“You have a maid?”

Waldo laughed. “Child, you are a stitch.”

Later, Bill lay sleepless on the lumpy couch trying not to hear the muffled sex sounds drifting into the room from behind the curtained alcove. It wasn’t so much the whispered “Oh yeah fuck me, daddy, fuck me” that kept him awake as the low rumble of Eddie’s laughter and Waldo’s happy squeals. Fun. They were having fun. Fun, he realized, had never entered into his fantasies of Marco.

4.

4.

Framed by a million-dollar view of the Bay Bridge in the window of her eighteenth-floor office on California Street, Ruth Fleming regarded me skeptically. The large, gleaming desk that served as a buffer between us held an in and out box and a complicated, many-buttoned phone but not a single personal item; no framed family photographs or fancy paperweights for her. Her desk proclaimed she was all business, as did the woman herself. Her makeup had been painstakingly applied to project attractiveness without a trace of sensuality just as the silk burgundy shawl that draped the padded shoulders of her jacket seemed calculated to soften her authority. The nameplate on her desk identified her as a vice president. The only other women I had seen when she led me from the foyer to her office were secretaries. Larry Ross’s words may have been good enough for her boss, Myles Landon, in L.A., but Fleming tapped with doubtful fingertips the résumé she had asked me to bring her.

“I have to say, Mr. Rios, you don’t seem to have any relevant qualifications for this job,” she observed in a firm but modulated voice.

“That’s what I told Myles Landon,” I replied. “He seemed to think my experience as a litigator would be sufficient. You don’t agree?”

She frowned. “No, I don’t, but Myles is the boss, so here we are.”

Clearly, having an unqualified man foisted on her was a reminder that the old boys network was alive and well. I sympathized but was hardly in a position to concur. I needed the work.

“Look, Ms. Fleming—”

“Mrs. Fleming,” she said, automatically.

“Mrs. Fleming, give me a chance and if you think I’m not up to the job, I’ll quit and tell Landon it was my decision.”

She seemed a fraction less annoyed with me. “I’ll hold you to that, Mr. Rios.” She picked up a folder from her in box and slipped it across the desk. “This case involves a claim of accidental death which would require us to pay double the policy amount.”

“How much?”