“Good to see you again, Jake,” he said. “I always liked you.”

“I like you, too, Monster.”

They shook hands, Monster’s big paw engulfing Jake’s. Standing out on the sidewalk as the car pulled away, Jake realized that Monster had said he’d liked him. Liked. Past tense.

Once he got up to his apartment, Jake pulled off his coat and phoned Amy. As he punched the keys of her number he saw that his machine had no messages for him. Nobody had called. As usual.

*   *   *

“So I’ve got twenty-four hours to give Leeds my answer,” Jake said. With a glance at his wristwatch he amended, “Twenty-one and a half hours, actually.”

Amy had agreed to meet him as soon as Jake had called. The bar at the Roosevelt Club.

“Tell them at the door that you’re Mr. Tomlinson’s guest,” she had instructed Jake.

“Right.”

“And wear a tie or they won’t let you in.”

Opened when Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States, the Roosevelt Club was the hangout of the richest men in the state. Business and political leaders. Old money. Franklin Tomlinson’s father had served as chairman of its house committee for decades. Senator Christopher Leeds had never been invited to join.

The bar was a quiet, darkly paneled room at one end of a plush corridor that led to the club’s spacious dining room. Jake was surprised at how small it was. Only half a dozen stools at the bar itself, and no more than four high-walled booths along the far wall. There was a rear door that opened onto a garden, where members could come in or slip out without going through the main area of the club.

No one was sitting at the bar when Jake entered, and only one booth was occupied, by three elderly couples sipping at cocktails and chatting amiably.

Jake pulled up a stool and angled it so he could watch the door to the corridor. Amy won’t sneak in through the garden, he figured. The black bartender asked what he wanted to drink and Jake ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.

“Sir, are you a club member or a guest?” the bartender asked.

“I’m Mr. Tomlinson’s guest.”

“Mr. Tomlinson Senior, sir, or his son?”

“The son.”

The bartender smiled brightly. “Jack on the rocks. Right away, sir.”

At that moment Amy showed up at the doorway. With Tomlinson, who was holding her arm. She wore a cardinal red cocktail dress, its skirt mid-thigh, its neckline scooped low enough to show some cleavage. Tomlinson was in a dark gray three-piece suit, tailored perfectly.

They both smiled at Jake and Tomlinson pointed to one of the empty booths. Jake slid off his stool, then turned to the bartender.

“I’ll bring your drink to your table, sir.”