The smile flickered for a moment before it returned. “Tape? Me? I don't know.”

“Or maybe you could recommend somebody else. I just need to talk to somebody who's pretty high up in the business. Somebody successful. So if you know anybody...”

Rune thought this was way too obvious but Traub snagged the bait greedily.

“Okay? She wonders if I've been successful... I've done fucking astronomical. I've got a Ferrari sitting not thirty feet away from us right this moment. In my own garage. In New York. My own fucking garage.”

“Wow.”

“ 'Wow,' she says. Yeah, wow. I own this town house and I could eat in any restaurant in Manhattan every night of the year, I wanted to. I own — not a share — I own a house in Killington. You like to ski? No? I could teach you.”

“You own Lame Duck?”

“A controlling percentage. There are some other people involved.”

“The Mafia?” Rune asked.

The smile stayed on Danny Traub's face. He said slowly, “You don't want to say that. Let's just say they're silent partners.”

“You think they might have anything to do with the bombing?”

Again the fake smile. “Some calls were made. Some questions were asked. Nobody from... over the river, let's say, had anything to do with it. That information's gold.”

She supposed that meant Brooklyn or New Jersey, headquarters of organized crime.

“So, yeah, I'll talk to you. I'll tell you my whole life story. I've been in the business for about eight, nine years. I started as a cameraman, and I did my share of acting too. You wanta see some tapes?”

“That's okay. I —”

“I'll give you one to take home.”

A blonde woman — maybe last night's entertainment — appeared, groggy and sniffling. She was dressed in a red silk jumpsuit, unzipped to the navel. Traub raised his fingers as if he were signaling a waiter. The woman hesitated, then walked toward them, combing her long hair — it tumbled to her mid-back — with her fingers. Rune stared at the hair, a platinum-gold color. Neither God nor Nature could take credit for a shade like that.

Traub said to Rune, “So what would you like? Coke? I mean the real thing, of course.” He held up a saltshaker. Rune shook her head.

The audience heard: “She's a Puritan. Oh, my God.” Traub glanced back at Rune. “Scotch?”

Rune wrinkled her nose. “Tastes like Duz.”

“Hey, I'm talking single-malt, aged twenty-one years.”

“Old soap isn't any better than new soap.”

“Well, just name your poison. Bourbon? Beer?”

Rune stared at the woman's hair. “A martini.” It was the first thing that came into her mind.

Traub said, “Two martinis. Chop-chop.”

The blonde wrinkled her tiny nose. “I'm not, like, a waitress.”