The Hellfire Club

hissed and softened. 'If anybody happens along, we're inspecting our flat. Don't look at me, watch the street and tell me if anybody comes along.' He slipped the little knife back into its sheath.

Nora moved to shield him from the sidewalk. 'I don't get what you're doing.'

'Swapping plates. It's not as easy as it used to be. All these idiots treat their plates; like oil paintings. This was the first one that didn't have a frame around it.' The screwdriver clicked against metal. Dart grunted, then began humming 'Someone to Watch Over Me' again. Heat poured down on them. The police car for which Nora continued to pray neglected to appear.

'Now the front.' She: followed him and stood in the road as metal rubbed against metal. 'Want to hear a little-known fact about our old pal Ernest Forrest Ernest? This great man fancied the Nazis during the Second World War, though it was of course a deep dark secret, and afterward he was part of a splendid little group of ultrawealthy men who tried to promote Fascism right here in our good old cradle of liberty… All right!'

He went two paces to the rear of the Lincoln and started to remove the screws in its license plate. 'They didn't use the nasty F-word, of course. They called it the Americanism Movement, which lasted about five minutes until Joe McCarthy came along and put them in his pocket and they had to pretend they liked it. But the point of this' - he slapped the other car's plate into position and fit the screws into place - 'is that little Davey's grandfather was behind the whole show.'

Nora remembered the passages about Fascism in the chapter of Daisy's book she called 'the fantasia.'

'Lincoln Chancel was the badass's badass.'

'So I gather.'

Dick Dart looked up at her in amused surprise. 'I don't think Davey knows a quarter of the stuff the old man did.'

'He knows he wasn't a saint.'

Dart stood up, went to the front of the Lincoln, and knelt down while Nora posted herself to shield him from the empty street. She had been in Fairfield perhaps thirty times during the two years of her marriage, she had shopped on Main Street for her jeans and Ann Taylor dresses, she had bought veal chops and crown roasts from the excellent butcher, enjoyed lunches and dinners at three different restaurants, and in all that time, it came to her now, she had never seen a single policeman.

'We behold an unhappy degeneration in the Chancel line,' Dart said. 'Lincoln Chancel wouldn't have used Davey for a toothpick. Lincoln was one dangerous son of a bitch, and Davey doesn't have the guts of a teddy bear. Alden is sort of halfway between them, a thug and a bully, but not a real thug or a real bully.'

'He has his moments,' Nora said.

'You never met the real thing. Alden thinks he's a big shot and he prances around talking tough, but I think his old man cut his nuts.' He stood up and motioned for Nora to follow him to the rear of the sports car.

They were walking side by side down the street like any ordinary couple. The man beside her looked like a stockbroker or lawyer after a rough night, and she probably looked like his wife.

The old plate came off, the new one went up. 'If Alden Chancel hadn't inherited Chancel House, what would he be doing? He has one great editor, Merle Marvell, and a lot of blockheads. One dead writer, Hugo Driver, keeps the company solvent. His royalties bring in about forty percent of the company's total revenue, and almost all of that is generated by one book. Night Journey. Alden's a disaster. Right now he's negotiating a deal to sell the company to a German publisher - to get a lot of money out of the business before he runs it into the ground, The only reason the German publisher is interested is Night Journey.'

'Alden's trying to sell the company? How do you know about this?'

'We're the lawyers, baby. Remember? As we go along putting dents in dear old Dart, Morris, I am going to give you an education. Before I begin, I have to do something, but after that, tutorials in the real world are in session. Okay, let's wrap up this tedious bullshit.'

He stood up and shook out his arms, then produced a wrinkled, distinctly unclean handkerchief from a trouser pocket and swabbed his forehead.

'He's selling the company?'

'Trying to.' Dart pulled her up the street and knelt in front of the Lincoln. 'I'm going to tell you something little Davey never heard about his grandfather. The guy wasn't born rich, you know, he got there by himself. Did many, many nasty deeds. Even murdered someone once.'

'I don't believe that,' she said, although what she knew of Lincoln Chancel nearly made it possible.

'Old Lincoln was a brute, baby. My sainted daddy, who has been privy to the real history of the Chancels for the last forty years, told me in a moment of imperfect sobriety that Lincoln Chancel once tore a man to pieces - turned him into hamburger with his bare hands. Lincoln was caught short playing too many ends against the middle, threat of scandal, and the only way out was the removal of one man. He arranged a confidential appointment with the guy, canceled it on the morning of the day they were supposed to meet, and showed up unannounced around the time of the meeting he canceled. Nobody knew he was supposed to be there, and the guy was all alone. Got away scot-free '

Dart said, 'Good for another day, anyhow. Let's go to Main Street and pick up a couple of bottles.'45

Police cars swept past them, most of them silently, several flashing and wailing. Dart amused himself by pointing the revolver at drivers and passengers in other cars and pretending to shoot them. Hartford loomed up alongside the expressway, and Nora sped upward to fly through the office towers at seagull height. Dart lolled, half in his seat, half against the door, and sneered his smile at her.

'Why do you have your window down? What happened to air conditioning? Save-the-planet kind of thing?'

'I don't want to pass out from your stink.'

'My stink?' He opened his jacket and sniffed his armpits. 'You're probably having some feminine disorder.'

'You hate women, don't you?'

'No, I hate my father, women I actually adore. They're physically weaker than men, so they had to work out a million ways to manipulate them. Some of these stratagems are fantastically ornate. Guys who don't understand that women are incapable of psychological straightforwardness don't stand a chance. One morning they wake up beside some cash register who has a big fat diamond ring and a gold band on her finger, and she controls the pussy. If he wants any, he has to hand over the credit cards. If he complains, she makes him feel so small and selfish he makes her breakfast for a week. But is he allowed to say no? Uh uh, baby. And think about this. She can hit him, that's fine. Brute like him deserves to be hit. But can a man hit a woman? If he does, she whips his ass in divorce court and takes all his money without even having to give him sex. He's completely under the control of a capricious, amoral being with a tremendous capacity for making trouble. Remember the Garden of Eden? Great place until this woman came along, whispering, Come on, take a bite, the Big Guy isn't paying any attention. Been the same way ever since. If the woman's really good, this poor sucker with a noose around his neck, a perpetual hard-on, and someone else's hand in his pocket is convinced that he's running the show. He's so tangled up he thinks his wife is this sweet little thing who isn't very good at practical matters but sure is great, damn it, a goddamned pearl for putting up with him. Once a year she gives him a blow job, and he's so grateful he races out to buy her a fur coat. Those fur coats in a restaurant, where women don't want to put them in the checkroom? Every single one of those coats? A blow job, and every woman in the place knows it. And here's something else - the older the woman, the better the coat.'

'And you claim to adore women,' said Nora.

'I didn't make this stuff up. Spent the last fifteen years of my life taking my Marthas and Ednas and Agathas to the Chateau and listening to them talk. I hear the things they're telling me and I also hear what they're really saying. And sometimes, Nora, more often than you would imagine, they are the same thing. An eighty-five-year-old woman who has had three face-lifts, two husbands, at least one of them seriously rich, both currently dead, also a couple of glasses of wine with a rakish, good-looking young lawyer, is likely to let down her guard and tell you how she got through a long and pampered life without ever working a single day. Once they see that I already know how it works, they can start having a good time. These ladies are generally pissed off, they used to be fascinating, the whole male world used to stand in line to get into their pussies, and all