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Stone.
    “All of it.”
    Dino dialed another number. “This is Bacchetti; who’s got the duty?” He paused. “Anderson? Get over to my apartment right now.” He gave the detective the address. “But first, get a squad car there. Somebody’s attacked my wife. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Dino hung up and concentrated on his driving, roaring down the Henry Hudson Parkway, weaving in and out of the heavy traffic.
    Stone put his hands on the dashboard and braced himself. He had always thought it a good possibility that he would die in a car with Dino at the wheel, and he wondered if this was going to be the day.
    Dino got off the parkway at Seventy-ninth Street and charged across the West Side. He turned down Central Park West and raced to Sixty-fifth Street, then turned into the park, driving across a traffic island to break into the traffic. “I wish the hell this thing had a siren,” he said, half to himself. He overtook half a dozen cars at one go, bulling his way through the traffic from the opposite direction, miraculously not hitting another car. Two minutes after leaving the park he drove the wrong way down his block, abandoned the car in front of a fire hydrant, and ran toward his apartment building, with Stone on his heels.

    The building’s doorman saw them coming. “There’s two uniforms up there already, Mr. Bacchetti,” he shouted, as they sprinted past him for the elevator. A minute later they were in the apartment, and Dino was holding Mary Ann, who didn’t seem all that flustered now.
    “I’m all right,” she said. “Don’t make a big deal.”
    Dino sat her down on a sofa. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
    “I got out of a cab at the corner and was walking toward the building. When I was almost to the front door I saw this guy coming down the block in the opposite direction, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was coming at me. He was only a few steps away when I saw him take a knife out of his pocket—a big switchblade—and flick it open. I already had my hand in my purse.” She pointed at her pocketbook, lying on a chair opposite; there was a gaping hole in the bag. “I fired before he could get to me, and the shot spun him around. He could run, though, and he did.”
    “Where did you hit him?”
    “I didn’t have much chance to aim, but I was going for his head. I think I caught an ear.”
    “Which ear?”
    “Uh, the left. Yes, that’s right, the left ear. He had his hand on it as he ran, and I saw some blood.”
    “You,” Dino said, pointing at one of the two uniforms in the room, “go downstairs and see if you can find some blood on the sidewalk. Don’t let anybody step in it; I want a sample taken.”
    The cop left at a run.

    “You,” Dino said, pointing at the other uniform, “get on the phone to the precinct and tell them I want a tech over here right now to collect a sample.”
    The cop went to a phone and started dialing.
    “Are you all right, now?” he said to his wife.
    “Perfectly,” she said.
    “All right enough to answer an important question?”
    “Sure, I’m okay; what do you want to know?”
    “What I want to know is,where the hell did you get a gun? ” Dino demanded, his voice rising.
    Mary Ann looked away petulantly. “Daddy gave it to me.”
    “You took a gun from yourfather ?”
    Stone knew that Mary Ann’s father was an extremely well connected Italian gentleman of the old school with many business interests, licit and otherwise, and a wide acquaintance among people who owned guns.
    “Yes, I did,” she said, rounding on him. “I knewyou wouldn’t let me have one.”
    “Oh, swell,” Dino said. “And, knowing your father, I don’t suppose he bothered with the permitting process.”
    “As a matter of fact, he did bother,” Mary Ann replied. “The permit is in my purse, if you don’t believe me.”
    “Jesus, you’re lucky you didn’t shoot yourself. You’ve got no business with a gun.”
    “Listen,