“Go on,” Fox said. “Air the old dirty laundry. The world insists on knowing.”

Ross cleared his throat again. He looked pained. “We have good reason to believe that Marshall is the person responsible for Cynthia’s pregnancy.”

The room fell silent. Megan’s eyes were on her boss, who gave no outward indication of having even heard what Alan Ross had just said. Ross sent a sympathetic look Fox’s way. Almost a paternal look, like that of a disappointed but still supportive father.

Gallo spoke. “Is this true, Mr. Fox?”

The entertainer threw a look at Megan that was almost mischievous. He leaned back on the couch and tilted his head, looking up at the ceiling. He remained silent for several seconds, then exhaled loudly.

“Busted.”

THE AFFAIR HAD BEGUN some two and a half months before Cynthia Blair’s abrupt resignation as producer of Midnight with Marshall Fox. Not a soul on the staff had the vaguest clue. The outward behavior of the show’s star and its producer had not deviated one iota from its standard combative mode. If anything, on reflection, it might have seemed that the daily antagonistics between the two hardheaded personalities was spiking more than usual.

It had started, appropriately enough, with a fight. Fox, at his acerbic best, had tied his producer into ever more infuriating knots until, finally, she had exploded with clenched fists raining down on his head. This had been followed by a burst of angry tears. The simple ugly truth was that Cynthia Blair adored Marshall Fox-her dirty little secret. Herculean efforts notwithstanding, Cynthia had failed to convince herself that she was ever likely to meet another man with the same infuriatingly wonderful qualities as her colleague and erstwhile combatant. At the same time, he offended her in more ways than she could count. Talented, charming, smart, sexy and about as self-centered, arrogant and old-fashioned sexist as anyone she had ever laid eyes on. What Cynthia had hated the most was that from the moment she met him, he had been, for all his evident faults, consistently the single most vibrant person she had ever encountered. Marshall Fox made all the other men she dated bland and pale by comparison, even some of the otherwise considerably dynamic ones. It wasn’t fair. For Cynthia, the son of a bitch had become the gold standard. Damn it all to hell, no one else need apply.

And, of course, he was still married.

Not to mention a royal shit.

Their argument had taken place at Fox’s borrowed apartment early on Friday evening. Fox had invited Cynthia to continue the spirited postmortem of the week’s shows that had kicked up in his office after the taping of the Friday program. Somewhere along the line, the argument had gone terribly awry, and the two had ended up in a sweaty clutch on the tan leather couch. She had remained the entire weekend. If anyone at work on Monday morning noticed that Cynthia was wearing the same outfit she had been wearing on Friday, they didn’t say anything. For her part, Cynthia had felt as if she were going through her workday stark naked, with a big SCREWED BY MARSHALL FOX stenciled diagonally across her front and her back. By the end of the workday, she had determined that the orgiastic weekend with her boss had been an exquisite fluke and that both she and Fox were already back on their standard argumentative footings. But later that evening, Cynthia’s cries echoed in her own ears as her fingers clutched at her boss’s back. This time she managed to get herself home, where she crawled into her bed, curled into a fetal position around her feather pillow and laughed herself to sleep. An open, free, lung-cleansing laughter she could not recall experiencing since she was a child.

For two and a half months, Marshall Fox had driven her into a delirious oblivion. Ten times a day, Cynthia declared silently that she was disgusted with herself and that she could see right through Fox and his king-of-the-mountain game. I’m smarter than this, she told herself. I know better.

And then it ended. She had known it would. In the months since leaving his wife, Marshall Fox had already run through nearly a dozen minor relationships that Cynthia knew of, the most recent being that striking Quaker girl he’d picked up at the Rosses’ annual Long Island orgy. Naturally, it would end. That was the Fox way. Even so, Cynthia had pretended that with her, it would somehow be different. But really, the only difference between her and the others was that she worked with the goddamn man. That was how stupid she had been.

And then the other difference. Or maybe she was being extraordinarily naïve and it wasn’t a difference at all. Maybe Fox had been forced to finesse this development before. She was pregnant. Careful here, careful there, it had still happened. On learning the news, Cynthia had realized instantly that she had no intention of aborting the child. Absolutely not. Being a mother had always been somewhere in her plans (or, if not plans, then intentions), and Cynthia was under no illusions. She was seeing more and more women throwing in the towel early, as far as hoping to land one of the world’s rapidly vanishing species-the worthwhile single man-and when she discovered that she was pregnant, she knew this was her moment. She sobered up concerning Fox himself. There could be no illusions that he would respond to the news with any intent to be a real part of the child’s life. And she was ready for all that. She could see her future. Finally. And she accepted it.

What she had not expected was Marshall Fox’s adamant insistence that she “lose the kid.”

“My fucking seed? My kid? Oh, I don’t think so, Miss Cindy. That’s not the plan, girl. Word will get out, I know it will. You’ll tell. One of your friends will tell. Or the little bastard will look like me. Uh-uh. No, ma’am. I’ve got some plans of my own, you know. I’m waking up and smelling the coffee, honey, and it still smells like the lovely Rosemary. We’re in negotiations as we speak, so don’t even think you can go pulling a stunt like this. It goes. If I have to rip the damn thing out myself. This isn’t going to happen. Have you got that? Not in the script, Cindy. Not in the script.”

Back in her office, Cindy broke the glass on her display case in her fury to get at the Emmy Award she had received for her work on the show. She pounded the base of the award against the wall separating her office from Fox’s. My God, she thought as she pummeled at the drywall, I’ve gone insane. Well, fuck him! She had succeeded only in creating a large hole in the wall. She wondered what in the hell she was thinking. Was she going to climb right through the wall back into Fox’s office and sink her heavy statuette into his skull? The hole in the wall, about the size of a bowling ball, broke through to an open space. Cynthia shoved the award into the open space, and it disappeared. Five minutes later she was in the elevator, wishing Marshall Fox were in it with her, wishing that the cable would snap and send the two of them (rubbing her stomach, the three of them) plunging to their stupid, stupid, stupid, deserved deaths.

MEGAN ASKED if she could be directed to the bathroom.

Fox flicked his head. “Down the hall, on the right.”

As Megan left the room, Gallo addressed Marshall Fox. “I’m sure you know my first question.”

“Why didn’t I tell you before? Why do you think? It was something private between Cindy and me. It has no significance to what happened to her.”

Gallo was already shaking his head. “Not good enough.”

“It’s going to have to be.”

Ross began, “Someone like Marshall-”

Gallo cut him off. “Please. I really do need to hear this from Mr. Fox.”

“It’s okay, Alan.” Fox turned to Gallo. “Look. It’s pretty simple. Doing what I do, the first thing that goes is a private life, okay? The entire population of the state I come from could probably fill up the buildings between here and the Hudson River. I could go entire days without seeing a single soul. So, yeah, I tossed that out the window. My choice, I’m not whining. Or fine, maybe I am. But ever since the separation from my wife, I’ve really lost anything like a personal life. You’ve just got no idea. I’m trying to patch things back up with my wife, Mr. Gallo. I miss her. Hell. I need her, is what it is. And it’s touch and go, believe me. I screwed up pretty big over this last year. Now, you’re a smart man. Maybe you can figure out which way she’s going to lean if she finds out that I slept with my producer and got the damn girl pregnant. Do you want to do the math for me on that one?”