She said, “I may get a divorce, but it’s going to have to be on my terms. I need ammunition-to keep him from contesting it.”

“Maybe I can let you have something,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

“Make it good,” she said. It made him look at her in the mirror, but she seemed unaware it was the same phrase she’d used before coming to bed with him. The irony amused him. Ginger said, “I don’t intend to be thrown out like an old shoe. When I leave him it’s going to be in style. I want to gouge him good when I go. He can afford it-thanks to you.”

“Suppose I ask you to hold off for a while.”

“Why should I? Have you any idea how intolerable he makes my life?”

“You seem to be surviving,” he said, shoehorning his feet into his shoes. “Hold off until I give you the word, and I’ll give you the ammunition you want.”

“I suppose I never should have expected anything from you that didn’t have a price tag attached.”

“If it didn’t cost you something, it wouldn’t be worth much, would it?”

“The puritan ethic, from you?” She was astonished.

He slipped into his suit jacket. “Let’s get back to Dan Silver-stein. You used to get along with him pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Carol got along with him better than I did. She was always his favorite. At least she was until they had some kind of falling-out.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“She was pretty green-it was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Four or five years, anyway. She wasn’t used to all the tricks of the trade. He wanted her to do something she didn’t want to do, he pressed the point, and she kept refusing, he got nasty, and she belted him one. Carol used to have a pretty good right hand. Do you keep in touch with her?”

“Sure,” Villiers said.

“The same way you keep in touch with me,” Ginger said dryly. “But that’s all right, you’re big, Mace, there’s plenty of you to go around. I never felt possessive about you at all. I couldn’t care less about your other women-I suppose I’m only being realistic.”

“You’ve always been realistic, Ginger.”

“All right, you win. What about Dan Silverstein?”

“He’s on a few corporate boards of directors,” Villiers said. “I need his vote on a few things.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“I want you to bump into him, by accident. He’s in New York, staying at the Plaza. Generally he has his dinner in the hotel dining room around seven-thirty. Let him run into you there.”

“And?”

“Charm him. Reminisce about old times. Throw in a little nostalgia and a lot of sex appeal. He hasn’t got his wife with him-he’ll take you upstairs.”

“I suppose you’ve got his room bugged with cameras and microphones? What the hell have you got in mind, a badger game?”

“You’ve played it before,” he told her. “Don’t be indignant, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I don’t think I like it. What if I refuse?”

“What if you refuse? Nothing. I’m not twisting your arm.”

“But if I don’t do it, you won’t help me with George, is that it?”

“Ginger, when you want something, you’ve got to be willing to trade something for it. I’m not a charity.”

She said, “I don’t like it. If you get him on film, it means you get me on the same film. Suppose you turn around and show the film to George?”

“You’re not thinking,” he said. “I’ve already got plenty of film on you. Don’t you remember? If I’d wanted to show it to George I could have done it anytime in the past five years. Look, if you’re worried, pull the sheets up over your face. Just make sure Silverstein’s in plain sight. You know how it’s done.”

“Some things you just don’t forget-even if you try.”

He said mildly, “Go on, get dressed.”

While she was in the bathroom he crossed the suite to the telephone in the living room and called George Hackman. A girl’s voice told him in an English accent to hold on; in a moment the broker’s hearty voice struck his ear. Villiers said, “Never mind the small talk. I want you to call Steve Wyatt. Tell him to get to a pay-phone booth at exactly two-thirty this afternoon and call me at this number.” He quoted a phone number from memory, not the hotel’s number.

Hackman said, “Okay, I’ll give him the message.”

“If the line’s busy, tell him to keep trying until he gets through.”

“Sure enough. Listen, Mace, while I’ve got you on the phone, Sidney’s been having one hell of a time trying to get anything moving on this Rademacher business, you know, the old guy who-”

“Not on the telephone, George. You can tell Sidney I’ve got someone working on that problem from my end, but tell him to keep plugging anyway. Anything else?”

“Well, ah, yeah, one little item here, I guess we can talk about it on the phone. I just had this mock-up of the prospectus delivered over here, for the Nuart stock issue.”

“How does it look?”

“Like all the rest of these things, mainly just a poor-mouthing hedge against some damn fool investor later claiming he’s been misled. It more or less says we don’t promise to make any money for the stockholders, in fact, we may well lose their damn money for them, but we’d like them to invest in us anyway.”

“I know. Nobody ever pays any attention to those ritualistic disclaimers anyway. The important thing is, it’s got to look like a good professional job, respectable and well done up.”

“It’s impressive. Want me to send it over with a messenger?”

“Never mind. I won’t be here. I’ll stop in Monday morning and have a look.”

“Anything else you want me to do over the weekend?”

“Tap somebody to take over Heggins Aircraft for us.”

“I’m working on three or four possibles. Expect I’ll have someone by Monday.”

“All right,” Villiers said. “I’ll be in touch.” He hung up and glanced at the bedroom door, where Ginger stood smoking, dressed in a figure-hugging pants suit.

She said, “Was that George?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you feel the least bit odd, talking to my husband with me right here?”

“Why should I?”

“Anybody would.”

“I’m not just anybody.”

“You can say that again,” she said. “You know what really bothers me about you, Mace? The rest of us are just human beings, but you’re so Goddamned sure of yourself-you keep acting as if you know more about me than I do, and that’s crazy.”

He said, “Seven-thirty, Plaza Hotel.”

“I remember.”

“You can cover it with George?”

“He doesn’t care what I do anymore. He probably won’t get home himself before five in the morning.”

“All right. If he asks, have a story ready.”

“I always do. It’s always the same story, because I’ve never had to use it yet. He never asks.”

“Count your blessings, then,” he said. “There’s one bit of dialogue I want you to memorize to use on Dan Silverstein tonight. Slip it in whenever you think you’ve found the right point in the conversation. Tell him your husband’s latest big deal is the Heggins Aircraft take-over-tell him your husband negotiated the deal between Colonel Butler and me. Tell him I’m the one who’s buying it, and let him get the idea I’m buying it for the purpose of gutting the company, selling off the assets, and closing it down.”

“That’s all true, isn’t it? You’re not just making that up.”

“Most of it’s true, except the last part, which is the only part Silverstein won’t be able to check.”

“What’s the point of it, Mace?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“It would help if I had a hint. Sometimes you can’t just drop a chunk like that into a conversation like dropping a stone into a pool. If I knew what it was all about, then maybe-”

She didn’t finish it; she made a gesture instead, and Villiers said, “Put it this way. Silverstein has already sold a block of Heggins stock short. If he thinks I’m going to ruin the company, he’ll sell more short. I want him to sell it short, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t give me much of a handle.”