“Here’s the man!” Baxter said, waving across as Cade came in.
Cade helped himself to a Jamesons Irish from the bar and joined them. “Hi, Anita . . . Norman. So how are things? I don’t detect any signs of incipient poverty.”
“Norman showed up in that new Lamborghini I’m told he’s been talking about for a hundred years,” Baxter told Cade. “It makes me feel really glad that I don’t pay any of that firm’s bills.”
“Got to be able to catch the ambulances,” Schnyder said, sipping his drink. He looked suave and opulent, with hair showing silver at the sides of his tanned face, a dark suit with narrow pinstripe, and expensively glittering tie clip and links. Anita Lloyd, in her early thirties, with auburn hair styled into chic, forward-sweeping points, wearing a sleeveless navy dress with elbow-length satin gloves, had just banked her first million the last time Cade talked to her. They were senior partner and associate respectively of an LA law firm that had been seeing some good years. Henry always got his terms precisely right.
Anita eyed Cade’s five-eleven frame in white dinner jacket with black tie. He kept athletically trim at thirty-six, and had wavy brown hair combed back at the sides above an angular face with narrow nose, easy-smiling mouth, and eyes that never quite lost a puckish glint. “You seem to be bearing the burdens of life pretty well yourself, Roland,” she remarked.
“Which just goes to show the wisdom of pure thoughts, clean living, and faith in the Lord.”
“But be sure to keep a good lawyer in your back pocket all the same,” Schnyder said.
“You mean like something to break the glass, in case of an emergency?” Cade quipped, making a toasting gesture.
“Don’t joke. You never know. We had a bar in town sued the other week for serving a guy who had a liver condition and knew he couldn’t take it. Would you believe that? I mean, what are they supposed to do—check everybody’s medical records now?”
Julia appeared in the archway to the front part of the house, calling something back to Henry about a rose tree by the front door. She saw Cade, picked up a glass of champagne that she had left on a side table, and came over, perching herself on a couch-arm next to where he was standing and resting her free hand lightly on his shoulder. Julia was Cade’s business partner and significant other in life, having moved in to share the house a little over a year before. She was tall, lithe, and red-haired, with a feline elegance of movement that exuded sexuality. Tonight she had enhanced the effect with an ankle-length dress of body-clinging moiré that altered in the light between bottle-green and sage-yellow, set off by an emerald bracelet and earrings. Her former husband ran a couple of night clubs that the right people in southern California frequented, which meant that she knew a lot of names that were worth knowing, making her a natural for Cade to get attached to. Knowing the right people was what Cade’s business was all about.
She tasted her drink and ran a questioning eye over the company. “So, what problems of the world are we putting right tonight?”
“Have you seen Norman’s new wheels yet?” Anita asked.
“Yes. And I feel sick. Why do you think I’m wearing green?” Julia nudged Cade pointedly. “I want one.”
“Sounds like I’d better check with Simon and see what our money’s in,” Cade replied.
“Well, I hope you don’t have too much of it in computers or electronics—or anything high-tech, by the sound of it,” Baxter said. “Norman was saying just before you came in that the bottom’s falling out across the board. The Hyadeans are going to be flooding the market here with better stuff at prices you can’t even think about.”
Schnyder was already nodding. “Their production is all run by AIs—totally automatic. Matching what we use here costs them practically nothing. It’s like beads. A lot of industries are in trouble.”
Cade tried not to let things like that affect him. It was the way life was. Things changed; you couldn’t stop them. If you were smart you adapted and let yourself go with the flow. It wasn’t his place to protect those who chose to stay in places where they were going to lose out. “There’s a lot of opposition out there,” he said. “That has to have some moderating effect, surely. The government isn’t going to just let it happen.”