“And do you know where she is?” she asked.

“We’re close to ascertaining her location, ma’am.”

Candy nodded again, then went back to perusing her data.

Somehow, she thought, I have failed, failed to keep the passion alive. And Jackson found his way to Polly Paget.

“Get me Polly Paget,” Ron Scarpelli said.

Scarpelli thought this kind of simple, impossible command gave him an authoritative voice. He’d learned that at a seminar on personal power: Speak in an authoritative voice.

Walter Withers hadn’t attended the seminar but recognized the brisk 80’s tone. Here I am, he thought, sitting on a pornographer’s black leather sofa with my knees up to my chin, sipping on his chichi designer water, trying not to stare at the legs of the six-foot-tall woman in a black dress who’s his “personal assistant,” and he’s attempting to employ personal power techniques. It’s superfluous, Mr. Scarpelli. It’s your penthouse office, your view of Central Park, your magazine, and your nickel. You don’t need to speak in an authoritative voice.

Withers didn’t say that, though. He was fifty-six years old, five-okay, twenty pounds overweight, and owed Sammy Black ten thousand big ones plus the vig, which was growing every day. But for the first time in a long time the ball had stopped at Walter’s number and he wasn’t about to walk away from the table.

So he said, “Everyone in the country wants Polly Paget, Mr. Scarpelli.”

“But I’m not everybody,” Ron Scarpelli assured him. He looked to the personal assistant for confirmation. She formed her dark red lips into a dazzling smile.

And why not? Withers thought. He wondered how much she pulled down a year as a personal assistant.

“I don’t touch her,” Ron Scarpelli said, misreading Withers’s thoughts. “She’s married. Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Yes, she is.”

She looked like money. From the gloss of her black hair pulled tightly back to the perfect pale skin, the health-club figure, the clothes.