Shearson shrugged, but didn’t release his tight grip on her wrap. ‘I know because I have to know. I’m an influential man, Della, and influential men are at permanent risk from chisellers and con artists and sweet-talking whores with big tits. You – you’re different. You talk sharp and you don’t let me get away with treating you like dirt. I like you a lot. And that’s why my friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were only too glad to fill in a little background for me.’

Della looked down at his fist, gripping her wrap possessively.

‘You want me to give up the newspaper?’ she asked him. He nodded.

‘How much would it pay? I mean – running an emergency fund isn’t a career, is it? What would I do when it was all over?’

‘You wouldn’t have to do anything. A fund of this kind can raise up to three hundred million dollars. Maybe more. You and me and Alan Hedges – we’d all be working for a percentage. In rough figures, you may come out with a million and a bit.’

‘A million and a bit? A million dollars?’

‘You heard me. That’s the offer. But if you don’t take it, I don’t want a single word about this Blight Crisis Appeal turning up in the Kansas City Herald-Examiner, or any other newspaper for that matter. This is offered to you in confidence, because I like you, and because I think I can trust you.’

Della stood silent. Shearson watched her for a while, the sweat shining on his forehead, and then he heaved himself out of his chair, and stood over her.

‘You know why I like you?’ he growled. ‘You’re a smart bitch. A real smart bitch. Even now, you’re playing smart. Even though I know damned well what you’re going to say.’

He seized her emerald-green wrap in both hands, and pulled it right down over her shoulders, baring her breasts. They were big and white and heavy, with soft pale nipples, and Shearson looked down at them with the theatrical pleasure of a stage pirate who has just prised open a casket of gold.

‘You’re smart,’ he said, ‘and you’re damned sexy.’

He gripped her breasts in both hands, digging his fingers in deep. She raised her head, and closed her eyes, and he leaned forward and kissed her neck, and then bit it, until he was leaving bruises all over her skin. His fingertips worked at her nipples, tugging them and rolling them around the ball of his thumb, until the pink areolas crinkled, and the nipples tightened and stood up.