‘I want you to be a wise guy,’ Lev went on. ‘Not like some of these dummies.’ Greg had no idea who the dummies were. ‘You’ve got to stay ahead of the curve, all the time. That’s the way to get on.’

Lev drove to his office, in a modern block downtown. As they walked through the marble lobby, Lev said: ‘Now I’m going to teach a lesson to that fool Dave Rouzrokh.’

Going up in the elevator, Greg wondered how Lev would do that.

Peshkov Pictures occupied the top floor. Greg followed Lev along a broad corridor and through an outer office with two attractive young secretaries. ‘Get Sol Starr on the phone, will you?’ Lev said as they walked into the inner office.

Lev sat behind the desk. ‘Solly owns one of the biggest studios in Hollywood,’ he explained.

The phone on the desk rang and Lev picked it up. ‘Sol!’ he said. ‘How are they hanging?’ Greg listened to a minute or two of masculine joshing, then Lev got down to business. ‘Little piece of advice,’ he said. ‘Here in New York State we have a crappy chain of fleapits called Roseroque Theatres . . . yeah, that’s the one . . . take my tip, don’t send them your top-of-the-line first-run pictures this summer – you may not get paid.’ Greg realized that would hit Dave hard: without exciting new movies to show, his takings would tumble. ‘A word to the wise, right? Solly, don’t thank me, you’d do the same for me . . . bye.’

Once again, Greg was awestruck by his father’s power. He could have people beaten up. He could offer eight million dollars of other people’s money. He could scare a president. He could seduce another man’s fiancée. And he could ruin a business with a single phone call.

‘You wait and see,’ said his father. ‘In a month’s time, Dave Rouzrokh will be begging me to buy him out – at half the price I offered him today.’

(iii)

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with this puppy,’ Daisy said. ‘He won’t do anything I tell him. I’m going crazy.’ There was a shake in her voice and a tear in her eye, and she was exaggerating only a little.

Charlie Farquharson studied the dog. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ he said. ‘He’s a lovely little fellow. What’s his name?’

‘Jack.’

‘Hmm.’

They were sitting on lawn chairs in the well-kept two-acre garden of Daisy’s home. Eva had greeted Charlie then tactfully retired to write a letter home. The gardener, Henry, was hoeing a bed of purple and yellow pansies in the distance. His wife, Ella, the maid, brought a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses, and set them on a folding table.

The puppy was a tiny Jack Russell terrier, small and strong, white with tan patches. He had an intelligent look, as if he understood every word, but he seemed to have no inclination to obey. Daisy held him on her lap and stroked his nose with dainty fingers in a way that she hoped Charlie would find strangely disturbing. ‘Don’t you like the name?’