Free Insatiable Appetites by Stuart Woods Page B

sacrificed.’”
    “Perfect.”
    “I’m elated, but it’s still tough,” Ann said. “I came real close to starting smoking again.”
    “When did you quit?”
    “Fifteen years ago.”
    “And you still want it?”
    “Sometimes. Why? Would that be a deal breaker?”
    “You know my friends—have you ever seen one of them smoke?”
    “Now that you mention it.”
    “I’m not a fanatic about it,” Stone said. “As far as I’m concerned, there are only two places where it should be banned.”
    “Where are they?”
    “Indoors and outdoors.”
    She laughed until he pounced again.

    Ann woke him at five AM and attacked him. Stone submitted gracefully. Done with him, she jumped into a shower, pulled a change of clothes from her large handbag, replacing them with those worn, spent half an hour doing something with a hair dryer in the bathroom, then woke up Stone again.
    “There’s a car waiting for me downstairs. I can’t stay for breakfast.”
    “Look in the dumbwaiter,” Stone said, pointing.
    Ann looked and found a brown paper bag. “What’s in it?”
    “Some of Helene’s pastries and coffee. You can enjoy it on the way to the Carlyle. Will I ever see you again short of the inauguration?”
    “Of course,” she said, kissing him, “but as Rodgers and Hart once said, ‘Who knows where or when?’”
    “I’ll wait with bated breath.”
    She kissed him and ran from the room.
    Stone fell asleep again.
    •   •   •
    Stone was working in his office with Herbie after lunch when his cell phone buzzed on his belt. “Hello?”
    “It’s Carla Fontana,” she said.
    “Good afternoon, Carla. I hope you’re well.”
    “I am, thank you, and better than ever, thanks to your referral.”
    “Did he prove cooperative?”
    “I met him an hour ago in the rear office of an antiques shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Georgetown.”
    “And?”
    “He was very cooperative. He told me his name, and he said I could tell you.”
    “Who is he?”
    “He is Evan Hills, a first-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and he was very brave. He knows that if his leadership ever finds out he spoke to me, he’ll be gutted and hung out to dry, and I think he actually believes they’ll have him killed.”
    “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “Some dark figure or other. Who knows?”
    “Is it a story?”
    “Is it ever! Evan has an excellent memory, and he was able to give me a verbatim account of who said what. He made notes as soon as he got home.”
    “Whose house was the meeting held at?”
    “Ready for this? Harley David, oil billionaire who’s backed a dozen right-wing organizations. He has a son, Junior, who’s known as Harley Davidson—get it?”
    “The poor kid.”
    “No, he’s a rotten little bully. He drives around Dallas and D.C. in a Ferrari, mowing down pedestrians. He’s had two hit-and-runs in Texas while drinking and has walked away from both, leaving a trail of his daddy’s money in his wake.”
    “He sounds like a charmer.”
    “Not only that, but his daddy is clearing the way for a congressional seat for him next time.”
    “Was H. David Senior at the meeting?”
    “He was.”
    “When will your story run?”
    “A few days, maybe.”
    “Maybe?”
    “I’ve got some checking around to do. I want to be sure that I—and you—are not being set up. This has been a little too easy. I have a list of who was at the meeting, and there’s one other guy I might be able to get to cop to being there. I need a second source.”
    “You would know better about that than I.”
    “I’ve talked to my executive editor in New York, and he’s excited, but, like me, he thinks that it may be too good to be true. The Gray Lady doesn’t want her tit caught in a wringer, and Harley David would like nothing better than for that to happen. Also, I want to see what else I can get out of our man Evan Hills.”
    “What’s Hills’s background?”
    “Deerfield Academy, Penn, Yale Law School, practiced