“I don’t need to stay while you do this, do I?” Stone asked. “I’m supposed to be meeting Bill.”
“No, but youdoneed to know how this works.”
“Can you show that to me first?”
She sighed. “If I must.”
She removed the button tray from the box and, from the space below, withdrew a thin, black plastic device about the length and width of a deck of cards.
“Give me your phone,” she said.
He did so.
She tapped on the screen for several seconds, then returned the cell to him.
“See that app with the green icon?” she said, pointing at the screen.
Since it hadn’t been there before, he noticed it right away. The name below it readHealth Tracker.
“Open it,” she said.
He obliged. The screen turned white and showcased a black button in the middle, labeledStart.
“Before you get to the funeral, touch that. It’ll turn on this box, which you should put in your inside jacket pocket.” She wiggled the device. “It controls the button camera. The signal will go from the camera to the box to your phone to us in Maine.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Anything else I need to know?” Stone asked.
“There is.”
She pulled something else out of the bottom of the box and held it out to him. It was a tiny earpiece, the color of his skin.
“Put this in your ear before you start the camera. That way we can tell you if there’s someone specific we want you to aim the lens at.”
“Like a backseat driver?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “That is an apt description.”
“Is that it?”
“Just one more thing. Tell Bill I say hi.”
Stone met Bill Eggers atthe Grill, the eatery that had replaced the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building.
After catching each other up on several clients’ cases, Stone asked, “How are things in Washington?”
Stone was referring to the town in Connecticut where he had once owned a home, which he had sold to Bill several years earlier.
“My wife and I are out there almost every weekend these days,” Bill said. “We’re thinking of moving there permanently when I retire.”
“Retire? You’re not thinking about that yet, are you?”
“I’m always thinking about it, but it won’t happen for another decade, at least. Plan for the future, and all that. I’d ask you what you plan to do after you stop practicing, but I have a feeling you’ll pass quietly at your desk while going over a contract, and Joan will have to wheel your body out in your office chair.”
“That’s quite the vivid image. Have you been thinking about this a lot?”
