Silent Treatment

body, her high,full breasts, her legs. Perfect. Her emerald dress was wet-suit tight, slit upthe right side to her hip.

'Who are you?' he demanded.

She set the brush down, smoothed the frontof her dress, and moistened her lips before she spoke.

'My name is Kelly.'

'Who sent you here?'

'I … I don't understand.'

Kevin glared at her. After what happenedwith the reporter, surely this was either a joke or some sort of test.

'Where did you come from? That's a simpleenough question. How did you get in here? That's another simple question.

Fear sparked in the woman's dark eyes.

'A man met me outside the door and let mein. Each of us was given a room number to wait at. I … I'm here to please youin any way that you want.'

'Just sit down there and stay there,'Kevin said, motioning to the bed. 'No!' he snapped as she reached behind herback for her zipper. 'Just sit.'

He stalked to the living room, slammingthe bedroom door behind him.

According to Burt Dreiser, the women hadbeen part of second and fourth Tuesdays for most of The Roundtable's six-yearexistence. Lancelot, who had been there from the beginning, was responsible forthem. And until two months ago, there had never been a problem. Those knightswho wanted sex had it. Those who wanted nothing more than a massage or a lovelycompanion for dinner got that. The escort service Lancelot employed was one ofthe most upscale and discreet in the city. But somehow, they had beenpenetrated — not by a cop, but by a reporter.

Kevin snatched up the phone.

'Mr. Lance's room, please.'

Lancelot, Pat Harper of Northeast Life andCasualty, was the only member of The Roundtable whom Kevin had met beforejoining. In stature and appearance, Harper was anything but a Lancelot with anexpansive gut, ruddy complexion, fat cigar, and high-pitched laugh that werefar closer to Dickens than to Camelot. Kevin had once played in the samefoursome with him during an industry-sponsored charity gold tournament and hadbeen beaten by a dozen strokes. Harper had a wife and three or four grown kids.Beyond that fact, Kevin knew nothing of the man except, of course, that heliked young, beautiful women.

'Lancelot, this is Tristram,' Kevin said.'I thought we decided no more women.

'Ah, Kelly. . What do you think of her?A ten and a half, don't you agree?'

'Yes, except she's not supposed to behere.'

'Oh, lighten up, my friend. Life is tooshort. We decided no more women from the old escort service. Kelly andthe others are from a new one. Don't worry, every one of them has beenchecked out. There won't be any more screwups.'

The name the reporter had used wasDesiree. She had spent two Tuesdays with Sir Gawaine and two with Kevin. Theowner of the escort service had learned of Desiree's duplicity from one of theother women, whom the reporter had tried to interview and who was certain thatthe impostor had recorded her sessions with her two clients. At Galahad'sinsistence, the escort company was terminated immediately, and Roundtablemeetings were moved.

During the tense questioning that followedthe discovery, Kevin learned a bit about Gawaine, the last member admitted tothe group before he was. From the very beginning, Kevin had found the man'sbutton-down composure and varsity club accent threatening. Gawaine seemed tofit right in with the others, while Kevin's hardscrabble Newark upbringing madehim an instant outsider. Now Kevin knew that he and Gawaine had at least onething in common: both were contented family men who had never wanted orreceived more than a massage and some conversation from their escorts.

Apparently, however, Lancelot had beengiven the green light to start up again with a new service. Kevin was about totell the guy that no more women were to be sent to his room. But he rememberedone of Burt Dreiser's warnings about The Roundtable.

'So much is at stake,' Dreiser had said,'that nobody trusts anybody. The best thing you can do is not to stand out inany way. Look and act like everyone else, and you'll do fine.'

Kevin had drawn the conformity line atscrewing the women Lancelot brought in. But he had never mentioned that toanyone. In fact, if he and Gawaine hadn't been asked during Galahad'sinvestigation whether or not they were actually having sex with Desiree, no onein the group would have known.

'Listen, Lance,' he said now. 'Don't takeit personally. Kelly's beautiful. I'm very pleased with her. I was just makingsure there weren't any problems. That's all.'

He set the receiver down and returned tothe bedroom. Kelly, slowly stroking her thick mane of ebony hair, smiled up athim from the bed.

'Is everything okay?' she asked.

The sight of her sitting there, her rightleg exposed to the hip, sent an uncontrollable surge of blood to Kevin's groin.

'Everything's fine,' he said. 'Listen. Howabout calling room service and ordering dinner. Get anything you want foryourself. I'll have a filet. Medium rare. And then maybe a massage. Are yougood at that?'

'I am very good at that,' she said.

Harry had lived in Manhattan for much ofhis adult life, but until today he had never been in Tiffany's. With MaryTobin's help, he had freed up the last hour and a half to makeearlier-than-usual rounds at the hospital and head home. The idea of doingsomething special for Evie had been his. The suggestion to do it at Tiffany'shad been Mary's.

Now, silently humming Joe Kincaid'srendition of 'Moon River', Harry tried for George Peppard's Breakfast atTiffany's nonchalance as a saleswoman laid one prohibitively expensive gemafter another on the black velvet display cloth.

'This tennis bracelet is quite charming,'she said. 'It has alternating beautifully matched rubies and diamonds, each aneighth of a carat.'

'My wife doesn't play tennis too often.. Um. . how much is it, though?'

'Thirty-six hundred, sir.'

Well, then, perhaps I could seesomething in a Ping-Pong bracelet?

Eventually, he settled on a half-caratdiamond pendant flanked by two small rubies. Evie loved precious stones. Withthe help, Harry suspected, of her ex-husband and ex-suitors, she had amassed asizable collection by the time he started dating her.

'I want to sell every piece I have,' shesaid, soon after they were married, 'so we can buy a camper and drive acrossthe country.'

Harry knew that Evie had never beencamping in her life and suspected that she would not be too enamored of blackflies and blackened burgers. The declaration was part of her commitment tomoving her life out of the fast lane and into whatever lane she perceived himto be traveling. Eventually, though, she stopped talking about the simple lifeand put her jewels into a safe-deposit box. They never did go camping.

There's nothing to worry about.. I hope this will mark a new beginning for us. . Everything's going to beall right. . Believe it or not, there are places I want to take you whereyou can actually wear this. . Harry considered then rejected any number of messages forthe card, before writing simply 'I love you.'

I need to talk to you. . WithEvie's words playing over and over in his mind, he took a cab to the co-op theyhad owned since shortly after the wedding. The sixth-floor apartment, fivedecent-sized rooms and a tiny study, was in a well-maintained building on theUpper West Side, a block from Central Park. Over Evie's eight-plus years there,the flat had changed, in her words, from 'exquisite' to 'adequate' to 'small,'and, most recently, to 'depressing.'

I need to talk to you. . Health?Money? The marriage? Her job? Could she possibly be pregnant? It had been solong since she had needed to speak with him about anything. Maybe shefinally wanted to clear the air and start over again.