rented.”
“Are you going to be the new Donald?”
“Hardly, but it’s a good investment.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I saw the two thugs again,” Herbie said.
“The ones responsible for your dip in the harbor?”
“The very ones. They were across the street from my building when I came downstairs this morning. Stone, can you get me a carry permit for a handgun?”
“Herbie, that’s the hardest document to get that the city issues. I could get you a building permit at Ground Zero more easily.”
“What are the requirements for a carry license?”
“Essentially, you have to prove that you regularly carry large amounts of cash, like a payroll, or quantities of diamonds or other jewelry on a regular basis.”
“How about having my life threatened? Does that count?”
“I’m afraid the NYPD—the issuing authority—places more value on property than life.”
“I thought the Supreme Court decision on the D.C. case changed everything.”
“Everything but the NYPD and the mayor. It could happen, eventually, but they’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new era. If you want something to do, you could get a couple of your classmates together and sue the city.”
“Not a bad idea,” Herbie said. “And in the meantime I have to fend off hired killers with my bare hands?”
Stone raised a finger and picked up the phone. “Get me Seth Keener,” he said to Joan.
“Keener,” the voice said.
“Seth, it’s Stone Barrington. My client Herbert Fisher is in my office to sign the divorce papers, but he insists on one further condition.”
“I thought we had a deal,” Keener said.
“This is an easy one: Mr. Fisher insists that his soon-to-be-former wife stop trying to have him killed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Fisher has already experienced an encounter on a yacht in New York Harbor that required him to choose between being knifed by two thugs or taking a swim in December. The thugs are still following him.”
“I have no knowledge of anything like that,” Keener said.
“That’s what I would say, too, in the circumstances. Would you be kind enough to mention the situation to Mrs. Fisher?”
“If you insist, but I still maintain she has nothing to do with thugs following Mr. Fisher.”
“Let me know what she says, will you?”
“Sure, I will.”
Stone hung up. “I’m afraid that’s all we can do to put an end to it. In the meantime, may I suggest that you carry a roll of quarters in each coat pocket?”
“You think I can buy them off with quarters, Stone?”
“No, but holding them will more than double the weight of your fists and greatly enhance the effects of a punch in the nose. And if the cops ask, you can say you carry the coins for the parking meters.”
Herbie got up and with a little wave departed Stone’s office. “For this I pay five hundred bucks an hour?” he called out from down the hallway.
11
S
tone attended a partners’ meeting at Woodman & Weld in the afternoon, and afterward he asked for a few minutes with his old friend and law-school classmate Bill Eggers, the firm’s managing partner.
“What’s up, Stone? You look like a man with a problem.”
“Nothing life-threatening,” Stone replied, “just a little thorny. But I think that addressing some issues now will greatly smooth things for the future.”
“Tell me about it.”
“For a start, you correctly assessed the resemblance between the photograph of my father and Arrington’s son, Peter.”
“Ahhh,” Eggers said. “So you’re finally willing to cop to that?”
“I’ve always been willing, but Arrington was slow to come to that point. Recent events have changed things.”
“Changed them how?”
“Well, Peter arrived in town a couple of days ago, a day ahead of his mother, who was under the weather. She arrived yesterday. Peter saw the photograph of my father and, apparently, considering some past suspicions, put the whole thing together in a flash. The boy is extraordinarily bright.”
“Every father thinks that, Stone, trust me.”
“Not every father has a son who is graduating from high school at sixteen and is already writing and directing his first feature film.”
“Oh,
that
kind of bright.”
“Yes. He’s big for his age, mature as most people get in their midthirties, and very well-spoken and well-mannered.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“You will, in due course,” Stone said. “But now some steps have to be taken to regularize his life.”
“Regularize?”
“He’s been in a prep school in Virginia for a few months, and is now way ahead of not just his peers, but the seniors. He’s also saddled with Vance Calder’s name, and he doesn’t like the treatment he receives because of it.”
“And what’s your solution for handling it?”
“Not my solution, entirely, but Peter’s, and his mother has fully bought into it.”
“Go on.”
“Peter wants to attend a performing-arts prep school on the Upper East Side called Knickerbocker Hall, doing college-level work and attending their film school.”
“Sounds good.”
“And he wants to change his name to Barrington before he applies.”
“I see.”
“And he wants them to think he’s eighteen.”
Eggers blinked. “And how does he plan to do that?”
“Just by telling the school that he’s eighteen. When you’ve met him you’ll see that nobody will doubt him.”
“He’s currently a resident of Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll have an associated firm in Virginia do a straightforward change of name in the courts down there. They can also notify his school of the change and request that all his records there be changed to Barrington.”
“This has to be done in such a way that no one in the media catches it.”
“Legally, it will have to be advertised locally, but there are always obscure publications that can satisfy that requirement. We have to have a reason stated for the change of name in the petition to the court. What do you want to say?”
Stone thought about it. “Damned if I know.”
“How about: ‘Petitioner wishes his surname to be that of his natural father’?”
“He’s too young to be a petitioner; I suppose Arrington will have to fill that role.”
“I thought he was going to be eighteen.”
“Well, to all intents and purposes—except for legal ones, of course.”
Eggers tilted back in his chair, rested his feet on his desk, and pressed his fingertips together in a thoughtful pose. “Where was he born?”
“In Los Angeles.”
“How about we get his birth certificate reissued and his old one removed? That should solve the problem.”
“How the hell are you going to do that? You can’t just hire some clerk to steal a public record and replace it with a forgery.”
“Well, I suppose you could, but that’s messy. All we need is a judge to order a reissuing of the certificate, for the same reason as we give in Virginia, and along the way, to correct a typographical error with regard to birth date. We should still do the name change in Virginia, because of his school.”