“Okay, you’re in a good negotiating position; your readership is slightly up in the home paper, and well up in syndication. You’re not overpaid, at the moment, and what we’re asking for isn’t out of line with the numbers involved. However, it’s almost never good to appear eager when you’re dealing with Dick Hickock; he’ll have you for breakfast, if he thinks he has any sort of edge. My advice is to wait, not even call him, just wait for his call. He knows exactly when your contract is up, and he won’t ignore the deadline and risk losing you to another paper. Sit tight, and you’ll get most of what you want. There, I’ve said it; what do you want to do?”

“Precisely ten past one, at the Galaxy Building.”

“See you there.”

Amanda hung up and began doing something she had forced herself to put off: She went through the New York and L.A. papers quickly, looking for any reference to the incident of the night before. As she had suspected, there was nothing. Every paper had closed well before the photographs were taken at the hotel, and nobody would have been fool enough to print the story without substantiation. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief; she had until early evening, when the showbiz news programs came on, after the evening news.

Amanda got up, walked to the door, and leaned against the jamb, looking out into the open bay where her secretary and two assistants sat. Of the three, only Martha had known where she had spent the past weekend, and nobody, but nobody, could torture the information out of that woman. While the others hadn’t known, they might have somehow picked up something around the off’ce. Still, each of them was well paid and, apparently, happy in his or her work. One, Helen, was a young woman of thirty who had been with her for three years; the other, Barry, was a gay man who had been with her for eight. There was not a naive bone in Amanda’s body, but her best judgment told her that the news had been leaked from somewhere else, most likely from her lover’s end, although he had denied any such thing. Most likely his wife had put a detective on them, but that remained to be seen.

“All right, Martha,” Amanda said, “let’s go through the messages.”

At nine minutes past one the elderly Cadillac glided up to the main entrance of the Galaxy

Building, and Amanda stepped out; Bill Eggers was waiting in the lobby. It was lunchtime, and the two were alone together in the elevator.

“Amanda, won’t he be at lunch at this hour?”

Eggers asked.

“Dick Hickock always has lunch at his desk on

Mondays,” she replied. “Always.”

“Are you sure he’ll see you?”

“He won’t have a choice,” Amanda said.