proudly. “Right, Ron?”
Ron was staring at the outriders in front of the van and frowning. As
the senior member of the team, he was the only one who got told where
they were going. But he was not thinking of the route, or the job, or
even Tony Cox the ex-boxer.
He was trying to figure out why his eldest daughter had fallen in love
with a hippie.
Felix Laski office in Poultry did not display his name anywhere. It was
an old building, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with two others of
different design. Had he been able to get planning permission to knock
it down and build a skyscraper, he could have made millions. Instead it
stood as an example of the way his wealth was locked up. But he reckoned
that, in the long term, peer pressure would blow the lid off planning
restrictions; and he was a patient man where business was concerned.
Almost all of the building was sublet. Most of the tenants were minor
foreign banks who needed an address near Threadneedle Street, and their
names were well displayed. People tended to assume that Laski had
interests in the banks, and he encouraged this error in every way short
of outright lying. Besides, he did own one of the banks.
The furnishings inside were adequate but cheap: solid old typewriters,
shop-soiled filing cabinets, secondhand desks, and the threadbare
minimum of carpet. Like every successful man in middle age, Laski liked
to explain his achievement in aphorisms: a favorite was “I never spend
money.
I invest.” It was truer than most dicta of its kind.
His one home, a small mansion in Kent, had been rising in value since he
bought it shortly after the war; his meals were often expense-account
affairs with business prospects; and even the paintings he owned-kept in
a safe, not hung on walls-had been bought because his art dealer said
they would appreciate. To him, money was like the toy bank notes in
Monopoly: he wanted it, not for what it could buy; but because it was
needed to play the game.
Still, his lifestyle was not uncomfortable. A primary-school teacher, or
the wife of an agricultural laborer, would have thought he lived in
unpardonable luxury.
The room he used as his own office was small. There was a desk bearing
three telephones, a swivel chair behind it, two more chairs for callers,
and a long, upholstered couch against the wall. The bookshelf beside the
wall safe held scores of weighty volumes on taxation and company law. It
was a room without a personality: no photographs of loved ones on the
desk, no pictures on the walls, no foolish plastic pen holder given by a
well-meaning grandchild, no ashtray brought home from Clovelly or stolen
from the Hilton.
Laski’s secretary was an efficient, overweight girl who wore her skirts
too short. He often told people: “When they were giving out sex appeal,
Carol was elsewhere getting extra rations brains.”
That was a good joke, an English joke, the kind directors told each
other in the executive canteen.
Carol had arrived at nine twenty-five to find her boss’s “out” tray full
of work which had not been there last night. Laski liked to do things
like that: it impressed the staff and helped to counteract envy.
Carol had not touched the papers until she had made him coffee. He liked
that, too.
He was sitting on the couch, hidden behind The Times, with the coffee
near him on the arm of the chair, when Ellen Hamilton came in.
She closed the door silently and tiptoed across the carpet, so that he
did not see her until she pushed the newspaper down and looked at him
over it. The sudden rustle made him jump with shock.
She said: “Mr. Laski.” He said: “Mrs. Hamilton!” She lifted her skirt to
her waist and said: “Kiss me good morning.”
Under the skirt she wore old-fashioned stockings with no panties. Laski
leaned forward and rubbed his face in the crisp, sweet-smelling pubic
hair. His heart beat a little faster, and he felt delightfully wicked,
the way he had the first time he kissed a woman’s vulva.
He sat back and looked up at her. “What I like about you is the way you