The Monkey Handlers Read online

  The party, Michael Stone thought, was getting rough. He squeezed Sara’s elbow so hard, the pain made her wince. “Thank you very much,” he said, then wheeled his sputtering and protesting client around and propelled her out of the lobby and down the street.

  “But I wasn’t finished, damn it!”

  “Either you were or I was. You go back in there, you go alone. You had your say, and you stayed out of trouble. Be grateful, not greedy. How much of what you said do you think they’re gonna publish, anyway?”

  Sara looked at Stone sharply. “All of it. Why not? It’s all true and a matter of life and death. And that’s news!”

  “No it isn’t. You said so yourself back there. If they’ve been sitting on the story for years, what makes you think you’re gonna turn ’em around?”

  They were back at Stone’s car now. He looked back. No one was following. “You don’t get the point, Sara. Who are you, the Wizard of Oz giving out guts, brains, and heart to people without any?” He opened the car door for her.

  “Okay,” said Sara, “so I’m not the Wizard of Oz. That makes me a failure?” She got into the passenger seat.

  “No. But you’re a long way from Kansas, kid.”

  Stone flipped Sara’s door shut. Through the closed window glass, he could see her exaggerated lip movements as she mouthed “Fuck you.”

  * * *

  Something about Stephanie Hannigan seemed different to Michael Stone as she descended the steps of the public defender’s office to the street. Stone was leaning against the passenger side of his Mustang, waiting for her, trying to figure out what it was. Her dress and hair were the same. She wasn’t carrying her briefcase, but that wasn’t it. Stone was distracted for a moment by the strong sun backlighting Stephanie briefly as she walked through the reflected glare of the glass doors behind her. It made her hair form a golden halo and, even more diverting, rendered her skirt unexpectedly translucent for a flash outline of parted thighs. Although the effect vanished a step later, its effect on Stone was such that she was almost upon him before he realized what was different about her appearance: she wasn’t wearing her previously ever-present glasses. “Hungry?” he asked, opening the car door.

  “Very! How far away is this place of yours?”

  Stone shut her door and climbed in behind the wheel. “Worth the wait.” The car interior had heated up under the sun as he waited for her. “This car has no air conditioning,” he said, “helps keep the weight down and the speed up. How do you feel about top-down travel? It could blow the hell out of your hair.”

  Stephanie smiled, turning her head toward him. “Let ’er rip, counselor. I brought a comb.” Inside the Mustang, the distance between them was small, and Stone noticed the outline of a contact lens in Stephanie’s eye. He found himself wishing she’d kept her glasses on. The contacts made her eyes seem smaller. Maybe the glasses magnified them. Anyway, he thought, she had the pure blue eyes for which Ireland was almost as famous as its emerald green shamrocks.

  Stone flipped the catch at the upper left of the windshield, then leaned past Stephanie to do the same on her side. As he did, the right side of his body brushed her left breast. “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Stephanie said softly. Stone noticed that she didn’t pull away.

  As the top whined to a stop in its retracted position, Stone depressed the throttle to set the choke and twisted the ignition key. The engine caught, and he blipped the throttle. “Light off all eight boilers, aye, aye. Ready to launch!”

  “What?” shouted a mystified Stephanie as the engine’s bellow enveloped the Mustang’s open cockpit.

  “I’m mixing navy metaphors,” Stone answered, pulling out into traffic. “In the days of steam, for maximum speed the skipper ordered all boilers lighted to produce the most steam possible. ‘Ready to launch’ comes from the carrier fleet.” He turned right onto the bridge over the Hudson River. There was little traffic at that hour and Stone mashed the throttle. Stephanie grabbed the door grip with her right hand and held the back of her head with her left in a vain attempt to keep her hair from streaming out in front of her from the backwash of the windshield as the red convertible accelerated.

  “Bullitt!” she shouted above the roar.

  “What?” Stone shouted back. The noise of the exhaust now was deafening as it was compounded by ricocheting off the concrete railings of the bridge.

  “That’s where I heard that sound before,” Stephanie shouted. “The car Steve McQueen drove in the chase scene. It sounded like this one.”

  Stephanie couldn’t have said anything to please Michael Stone more. He grinned. “Mustang! Made before the government screwed up the auto industry along with everything else it touches.”

  There are no tolls going west across the Hudson, so Stone didn’t slow as he took the sharp right at the other end of the bridge and screamed up the hill to the top of the rocky palisade.

  “I thought you said ‘lunch,’ not ‘launch,’” Stephanie yelled into Stone’s ear.

  Stone took the hint and slowed down. They had reached the narrow two-lane road running south overlooking the Hudson far below, and it was the view he had wanted to show off to Stephanie, in any event. They drifted along at forty-five miles per hour, the big V-8 barely registering on the tachometer. The sun warmed them and shone brightly off the surface of the river.

  “It is beautiful, counselor, isn’t it?” said a now-relaxed Stephanie.

  “Counselor,” said Stone, “is not the name on my birth certificate.”

  Stephanie’s blue eyes flashed warmly. “Michael,” she said.

  “Michael is what my Aunt May calls me,” said Stone, “and she doesn’t approve of me. Try Mike.”

  Stephanie looked impish. “I’m not sure I approve of you, either. You drive like a maniac. Think I’ll stick with Michael, at least until I see if I make it back alive.”

  Stone’s foot came off the gas. The car fell silent and coasted as he looked intently at Stephanie and said, “No harm will come to you while you’re with me.”

  Stephanie could tell instantly by Stone’s expression and tone of voice that she had stumbled into a sensitive area. It probably had something to do with his masculine pride. She wished she hadn’t been an only child. If only she’d had a brother—even an older sister who dated a lot—she wouldn’t be so damned ignorant about men. She always had to be so … on guard. She hated having to apologize for a perfectly innocent remark, but she did so again, for what seemed like the thousandth time. Stephanie concealed her resentment: “Hey”—she smiled—“I’m sorry. I got in the car, didn’t I? Besides, I’m not wearing the right shoes to walk back.”

  Stone was embarrassed. He’d overreacted again. “I keep screwing up with you,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Stephanie leaned over and put her finger against his lips. The pit of Stone’s stomach reacted again, and he felt as if he’d stopped breathing. The distraction caused him to interrupt his long-ingrained driving habit of scanning the road, his instruments, and the rearview mirrors, so his first indication that they were not alone on the road was a deep rumbling sound that he identified instantly.

  “What’s that?” Stephanie asked, trying to turn around far enough to see behind them.

  “Only one thing in the world makes that sound,” said Michael Stone, “a Harley-Davidson.”

  Stone saw the motorcycle in his rearview mirror for only a moment and then it was alongside of them as if to pass on the left. As the big machine drew opposite Stone’s car door, it slowed and stayed there a few moments. The rider, a heavy man with a beer gut, clean-shaven head, and full dark beard, stared at Stone and Stephanie intensely then, shovel-head engine thundering from a two-into-one exhaust, pulled ahead, and disappeared around the next bend. The last thing Stone saw was the bright red tilted and double-overlapping H insignia on the rider’s back.

  “What was that?” Stephanie asked.

  Stone had a pretty good idea, but there was no sense alarming Ste
phanie unduly. The bike had a rigid frame and had been built up from parts to suit the rider. The insignia had been the colors of the Heads from Hell gang, as described to him by Ira Levin. It could have been a coincidence, or the rider could have been a scout, now going to report to his buddies on some prospective fun—a lone man and woman, a seldom-traveled road, a couple of Yuppies ripe for robbery and a gang bang. Worst-case scenario, he had been recognized as Sara’s lawyer. Worst case, that was, because of Stephanie’s presence.

  “Dunno,” Stone answered Stephanie, “maybe a little local color. We turn off up here, anyway.”

  Stone turned left down an even narrower road that led as close to the cliff edge as the road department deemed safe, then widened to accommodate a small building between the road and the cliff. A sign in front of the building announced that this was the site of Van der Meer’s Stage Stop Tavern, established 1663 and open for business without interruption ever since.

  Stone pulled in and parked the Mustang as far to the rear as he could get it, hoping it would be more difficult to spot from the road. To Stephanie’s unspoken inquiry, signified by a quizzical glance, he responded, “Can’t lock an open car. Wouldn’t want some teenager to go joyriding in it off the cliff.”

  Stephanie nodded her approval. “You’re a thoughtful man, Michael. You’d have trouble living with something like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Stone feigned incomprehension. “Damn straight,” he replied. “I can’t afford another car right now. I just got finished paying off this one.”

  Stephanie looked shocked for a moment, then realized she’d been had and, grinning sheepishly, swatted Stone on the buttocks with her pocketbook.

  The inside of the tavern had original-looking dark post-and-beam load-bearing walls with patched, rough sand-finished plaster in between. Against the far wall were small, two-person tables beneath a series of plate-glass windows that gave a spectacular view of the valley and the Hudson, far below. The rest of the small room had round tables seating six. To the right was a bar. To the left was a door, over which was a sign that read, in carved wooden letters, REST ROOMS. Except for a middle-aged bartender, the place was empty, the lunch hour having passed and the cocktail hour still the better part of an afternoon away.

  “Not too late for lunch, are we?” Stone called to the bartender.

  “No, no. Sit anywhere you like, folks. I’ll be right over.”

  “What d’you say we sit at the historic plate-glass windows and enjoy the view?” Stone asked Stephanie.

  “Sure,” she answered, “that way we won’t have to use the Colonial electric lights. Go ahead,” she said, heading for the rest rooms, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “We’ll both be back in a minute,” Stone called to the bartender, and followed Stephanie through the rest rooms’ door. Inside was an anteroom. A pay telephone was on the wall. Two doors led off from the anteroom, one marked HERREN, the other, DAMEN.

  “I wonder,” said Stephanie, heading for Damen, “what happens when some dropout thinks Herren means her’n and goes through the wrong door?”

  “You guys get another win on a Peeping Tom case. If high school graduates can’t read English anymore, no jury’s gonna believe a dropout can read Dutch.”

  As Stephanie disappeared into the bathroom, Stone went to the pay phone, picked up the handset, unscrewed the mouthpiece, and turned it over in his hand. The microphone, an inch-and-three-quarter disk with round holes arranged in a circle and one in the middle, fell away into his palm. Stone replaced the screw-on mouthpiece quickly, dropped the microphone into his outside jacket pocket, and entered the men’s room.

  Michael Stone and Stephanie Hannigan exited their respective rest rooms at almost the same time. “Perfect timing,” Stone said as he held the door into the restaurant open for Stephanie. They took their seats and the bartender stood over them, pencil poised over pad.

  Stephanie looked up at him. “Do you have a house white wine you serve by the glass?”

  “We got a Taylor Chablis,” said the bartender. “That’s a New York company,” he added helpfully.

  Stone smiled at him. “So’s New York Oil and Gas. And,” he said to Stephanie, “they’ve got a diesel number two I think you’d like better.” He turned to the bartender again. “Could I see your wine list? I was told you had a—”

  Stone was interrupted by the rumble of a big Harley just outside the tavern. The engine went quiet and in came the skinhead biker who had passed them on the road. The biker glanced over at Stone, then headed for the rest rooms’ door.

  “He a regular?” Stone asked the bartender.

  “Never seen him before,” the bartender protested. “This ain’t that kind of place. I’ll getcha the wine list.”

  As the bartender was retrieving the wine list from behind the bar, the biker came out of the rest rooms’ door and yelled over to the bartender, “Yer phone don’t work right, mister. Ya can hear, but they can’t hear you!” He headed for the door, and a moment later, the Harley boomed into life, exhaust sound receding as it moved off down the road.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Stone said to Stephanie. He rose and walked over to the bar and spoke softly to the bartender. “Kind of badass lookin’ guy. You got anything back there in case things get exciting?”

  “Uh-uh. I told ya, mister, this ain’t that kinda place. We don’t have no trouble here. We ain’t even open after ten-thirty. What’s more, I ain’t no hero. Anything did start, I mean serious shit, I’d sit down back of the bar an’ stay there till it was over an’ let the cops an’ the insurance company straighten it out. I ain’t gonna go to no hospital for what I make in this place in a week.”

  “Makes sense to me,” said Stone. He picked up the wine list and returned to Stephanie. As he looked over the list, Stone asked her, with an elaborate casualness not lost on a woman used to reading juries, “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, if it’s reasonable. What?”

  “If that beer belly on a bike comes back in here again with some of his buddies, would you mind going back to the ladies’ room and staying there till I come knock on the door?”

  “What? You know that guy? I mean, are you expecting trouble? If you are, let’s just leave now and avoid it.”

  “No, I’m not expecting trouble. I’m just anticipating. Force of habit. Old navy training. If there’s no trouble coming, we might just as well stay here and enjoy lunch. That’s what we came for. On the other hand, if trouble is coming, it won’t be from one biker, or he’d have started it when he was here. That being the case, we’re better off here than on a narrow road surrounded by a swarm of—”

  The growling, revving, booming roar of a squad of Harley-Davidsons arriving rendered the rest of Stone’s sentence moot. He slipped off his suit coat and handed it to the startled Stephanie, then went to work on the knot of his necktie. As he was handing it to her, the front door burst open and half a dozen big bald bikers entered and crossed to the bar.

  “Beer!” demanded the leader. He was six feet two and nearly three hundred pounds of muscle and blubber in dirty jeans, a sweat-stained black T-shirt, and a vest bearing the HH symbol of his gang on his back. Tattoos covered his arms and the lower portion of his neck. Three more bikers, one of them the man who had passed Stone on the road and later complained about the telephone, were given to fat. One, the youngest in appearance, had the body of a muscle-building weight lifter. The sixth was thin and rangy, with the eyes of a serious doper. All sported shaven heads, tattoos, and “colors” on their backs.

  The bartender brought up multiple beer bottles in each hand, holding them by their narrow necks between splayed fingers. “Now,” said Stone softly to Stephanie, “would be a good time for you to excuse yourself. Take it easy. Be cool and casual. Don’t come out till I knock.”

  “I can’t leave you here like this!” Stephanie whispered urgently. “There’s no point to it. The phone doesn’t work, so I can’t get help. Maybe they won’t do anything as long
as I’m here as a witness.”

  Stephanie was shocked at the transformation that came over Michael Stone. His face became blank, cold. His voice was flat, utterly devoid of emotion, as if some inner switch had been thrown. It hadn’t changed his personality so much as eliminated it. She felt as if she were facing a machine.

  “You don’t understand. I disabled the phone. I don’t need any help, they do. And I don’t want any witnesses. Now go.”

  Without another word, Stephanie rose, turned, and made for the rest rooms’ door. As Stone’s last words to her sank in, she realized that their impact had been extraordinary. In a moment, the source of her fear had been transferred from the menacing biker thugs to the now-cold, emotionless man who had sat opposite her—a man who was now a total stranger.

  By the time the rest rooms’ outer door had shut behind her, Stephanie’s shock had dissipated enough to allow her curiosity to assert itself sufficiently to disobey Stone’s “no witnesses” injunction. Ever so slowly, Stephanie eased the door open a crack, just enough for her to see and hear what was going on in the main room of the tavern. Which, for the moment, was nothing much.

  The skinheads continued to swill beer, joking among themselves. Stone quietly studied the wine list. Then, raising his head, he called out to the bartender:

  “If you’ve got a minute, I’ve picked out a wine.”

  “Wine!” bellowed the huge biker leader.

  “Wine!” chorused his five companions dutifully.

  “Only pussies drink wine!” snorted the leader.

  “Only pussies drink wine!” came the echo from the other five.

  “Number twenty-seven,” Stone called out to the bartender, ignoring his tormentors, “chilled if you have it.”

  “Chilled if you have it,” mimicked the bodybuilder, trying his best to sound effeminate. The others joined, each trying to sound more airy-fairy than the last.

  “Hey, bartender. Forget the twenny-seven. Give ’im the sixty-nine!” the thin one shouted, then doubled up in laughter at what he was sure had been a devastating display of wit. He stopped in mid-laugh, frozen by the sudden change in the tenor of events signaled by the venomous tone of the leader’s voice. “Nobody in this fuckin’ joint drinks nothin’ who ain’t wearin’ colors.” He turned to the bartender. “Hold that bottle of piss.” Then, staring right at Stone, he said, “Lessee yer colors, buddy. If ya got any.”