Battle-ax returned. "Mr. Bolitar?"

"Yes?"

"Ms. Lex will give you five minutes of her time. I have an opening on the fifteenth of next month."

"No good," Myron said. "It has to be today."

"Ms. Lex is a very busy woman."

"Today," Myron said.

"That simply will not be possible."

"At eleven. If I'm not let in, I go immediately to the press."

"You're being terribly rude, Mr. Bolitar."

"To the press," Myron repeated. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Will you be there?"

"What possible difference could that make?"

"All this sexual tension is driving me batty. Maybe afterward we could get together for a nice cool latte."

He heard the phone go click and smiled. The charm, he thought. It's baaaaack.

Esperanza buzzed in. "Topless tennis, anyone?"

"What?"

"I got Suzze T on line one."

He hit a button. "Hey, Suzze."

"Hey, Myron, what's shaking?"

"I got an offer for you to refuse."

"You mean you're going to hit on me?"

The charm suffers a setback. "Where are you going to be this afternoon?"

"Same place as now," she said. "The Morning Mosh. You know it?"

"No."

She gave him the address, and Myron agreed to meet her there in a few hours. He hung up the phone and leaned back.

" 'Sow the seeds,'" he said out loud.

He stared at the wall. An hour to kill before he headed over to the Lex Building on Fifth Avenue. He could sit here and think about life and maybe contemplate his navel. No, too much of that already. He swiveled his seat to the computer, double-clicked the proper icon, connected to the Net. He tried Yahoo first and typed sow the seeds into the search field. Only one hit: a Web site for the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners. They went by the acronym SLUG. Tough guys probably. A gang. Probably wore green bandannas and engaged in drive-by waterings.

He tried Alta Vista's search engine next, but they listed 2,501 Web pages. It was kinda like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Yahoo's search was toooo small. Alta Vista's was toooo big. They didn't have LEXIS-NEXIS at the office, but Myron tried a less powerful media engine. He typed in the same three words and pressed the return key, and bammo.

http://vwvw.nyherald.com/archives/9800322

Myron hit the link and the article came up:

New York Herald

THE MIND OF TERROR--YOUR DARKEST FEAR

by Stan Gibbs

Whoa, hold the phone. Myron knew the name. Stan Gibbs had been a big-time newspaper columnist, the kind of guy who regularly pontificated (read: pimped) on the cable news talk shows, though he'd been less annoying than most, which is like saying syphilis is less annoying than gonorrhea. But that had all been before the scandal gutted him like Ted Nugent over a fallen moose. Myron read: The phone call comes out of the blue.

"What is your darkest fear?" the voice whispers. "Close your eyes now and picture it. Can you see it? Do you have it yet? The very worst agony you can imagine?"