She whispered, “Terry, Terry…”
He tore her mouth away, pressing her head forward and down against his shoulder.
“So you don’t forget, baby. So you just remember how it might have been if things were different.”
Her head turned, her lips moving against his neck. “You always call me baby. Call me darling, Terry. Just once, call me darling.”
His voice was distorted with harshness, wrenched from his throat in the anger that comes with frustration. “Darling’s a word. It’s as cheap as ten thousand others. Darling Liza. Darling, darling, darling. Is that enough to pay you for the way we’ll die if Guy Sebastian gets any idea of this?”
She slipped away from him.
“You make him sound pretty grim, Terry. Guy. I mean.”
He laughed again without humor and took shoulders in his two hands.
“You trying to kid yourself, baby? If you are, you’d better quit. Guy Sebastian’s strictly a no-limit operator. How do you think he got all this fancy stuff you and I have been living with? Why do you think things happen when he says a word? Because he plays a horse now and then? Because he puts something on the books when the odds are right? You know better than that. These things are just to pass the time.
“He knows a lot of people in a lot of places. It might surprise you, the places those people are. It might surprise you even more to know where the big profits come from. You and I, we’re nothing. If we don’t watch out, we’ll be two stiffs in an alley, and no questions asked.”
“What does that make us, Terry?” she asked. “If Guy’s a louse, what does that make us? Funny that I never wondered before.”
“It makes us two parasites on a louse,” he said quietly, releasing her shoulders. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon this place will be swarming with people looking for drinks. You’d better get yourself sharp. Guy likes you to be a credit to him, you know.”
“I know.” She went back to the piano and picked up the purse she’d deposited when she came in. “When are you going to be on the level with me? When are you going to tell me why you’re really here?” The sudden desire to tell her the truth was an almost irresistible temptation. And he wanted to tell her to start running. But he only said, “I told you. I’m an educated flunkey. Self-made big shots always like to have one around. It keeps their egos fat.” Signifying defeat by the slight sag of her mouth, she rounded the piano and went out a door beyond it into the hall.
He stood without moving, hearing the receding tap of her high heels on asphalt tile, and when the sound was gone, he went down to the west windows and stood looking out across a wide terrace to the ragged skyline.
He was still there five minutes later when one of Guy Sebastian’s stony-faced servants materialized soundlessly at his elbow. Without moving, Terry angled a look over the corner of his shoulder into eyes as flat and depthless as metal disks.
“The boss wants you. In his office.”
“Okay.” Terry returned his gaze to the skyline, now darkening and grim.
The stony-faced servant said, “Now.”
Terry shrugged and went down the long room. In the hall, he took the stairs that ascended in a broad sweep to the second floor. Continuing on the level, he knocked on a door at the rear of the hall and the voice of Guy Sebastian invited him to come in. It was a peculiar voice, distorted and coarse and strangely modulated, as if its softness was intended to minimize its ugliness.
Terry responded to the invitation.
The man who stood in the center of the room to receive him was no more than average height, but he managed to give the impression of added inches. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit that was tailored to fit his body, not to disguise it. His hair was faded brown, wiry in texture, cropped close to a round skull. The face was aggressive, thrusting itself boldly in the lines of nose and jaw.
The distorted voice said, “Hello, Terry. Find a chair.”
Terry sank into foam rubber and waited. Sebastian, balanced catlike on the balls of feet slightly spread, lifted in a slight gesture the glass he held.
“Drink, boy?”
“No, thanks. I’ll have too many before the night’s over.”
“Sure. You’re smart not to let them get ahead of you.” Sebastian turned and crossed to an immense bleached oak desk. Leaning against it, tilting his glass against his mouth, he looked at Terry over an arc of rim. The eyes were casual. “How long have you been around, Terry?”
“In the organization, eight months,” he said. “Here in your apartment, about six.”
“Not mine. Ours. I told you when I moved you in that you were to use it like it was your own. You remember that?”
“Sure, Guy, I remember it. You know I appreciate it.”
The thin shadow of a smile flickered beneath the bold nose. “You know why I had you move in? Because I liked you. You’re a smooth, easy-to-like guy. It gives me kicks to have you around. I’ve got big plans for you a little later. In the meantime, though, maybe you misunderstood me a little. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I meant just the use of the apartment. I didn’t mean everything in it. You straight now, boy?”
He was straight, all right. He was straight enough to understand that he and Liza had been spotted in the clinch.
He closed his eyes and said, “She’s a beautiful gal, Guy. Beautiful enough to entitle anybody to one mistake.”
He sat there with his eyes closed, wondering if it had been the right response. And after a while he heard a soft sigh from Guy Sebastian, and he knew that it had been right.
“I’ve been a good friend, haven’t I, Terry? It’d be a shame to
