“Momentarily.”
“Until election night,” Kate said, then hung up.
Stone glanced at his watch, then found the room service menu and ordered a sumptuous dinner for two. Then the doorbell rang.
He answered it to find the Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, clad in a clinging black dress that revealed an enticing amount of décolletage.
“Good evening, Mr. Barrington,” she said.
He ushered her in. “Good evening, Ms. Fontana, and I hope that will be the last time we use that form of address.”
“Agreed.”
“May I get you something to drink? I have a very nice bottle of Krug on ice.”
“That would be perfect.” She strolled around the suite’s living room and had a peek into the bedroom while he opened the bottle. “This is very impressive,” she said. “Do you live this well in all hotels?”
“Just Arringtons,” he replied, handing her a fizzing flute.
“That’s right, you have a business connection, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be here for the grand opening. I have to fly back to New York tomorrow morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, then breathed a sigh of relief that she and Holly wouldn’t be in the same room for the event. “Please have a seat.”
She arranged herself becomingly on the sofa and took a sip of her Krug. “Very nice,” she said. “I’ll enjoy it more after our interview. Why don’t we get that out of the way?”
“As you wish.”
She removed a small recording device and set it on the sofa table behind them, equidistant from their lips. “Now, background?”
“Born and raised in Greenwich Village, attended P.S. Six, NYU, and NYU Law School.”
“How did you get sidetracked into the NYPD?”
“As part of a law school program I rode with a squad car for a few days, and the bug bit. I took the exam, passed, and entered the Academy right after graduation.”
“Without taking the bar?”
“After my ride with the NYPD I couldn’t imagine ever practicing law. I thought I would be a career police officer.”
“And that’s where you met our beloved police commissioner?”
“We both made detective in the same class and our captain put us together. We were partners until I left the force ten years later.”
“I haven’t been able to get the straight story on why you left the NYPD. The official word was a knee injury?”
“That was a convenience for the department. I had made an irritant of myself on a case Dino and I were working, and when I opposed my superiors’ views, it became clear I had no future in the department. A police doctor made it official, and I was unceremoniously retired.”
“With a seventy-five percent pension, tax-free?”
“That is the reward for being invalided out for a line-of-duty injury. Mine was a gunshot to the knee, from which I had pretty well recovered.”
“So you were at loose ends, then?”
“I was doing a renovation job on the town house a great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, had willed to me, so that kept me busy, but I was getting deeper into debt, and my pension wasn’t enough. Then I ran into an old classmate from law school . . .”