“Now, Lisolette, you must remember that stocks of this sort-most over-the-counter stocks-are highly speculative.”
“But if you think the chances are good, Harlee she began.
“You really should give it a great deal of thought,” he said seriously. What the hell was wrong with him? he wondered. He was blowing the whole pitch.
“You know I trust your judgment,” she said simply. She fingered the certificates in front of her. “They’re very pretty, aren’t they?
Very impressive.” She glanced at him, her face open. “What should I buy Harlee? YouR have “The metal stocks,” he began. He could feel the sweat in his armpits and on his forehead.
“Yes?”
Suddenly he was very angry with her, with himself.
“You trust me completely, don’t you, Lisolette?”
Her face was suddenly quite serious. “Of course.”
“Why should you?” he asked slowly. “Why should you trust my judgment-or me either, for that matter?”
She looked flustered. “You’re angry. Did I say something wrong?”
“You’re trusting, Lisolette,” he said grimly. “Much too trusting.”
“Is there-any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?” She looked perplexed.
He leaned back in his chair and took a long drink of the martini.
His ex-wife, he thought, he.had forgotten how much he had loved her.
And Lisolette was her duplicate.
Adele had trusted him with the business, with her bank accounts and she had left him everything in her will. She had loved him, too.
“Lisolette,” he said slowly, “what if I told you that these stocks were absolutely worthless, that they’re not worth the parchment they’re printed on. I should know to tell me.”
I printed most of them myself.” He touched one of them.
“You’re right-they’re beautiful, but worthless. They’re fake.”
He looked up at her. “So am I, Lisolette. I don’t have a dollar to my name, I’m two months behind in the rent; I can’t even pay for our dinner tonight.”
Lisolette frowned. “When one is in desperate straits “You misunderstand,” he said impatiently. “This is my way of life. He hesitated. “You aren’t the first one; I’m sure there are a dozen warrants waiting for me around the country, although most of my ladies are too well bred to bring charges.”
“Your ladies,” she said, smiling.
“My ladies,” he said, suddenly unaccountably sad. “My poor ladies.”
“You’re a very sensitive man, Harlee.”
He looked at her sharply. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
“Of course I have. Every word.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
She made a gesture. “Why should I be? I knew all this long before tonight; it was very easy to check.”
He stared at her, shocked, and then suddenly angry.
“And you let me go ahead and make a fool of myself?”
She reached out and took one of his hands. “That’s not it at all.
You’re a lovely, gentle man, and I.wouldn’t hurt you for all the world.
I wouldn’t have missed the money and you have given me so much more.”
“You would have gone ahead with it, let me take your money?”
“If it had come to that-though perhaps not as much as you wanted.”
“Lisa,” he said, for the first time using the diminutive form of her name, “you’re really an astonishing woman.”
She smiled..”No, just a woman who has lived a long time and still has an eye for the gentlemen.” Suddenly she was overcome with delight at her judgment. “Would it surprise you if I knew you would tell me all about the stock certificates, the truth about them? I told Rosette that you were the most honest man I had ever met!”
He laughed quietly. “God, I wish I had known you earlier.” And then he realized that he had, and that he had married her. Adele. She was Adele all over again.
“Now,” Lisolette said, suddenly very matter-of-fact, “while you were trying to convince Miss Reynolds that she should allow us to eat here, I took the liberty of ordering chateaubriand and a bottle of ChAteau Lafite Rothschild, ‘64. You see, I do know what gentlemen like!”
“Why … ?”
She shrugged. “I knew what she must be saying to you -and I wanted you to enjoy the evening with me.”
How like Adele, he thought. How much like Adele.
And yet-how uniquely Lisolette Mueller.
CHAPTER 19
Thelma and Jenny had shown up and Barton and Leroux, not wishing to talk business in front of them, had gone for a stroll on the promenade.
There were still ten minutes before their table would be ready.
Time enough to ask Leroux questions that Quantrell’s TV program had brought up-more than time, probably; considering how crowded the room was and that nobody was in a hurry to venture back outside. The table would undoubtedly be late anyway-and with less tension and hostility on Leroux’s part, Barton was beginning to enjoy himself. He was inside where it was warm and smelled pleasantly of food, and relaxed enough to admire the beauty of the soft snow drifting past the windows. It was almost a ghost snow-light, puffy flakes that clung to the glass for a moment before dissolving into tears of water that trickled down out of sight.
“Craig, you’ve been around architecture and construction long enough to realize there’s no such thing as a fireproof building, the best we can build is a fire-resistant one,” Leroux was saying. “Almost anything will burn; it all depends on how hot it gets. That’s your basic premise. After that, we get into time-how long will a piece of wood or a strip of rug resist charring, resist breaking into open flame? And at what temperature? Almost anything that goes into any building has a fire rating-it’s the law. And then there are building codes that every construction firm has to follow. We’re no different from the others.
We do our best to compete; we cut unnecessary corners and frills -that’s the name of the game. But we don’t break the law. The city has inspectors; the Fire Department has inspectors; the insurance companies have inspectors. If they don’t’ approve of the construction of one of our buildings, we can’t open it up for tenancy. It’s as simple as that.”
Barton swirled his drink for a moment and thought that it was anything but as simple as that. Leroux was pitching him and he wondered why the older man was making the effort.
“What about insurance trade offs? Quantrell implied that a builder could completely sprinkler his building, for example, and perhaps get a reduced rate from the insurance company that would help pay for the sprinkler system. True?”
Leroux laughed. “That’s almost a knee-slapper. He might actually find his insurance rates going up; there’s always the chance that something will set off the sprinklers accidentally and if they’re in a shop area with goods below, you’ve got one expensive, unholy mess on your hands. And few tenants would go for unsightly dropheads in their ceiling. What might happen is that you might get trade offs from the city in the form of relaxation of other parts of the fire code. For the majority of high rises, however, there’s not much chance of lower insurance rates.
Insurance is dirt cheap to begin with-there are something like four hundred companies out there bidding for your business. Frankly, the annual light-bulb bill for the Glass House will run to more than our annual insurance premiums.”
Barton drained his glass. Good, but they had included everything but ice cream in his Ramos fizz. He signaled for another. “How come it’s so cheap?”
Leroux looked angry. “Because, despite everything that Mr. Quantrell implies, fires in high-rise buildings are
