“Hey, you called me and ordered me down here in one hell of a hurry. You sounded pretty upset. I thought you wanted to talk to me,” Andretti retorted. He spun on his heel and headed back out the doorway. “When you’re ready, I’ll be in my office.”

Stern jumped up and grabbed him by the elbow. “Hey, hold on a minute. Carl, sit down. We need to talk.”

He waved Andretti to the chair across the coffee table from the couch.

Smythe reached for the remote and muted the TV. The crowds on the screen now ebbed and flowed in silence, seething around the U.N. Plaza while mounted policemen tried to keep them from spilling out into the traffic on busy First Avenue.

Andretti stood there for a moment, then held out a hand to Stern. “Good to see you again, Mark. What brings you out to the right coast?”

Stern shook the offered hand but maintained the grim, stony look on his face. “That’s what we’re here to discuss.”

Andretti plopped down in the offered seat. He snagged a couple of candies from the dish on the coffee table.

“Okay, so where’s the fire?” he said as he chewed.

The room was deathly quiet for a moment. Outside, night had fallen. The skyline across the river blazed with lights, reflecting with an orange, fiery glow off the deck of snow clouds overhead. It appeared traffic was at a crawl on West Street. A chopper lifted off from the pad just north of the New York Mercantile Exchange Building and swung upriver. Some hotshot executive was in a hurry to get to Westchester.

Stern cleared his throat and spoke. “Several things need to be taken care of, Carl. First off is the matter of the hardware we’re using for the project and some reports I’ve been getting about your attitude concerning it. Frankly, I’m getting very tired of hearing complaints about the Bund System’s equipment. That will stop right now. We’re using their gear, and that’s final.”

Andretti started to register a strong protest, but Smythe was faster on the trigger. His voice was low and stone cold when he spoke. “Just sit there, shut up, and listen. This is a one-way discussion.”

Stern nodded in Smythe’s direction, slid back on the couch, and continued. “You are hereby elected the president of the East Coast branch of the Bund Fan Club. Anyone asks about Bund, you will sing their praises from the rooftops. I want that understood. Am I clear, Carl?”