Desire and fear are the keys to salesmanship, Andy, boy. But desire works best.

The men sat on the couch. They regarded the crystal TV screen, on which fish swam and kelp waved, hypnotic.

“Good picture. Four-K. Man, that’s beautiful. We’ll keep that in mind.” He set the glass down. “Now where are we?”

“All good.”

“What about Otto Grant? I heard the news. They seemed to buy it.”

“They did.”

March paused the shark video and called up another video file on his computer. The video, a high-definition (though only 2K), showed Otto Grant, kicking in the last moments of his life, trying to get leverage to pull himself up and somehow unhook the rope from where March had tied it to stage the suicide. He struggled for a time and then shivered and went limp.

“Did he come?”

There was a rumor that upon being hanged, men sometimes ejaculated. Neither had been able to confirm this.

“Just peed.”

“Ah.”

“I left evidence in the shack that the man he hired is from Chicago and has already left to go back there, left right after the incident in the hospital. Solid leads. Phone calls, proxies, e-mails. They’ll sniff up that tree for a while.”

“Good.”

“Now, you were mentioning a new job.” March knew Jenkins had come to Carmel for another reason, but he wouldn’t’ve made up the part about a new job entirely.

“Client’s in Lausanne, so he wants it to happen anywhere but Europe. He mentioned Latin America.”

“Any preferences as to how?”

“He was thinking a fall, maybe a cable car.”

March laughed. He could hot-wire an ignition, he could disable an elevator. That was the extent of the mechanical engineering skills. “I don’t think so. A bus?”

“A bus would work, I’d think.”

“Send me the details.”

Glasses tapped again. March had sipped the wine once. He’d also eyed the pineapple juice.

Jenkins laughed and handed the glass to March, enwrapped his fingers. “Just don’t mix it with Saint Estèphe.”

March let his boss’s hand linger on his for a moment.

“Dinner?” Jenkins asked.

“Not hungry.”

March never was, not at times like this. All the work, hoping it would pay off. The way he planned out the jobs, well, it was fragile. There was a lot that could go wrong. Wasting all that time and money, the risk. Anyway, what it came down to: When the Get was hungry, March was not.

“Oh, here. I brought you something.” Jenkins dug in his Vuitton backpack. He handed over a small box. March opened it. “Well.”

“Victoria Beckham.”

They were sunglasses, blue lenses.

Jenkins said, “Italian. And the lenses change color in the sun. Or get darker. I don’t know. I think there are instructions. You’ll love them.”

“Thanks. They’re really something.”

Though March’s first thought was: Wearing bright blue sunglasses on a job, where you would want to be as inconspicuous as possible?

Maybe I’ll go to the beach sometime. On vacation.

Would you let me do that, Get? Just relax?