But she’d found a worm in the apple. It had appeared a few weeks ago, barely noticeable at first. It seemed to whisper to her; its words squirming slick and poisonous through her thoughts, slowly growing louder, and
louder.
By now, she was convinced that Bill was seeing another woman. Perhaps more than one. It was
obvious
. She’d smelled no alien perfume, detected no trace of lipstick on his linen collars, but he no longer seemed as passionate as he used to; didn’t look at her like before. He closed his eyes when they made love, imagining someone else in her place.
He’d been her attorney when they first met; a probate case in the wake of her father’s death. Bill handled the complications remarkably well. They fell in love. He was already middle-aged at the time, and widowed. With his graying hair, trim physique and conservative but commanding demeanor, she saw her father. It was natural.
Janice had once come close to marriage, way back when she was still in her early 20s. She’d fallen head over heels in love with a man she’d have done anything for.
Anything
.
At least Janice felt that way. The man—she would not even think of his name now, let alone say it—apparently felt otherwise. It all ended with a surprise visit to his apartment. He wasn’t alone. Sharing his company, and considerably more than that, was her best friend—another name Janice refused to say.
She’d thrown an ashtray at the entwined lovers, then left them to their rutting.
Since that immemorial night, Janice had had gone unmarried and unattached, well into her 30s, and had grown distrustful and timid, convinced that she would remain a spinster—a word she hated but had to admit applied to her—until Bill purged those foolish and resentful illusions.
For years, she’d not even considered that other women might find Bill attractive, as she did. But the worm insisted. Sometimes it almost seemed to
shout
. She thought about those other women all the time now, about the attention she knew he was giving them, attention that was rightfully hers. And she imagined what she might do to each and every one of them.
The worm had even begun to suggest what she might do. She’d begun to pay attention to the call log on Bill’s cellular phone. She would go through it, calling each number on the list. Sure enough, there were calls to the doctor, his office; to restaurants where he made reservations for them, to ordinary and legitimate recipients.
But she wasn’t fooled by that.
She began to follow him, to his so-called appointments. Sure enough, she tailed his Jaguar to his office downtown, to the doctor’s clinic on the west side, to the grocery store and to the golf course. So far, he had not stopped at a swank hotel for a clandestine tryst.
But she wasn’t fooled by that either.
This man was oh so
clever
, she reminded herself. How shrewd, how meticulous, how deceptive he could truly be.
She was working herself up to a blind rage. She no longer cared about the drink or the Degas or the big window or her goddamned life. She was so worked up that she never noticed that her wall clock still showed 4:31 p.m.
§
The BMW M-3 pulled into the underground garage at the Exeter. Sleek, black and new, it was the perfect vessel for its owner, Derek Taylor, who matched its sleekness in almost every respect.
It was late, nearly 3 a.m. Taylor wasn’t alone. He opened the door for his date, a tall blonde who could easily have passed for a model. As she rose from the seat, he took her in his arms and caressed her hair. She responded by grabbing his face in her hands and planting a wet kiss on his lips.
Taylor broke away long enough to open the trunk and retrieve a large vinyl cover, custom-made to drape the curves of the M-3. Gently, and with great care, he tucked his automobile in for the night.
He looked up at the girl who stood patiently near the door. She looked hot—skintight pants, heels, a top that revealed her taut stomach and a sun tattoo on the small of her back.
Delicious
.
She gave a delighted cry when she took in Taylor’s flat. It was techno-industrial, lots of stainless steel, thick white carpet, furniture that looked like it came from the set of Star Trek. It screamed money, which was the part the date most appreciated.
He put on some Sinatra and poured Taittinger into two small fluted glasses. He played the courtship and foreplay expertly and efficiently, wasting little time and even less emotional investment. The seduction was rapid, the foreplay even quicker. She was willing and ready.
Like everything Taylor did, sex was precise, energetic and fast. In the massive beveled glass mirror that covered his bedroom wall, he watched himself as he pleased her, in several ways. In turn, she did her best to please him. Yet for Taylor, the sex, for all its physical intensity, was tiring and businesslike, the date falling asleep in his arms almost as soon as it was over.
Taylor gently pulled himself away from her and rose from the bed. He covered himself with a satin robe and walked into the living room. He lit a cigarette and exhaled it busily. Although he had never been fond of flowery perfume or the uniquely female scent of apres’-sex, he took his hands, anointed with his lover’s essence, and rubbed them thoroughly over his chest and torso, making himself breathe the aroma deeply. It made him feel like a man.
He walked to the window and stared at the lights of the sleeping city far beyond. He watched the blue smoke of the cigarette tumble in the air of his flat, and frowned.
A stranger might have wondered why this man had anything to frown about. He was the proverbial playboy, a trust fund baby whose father was the scion of an immense manufacturing empire. Since birth, he’d been given everything he’d ever wanted and, not surprisingly, had come to expect that as a right. He had dutifully gone through the motions necessary to earn a BA at an Ivy League school but had done little of note since. He had no career, nor did he need or want one.
Taylor seemed content playing the role of privileged prince. When he reached 25, his father set him up to live independently—essentially paying him to stay away. That was fine with Taylor. He’d resided for the past five years in a series of opulent townhomes, of which the Exeter was the most recent. With each new home, he spent ever greater amounts of money. He spared no expense in decor or the best and latest in electronic gadgetry—built-in computers, plasma televisions, alarms and sound systems.
He was the kind of man whose likeness could be found in magazines like GQ, Esquire and Maxim. His hair was dark, made even darker by his habit of having it dyed black each month at the city’s trendiest salon. His suits were all custom-tailored, his shoes Italian, his shirts handmade silk. It was not unusual for Taylor to visit Zegna on regular buying sprees.
Women flocked to him, not only for his obvious wealth, but his striking good looks and taste. He was very seldom alone. He was a member of various cliques in the city, composed of the hippest crowds. This provided him with a never-ending supply of female company.
Taylor’s women, as a rule, were not very deep, and not very sincere—they were, in fact, mostly hungry opportunists—but they all were beautiful, sexy and looked very aesthetically pleasing draped on his arm.
Invariably, none of them lasted long. Not that it particularly concerned him; the presence of a female—the most beautiful, most hip, most sexy—was an essential component of his meticulously calculated image. Everything else—clothes, flat, wheels—was tertiary.
Nothing brought Taylor greater pleasure than to see a photograph of himself; his arm encircling the slender waist of one of his many Venuses, or his hand grasping hers, ideally on the daily’s society page.
He caught the ash of his cigarette at the last minute. His thoughts had strayed from the moment, out into the sparkling city. He wondered what was going on behind all those lights, what he was missing.
Taylor’s loins were empty, the animal edge of his lust momentarily sated, yet he was still hungry. He wanted to
hunt
.
The predatory desire was almost overwhelming, but he found himself unable to picture, or even imagine, his prey.
He was lying to himself and somewhere deep inside, he knew it. The realization made his shoulders twitch involuntarily. He began to chew on his thumbnail.
Taylor sensed what lurked out there, what waited for him. Like a moth circling a deadly, forbidden flame, he’d flirted with it here and there over the years; knew that he would likely do so again. There was both dread and excitement in that prospect.
It would happen sooner or later. When it did, the Derek Taylor that his friends and lovers knew; the Derek Taylor that he had always thought and hoped he was, would die forever.
Nothing in the world could terrify him more.
§
Stu Brown swallowed his Metamucil—he detested it, but it was the only thing that worked—and divided his attention between the morning business outlook on the Internet and Bloomberg’s stock index report on cable. Both led him to the same bleak conclusion:
“Fuck!” Cigar smoke streamed through his clenched teeth, hanging in the air of the flat. “Goddamn candy ass investors. Nobody has balls anymore.”
He shook his head in disgust, extinguished the TV with his remote and walked away, wondering how much he would lose today. The thought brought a sour taste to his mouth.
That the loss would likely be made up in a day or two, and the fact that his corpus was significant enough to withstand an entire year of such reports, made little difference to Brown. Any loss was untenable: if there was such a thing as a Golden Rule of business, that was it.
This morning, Brown was alone, as always. His flat was so arranged that it appeared a grand party was mere moments from the offing. The table was set for six, with silver, crystal and Delft. A decanter of Scotch—which he also detested—stood ready on the sideboard. Magazines he would never read were strewn tastefully across the coffee table. As for the classical art and sculpture, the Renaissance furniture and the ornately woven rugs . . . his concern for them was roughly equivalent.
Although Brown happily conceded his miserly qualities, he was no materialist. The things that money could buy were mere trappings to him. The same was true of his clothes; all purchased from the finest stores, sewn by the finest tailors and informed by the latest conservative trends.
Brown wore them with élan. They draped his stocky body, but in truth, he would have felt just as comfortable in sackcloth. The only reason he dressed as he did was the fact that he could, and that it was good for business.
And business was his reason for living.
His stock in trade was alcohol. That, and a wide variety of attractions, bells and whistles he expertly manipulated in order to attract consumers to it. He’d started humbly, with one bar—an old neighborhood gin mill, purchased for a song. It was 1964, and the world was ready for go-go, but only Stu Brown knew it. By 1965, the place had become the hottest spot in town, turning customers away. It was a place of excitement, where groovy boys could meet even groovier girls, where music pulsed and—most important—spirits flowed like nectar.
That first bar revealed to Brown his own greatest talent—seeing beyond the curve when it came to entertainment; knowing what the masses would want even before they knew it themselves. That, and an uncanny knack for promotion, would serve him very well.
In the 1970s, he had a chain of 10 discos, stretching across the region like a rhinestone necklace. Each one had a distinct concept and theme, but the results were the same.
By the 1980s, Brown started to slow down: He no longer cared for the whims of adolescent culture, where beer was the drink of choice and the funds for it quite limited. He began a gradual transition toward the higher end of the spectrum. His uncanny eye for the curve led him to sushi when that culinary fad was virtually unknown on this continent. He went from there to traditional French, to northern Italian, to exotic seafood, to USDA prime steak.
In the course of this mercenary journey, he discovered a fundamental truth: it was just as easy to sell fine champagnes and wines to high-end clientele as beer to post-adolescents.
By now, with most of his properties sold off and just a couple of flagship restaurants that he kept for show and various tax purposes, Brown was basically retired. His primary task was the daily monitoring of his vast fortune, most of it in stocks, some in bonds and commodities, and some in real estate.
It was the latter category that brought him to this place. In Alexander Cantrell, Brown had sensed a little bit of himself. True, Cantrell was an architect, perhaps even an artist—and he detested that too—but Brown could forgive him for that. He believed in his vision, and Brown suspected that Cantrell had some of the same skill for seeing beyond the curve. Perhaps most important, he had the balls to pull it off.
That’s why Brown was a significant investor in the Exeter. He liked the symmetry of living in a place he partially owned, with the inevitable headaches belonging to somebody else. Needless to say, he had no doubt that the development would bring him profit.
Profit, in the end, was Stu Brown’s family, his creed, his purpose in life.
Poverty was a lingering demon; a nightmare stalker always snapping at his heels. One stumble, the slightest slip, and it would be on him, devouring him whole.
His childhood had been one of empty bellies and bone-chilling nights in a Brooklyn tenement; of insects that lived in the kitchen and rats that shared his bedclothes.
His father had skipped town by the time he was two. It was only him and his mother, who was often away from home working two jobs, sometimes even three, just to put food on the table.
By the time Brown was 14, he was already working; emptying barrels of grease for neighborhood restaurants. He paid for some of the food and utilities by 16. At 18, he was paying all the bills. Tough, physically demanding, low-paying jobs, but he learned so much from them.