For that, by itself, he deserved to have her stand by him. But even without that, the fact was, she loved him. She knew everything that was wrong with him, she knew he was a selfish, infantile, coldhearted monster, because, with absolute openness, he had let her see to the depths of his black heart. But she also knew that she was the one spot of color he was able to see in the world outside himself.

What love he contained, Monroe had given to Alicia. He had made her rich and happy. They were still rich, and she could hope that some day they would once again be happy. And out of the compound, Lord, please.

The intersection. Coming to it from the other direction, slowing for the stop sign, she was startled to see that the Taurus was parked just off the road over there. Good heavens, were they that lost?

Behind the Taurus was another vehicle, a black Lincoln Navigator, like the bigger fish behind the smaller fish, mouth open to eat it. That car she’d never seen before.

There was no other traffic. Slowly she drove across the intersection, frankly staring at the Taurus, and was further surprised to see it was empty. Its driver’s window was open.

The Navigator was occupied, by a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, reading a copy of Harper’s. He didn’t look up when Alicia drove by.

There was something odd about all that. Driving on, frowning at her mirror, Alicia watched the empty Taurus and the chauffeured Navigator recede, then disappear around a bend in the road.

What was that all about?

8

SEATED BESIDE HIS PARTNER Os in the forward seat of the stretch, just behind the driver beyond his soundproof partition, Mark Sterling surveyed the trio from the Taurus, now arrayed across the forward-facing rear seat as though they really should be doing see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil. They were not an inspiring lot. Years of factory jobs interspersed with bowling had left them soft and paunchy, with blurred round faces. Their T-shirts were walking billboards for Miller Lite, Bud, and the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They did not, at first blush, look like anything a truly serious conspirator would want in his cabal.

Well, this had been Mark’s idea to begin with, Os being on the fence vis-à-vis the proposal, leaning toward the negative. So now was the moment of truth, the plunge, the spin of the wheel.

“I should begin,” Mark said, smiling in his clubby fashion at the trio, hoping to put them a bit more at their ease, since at the moment they couldn’t have looked less at their ease had they been seated in a tumbrel surrounded by people speaking French. “We should introduce ourselves,” he said, then gestured gracefully at Meadle, saying, “Well, Buddy, we’ve already introduced you. It is Buddy, isn’t it? You don’t use Alfred much?”

“Not much,” Meadle admitted. Seated in the middle—hear-no-evil—he was blinking a lot.

Time to move the process along. “Well, I’m Mark Sterling, Mark to my friends, of whom I hope to soon count yourselves, and this is Osbourne Faulk, known as Os to friend and foe alike.”

“Mr. Os to foe,” Os said.

“Yes, of course,” Mark agreed, bouncing his negotiator’s smile off Os’s prominent cheekbone. “If you’d like to introduce your friends, Buddy,” he went on, and spread his hands in a welcoming way, “even if only by nickname at this moment, it would certainly help us to move forward.”

“I’m Mac,” said the fellow on the left: see-no-evil, of course.

Buddy turned to look at the profile of his other friend, who now looked like a man in a swarm of gnats, intolerably pestered yet unwilling to open his mouth to complain. Buddy said, “You want me to innerduce you?”

“I don’t know what this is all about,” cried speak-no-evil. “What are we doing here?”

“Introducing ourselves, at the moment,” Mark told him, pleasantly enough. “What we are doing here in a larger sense, however, if I take that to be your question, I believe we have all been brought to this corner of the world by a desire for revenge against one Monroe Hall.”

Mac gave him a skeptical look. “You didn’t work for Hall.”

Oh, so that was it. Buddy was the driver, but Mac the natural leader. Mark remembered it had been Mac, from the rear seat of the Taurus, who’d said, “I think we should do it.” Therefore, addressing Mac more directly now, Mark said, “No, indeed, we didn’t work for Monroe Hall, at least we were spared that. However, we did invest with SomniTech.”

To Mark’s left, Os made that little grr sound he’d often make when about to lose control at tennis. Patting that knee—it quivered a little—Mark went on, “It has been our hope, since pitching our tent outside the Hall compound, to, one way or another, recoup our losses.”

“Us, too,” Buddy said.

Surprised, Mark said, “You invested?”

“Everything,” Buddy told him. “Life insurance. Health insurance. Pension plan.”

Oh, those things. They hardly mattered in the grand scheme of existence, after all, but Mark could just see that Buddy and his friends might treasure them more than they were really worth. Symbolic value, and so on. Sympathy at full bore, he said, “So you see, we are in a similar situation.”

“I’m Ace,” abruptly said speak-no-evil, sitting up straight like a drum major, frowning massively at Mark.

Mark smiled upon him. “Welcome to the group, Ace. Have you something to add?”

“How do we know,” Ace demanded, “you aren’t a cop?”

The limo, rented, like the Navigator, for its flash effect, traversed a climbing curve. The view outside, lovely enough, was sufficiently unchanging so as not to distract from the conversation within. His most open and boyish smile on his face, Mark said, “Ace, all I can tell you is, no one in my entire life has ever mistaken me for a policeman.”

Mac said, “Ace, these aren’t cops. These are—whatchucallit—venture capitalists.” Raising a thick eyebrow at Mark, he said, “That right?”

“Very good, Mac,” Mark said. “Yes, we are investors by trade, though at rather a low level, in comparison with some of the names you’ll read in the newspapers. We’ve had our wins and our losses, a nice win in a particular kind of rear window SUV windshield wiper, an unfortunate loss on a kind of nonflammable Christmas wreath available in every color except green—”

Os grred again, and Mark moved smoothly on: “But rarely have we trusted any company as much as we trusted SomniTech, nor any smooth-talking son of a bitch as we trusted Monroe Hall—yes, Os, we know—and I’m afraid we severely overextended ourselves there, so that our little company at this moment is in ruins at our feet.”

“Too bad,” Buddy said, though without what sounded like much real sympathy.

“Yes, it is bad,” Mark agreed. “Os and I are living on relatives, an unpleasant alternative in any circumstance. To make capital, as everyone knows, you must start with capital, and capital is just what we don’t have at this moment. All sources, familial and institutional, had already been exhausted before the final blow fell. Long after Monroe Hall was taking money out of SomniTech, he was still urging us to put money in. Yes, Os.” Mark patted that quivering knee once more, then told the trio, “It is only here, with our hands on Monroe Hall—yes, Os, on Monroe Hall’s throat—that we can hope to recoup, to raise the capital that will finance a few extremely promising opportunities about which we have been made aware, but I’m sure you’ll understand if I refrain from discussing in this venue.”

Os spoke for the first time, his throat partly closed by the intensity of his feelings, so that his voice had a rather clogged aspect: “It might be enough for you three to just beat the bastard up, but we need him to put the blood back in our veins.”