“So what are you doing here at the Starlight?” he asked.
“What areyou doing here at the Starlight?”
“Hoping to meet a gorgeous blonde from downtown on Hastings and Palm,” he said. “Near the Triangle.”
“So you met her,” Sheryl said, and covered his hand on her thigh with her own. Her hand was no longer cold.
“Seems I have,” Wiggy said.
Sheryl looked at her watch. “My girlfriend’s picking me up in five minutes,” she said. “We’ve got a car and a driver. You want to come downtown with us, honey?”
“Let’s have our drinks first,” Wiggy said.
THE LIMO WAS a black Lincoln Town Car driven by a black chauffeur. There was another blonde on the back seat, wearing a black dress like Sheryl’s, high-heeled black shoes like her, a black cloth coat identical to hers, little black fur collar at the neck. The car felt warm and smelled of expensive perfume. “Hi,” the other blonde said, extending her hand. “I’m Toni.” Wiggy slid onto the seat beside her, took her hand. “Hi, honey,” she said, and leaned across him to kiss Sheryl on the cheek. He felt her breasts against his arm. Her dress was high on her thighs. The door on Sheryl’s side slammed shut. She moved closer to him. The brother came into the car, made himself comfortable behind the wheel.
“We’re going home,” Toni told him, and the tinted glass separating front from back slid up at once.
“Excuse me, ladies,” Wiggy said, “but how much is this going to cost me?”
“One million, nine hundred thousand dollars,” Toni said.
He turned to look at her.
She was holding an AK-47 in her lap.
6 .
THE OFFICES OF Wadsworth and Dodds were in a side street off Headley Square, close to the Municipal Theater and the Briley School of Art. As Ollie crossed the small park outside the school, and then the square itself, a fierce wind almost blew his hat from his head. He clutched at it with both hands, cursed at the wind, and at God—who was also on his list of people, places, things, and supernatural beings he hated—and then proceeded across the square to the building in which the publishing firm was housed. The wind moaned beneath the eaves of the old landmark building as he mounted the low flat entrance steps and walked into the lobby, stomping slush from his shoes. He checked the lobby directory—Wadsworth and Dodds was on the fourth floor of the six-story building—and walked toward the waiting elevator, its fancy grillwork door looking like it had come out of a spy movie set in Vienna.
“Whoosh!” he said to the elevator operator, and took off his hat when he noticed there was a lady in the car. The gesture did not go unnoticed. The woman, a good-looking broad in her late fifties, Ollie guessed, with still splendid legs andpoitrines, ah yes, smiled almost imperceptibly. He figured she worked out a lot. One of these days, he’d have to go to a gym, lose a few pounds, though not anytime soon. Maybe after he learned his five songs. His next lesson was tomorrow night, he could hardly wait.
Wadsworth and Dodds occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. Ollie took one look at the receptionist behind the desk and figured she could have profited from the same aerobics classes the broad in the elevator most likely attended. Ollie hated fat people. He considered them unsightly and weak-willed whereas he thought of his own girth as perfectly suited to his height and his large bone structure. When Fat Ollie Weeks looked into a mirror he saw an impressive figure of a man, whose very presence struck fear into the hearts of underworld types.
“May I help you, sir?” the fat lady behind the desk asked.
Ollie flashed the tin.
“Detective Weeks,” he said, cutting to the chase. “I’d like to talk to whoever runs the place here.”
“You’d want Mr. Halloway, our publisher.”
“Okay,” Ollie said, and snapped the leather case shut. “Could you let him know I’m here, please?”
The fat lady picked up her phone, pressed a button on her desk panel, listened, said, “A Detective Weeks to see you, sir,” listened again, said, “Yes, sir,” looked up at Ollie, and asked, “May I ask what this is in reference to, sir?”
“No,” Ollie said.
The fat lady looked startled. “Uh,” she said into the phone, “he won’t tell me. Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, sir.” She hung up, smiled at Ollie, and said, “He’ll be with you in a moment, sir. Won’t you please have a seat?”
“Thanks,” Ollie said, and began roaming the waiting room.
Framed posters of Wadsworth and Dodds books lined the walls. The firm’s logo was a distinctive open hand with a silver globe sitting on the palm and radiating rays of light, the fingers tentatively closed around it. Ollie didn’t recognize any of the titles.
Behind him, he heard a buzz from the phone on the fat lady’s desk.
“Mr. Weeks?” she said. “He’ll see you now. It’s the end of the corridor, the door on the right.”
Ollie nodded.
The corridor leading to Halloway’s office was similarly lined with framed posters of books Ollie never heard of. The closed walnut door on the right, at the end of corridor, had no markings on it. He knocked, heard a man’s voice call, “Come in, please,” twisted the brass doorknob, and entered. He was in a corner office with floor-to- ceiling bookcases on two walls. The other two walls were windowed, enclosing a walnut desk that matched the entrance door. A white-haired man in his early fifties, Ollie guessed, sat behind the desk. He rose the moment Ollie entered the room. Extending his hand, he said, “Richard Halloway, how do you do?”
Ollie took the hand.
