The Night Watcher. John Lutz

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      “No need for that, Web. I already have my weekend appointments set up, including this evening and tomorrow morning.”

      “I thought you rearranged your schedule.”

      “I was going to,” she snapped.

      “C’mon. You’re a group, Myra—all your advertising says so. You have salespeople to do that sort of work.”

      “I have salespeople because I’ve got a successful agency. And I have a successful agency because I still do myself what I ask my people to do.”

      “Your people. Jesus, Myra! The world won’t stop spinning if you take a weekend off and enjoy yourself. Your people should be able to get along for a short while without you, maybe even sell a few condos and co-ops.”

      She knew he wouldn’t understand. He’d been born to money, gone to excellent schools, then gone to work in the family business—yacht parts or something—and that was the extent of his experience and the limits of his horizons. He hadn’t come from where she came from. Hadn’t even visited. They were good together in bed, but not in the rest of the world. “If you don’t understand,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

      “Now you’re pissed at me.”

      “No, I’m just frustrating you and you’re misinterpreting it as my being pissed. That’s because you’re used to getting what you want.”

      “My, my…coldhearted bitch.” He said it as a joke, but it had steel in it.

      What did he expect? Of course she was angry. Fighting mad, in fact. He had left her no escape route from her embarrassment at being stood up, no way to save face, to maintain her facade. So she became combative. Even a sparrow would fight to the death when cornered. He didn’t think of her as a sparrow. She lowered her voice. “I thought you liked it that way, Web.”

      “Myra, play above the belt. This kind of confrontation makes no sense. Why don’t you think things over, then call me back in about an hour and give me a definite answer?”

      “I’ve got a better idea, Web. Why don’t you call me back—when you have a piece of property to sell?”

      She hung up crisply but without banging the receiver.

      She knew he’d call back. If not today, tomorrow. Or maybe he’d find somebody else for his hotel tryst tonight, start another surface relationship. Myra didn’t care.

      Couldn’t care.

      Standing up behind her desk, she smoothed the wrinkles in the slacks of her business suit, then walked from her office to the sales cubicles where her agents were seated at their desks when they weren’t showing property. The large, blue-carpeted area was brightly lighted by overhead fluorescent fixtures. A door in the far wall led to a reception area with genuine Chippendale chairs and a Sheraton pie crust table. Tasteful oil reproductions were mounted on the cream-colored walls. The reception room was lighted softly with glass-shaded lamps and a Tiffany ceiling fixture. Adjoining that expensively decorated room was a conference room similarly furnished in an eclectic mixture of modern reproductions and valuable antiques.

      In the more Spartan sales floor area, half a dozen of the steel wood-tone desks were occupied this afternoon. A few of Myra’s people glanced up and nodded respectfully to her as she strode past. At the end cubicle she stopped and addressed the woman seated inside studying listings on a computer screen. Darlene, whose duty it was to keep the Myra Raven Group Web site up to date. More and more listings were attracting buyers over the Internet.

      “Is the new Central Park South listing on-site yet?” she asked Darlene.

      The neatly dressed elderly woman at the computer waved her into the cubicle. “I was just polishing it, editing the virtual tour.”

      Myra stepped a few feet into the cubicle and watched as Darlene worked the mouse, and a video camera swept through the spacious luxury apartment. “Did we get the summer park view, as I asked?” Myra knew how desirable a park view was in the concrete world of Manhattan, which was why her office and her own apartment had one.

      “Did we ever!” Darlene said. “I patched it in from a property we listed last July.” She maneuvered the mouse so a view out the apartment’s wide living room window filled the screen; then she zoomed in on what appeared to be a lush rectangle of green below.

      “Marvelous!” Myra said.

      Harold, one of her best salespeople, was behind her off to the side. “Myra, can I talk to you about the McCallister closing?”

      Myra nodded and left Darlene to her task.

      Eleanor, last month’s sales champion, was approaching Myra, head down, steps choppy, jaw set and determined. Myra knew what she wanted. She could read her people’s minds. “I’ll get with you on the closing after I talk to Eleanor about one of her listings,” Myra said to Harold.

      As Harold backed away a few steps, Myra said to a young woman passing by, “Amy, get me the file on 458K West Fifty-seventh.”

      “Myra,” the intrepid Eleanor was saying, “I have some serious issues on that West Fifty-seventh property.”

      “Amy’s getting the file,” Myra said. To Harold: “I’m sorry, Harold, but I know what Eleanor wants and it’ll only take a minute. When you see her leave my office, come on in and we’ll get together on your closing.”

      “Fine, Myra.”

      Myra strode to her office, aware of Eleanor hurrying to keep pace behind her. She felt grand. The Myra Raven Group was humming.

      She’d forgotten all about Web Thomas.

      An hour later, still at her desk, she picked up the phone and made sure she had an outside line before pecking out the number of Prestige Available Escort.

      “I need a male escort for this evening, dinner and drinks afterward,” she said to the woman who answered the phone.

      “Yes, ma’am. Have you used our service—”

      “I’m in your computer,” Myra said, telling the woman her PIN. “And see if Billy Watkins is available.”

      Rica figured the hell with it. She’d been sitting behind the steering wheel of a parked unmarked across the street from Helen Sampson’s West Side apartment for the last two hours. There was no need to start the car’s engine; she’d had it idling so the heater could be on. Which made the windows fog up. Which made it harder to see if the lights stayed on in Helen Sampson’s apartment windows, or if Helen herself left the building. At least the rain had stopped before changing to sleet or snow. Rica was hungry, thirsty, and had to go to the bathroom.

      Screw this!

      She put the car in drive and pulled out of her parking slot, ignoring the blast of a horn behind her. A taxi pulled up next to her at the next stoplight and out of the corner of her vision she saw the driver working his gums and giving her hell for pulling out in front of him. She guessed he had a right, but she thought, keep it up, asshole, and I’ll put the cherry light on the roof and give you a bad time.

      This whole waste of yet another evening, she thought, СКАЧАТЬ