Small Town

four

L’Aiglon d’Or was on Fifty-fifth between Park and Madison, and had been there for decades. A classic French restaurant, it had long since ceased to be trendy, and the right side of the menu guaranteed that it would never be a bargain. The great majority of its patrons had been coming for years, cherishing the superb cuisine, the restrained yet elegant decor, and the unobtrusively impeccable service. The tables, set luxuriously far apart, were hardly ever all taken, nor were there often more than two or three of them vacant. This, in fact, was very much as the proprietor preferred it. A Belgian from Bruges, who most people assumed was French, he wanted to make a good profit, but hated to turn anyone away. “The man who cannot get a table one week,” he had said more than once, “will not come back the next week.”

In response, one customer quoted Yogi Berra — Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded. The proprietor nodded in agreement. “Précisément,” he said. “If it is too crowded, no one comes.”

Francis Buckram saw he was a few minutes early and had the cab drop him at the corner. He found things to look at in a couple of Madison Avenue shop windows, and contrived to make his entrance at 8:05.

They were waiting for him at the table, three middle-aged men in dark suits and ties. Buckram, wearing a blazer and tan slacks, wondered if he should have chosen a suit himself. His clothes had nothing to apologize for, the blazer was by Turnbull & Asser, the slacks were Armani, the brown wing tips were Allen Edmonds, and he knew he wore the clothes well, but did they lack the gravitas the meeting required?

No, he decided, that was the point. The meeting was their idea, and he wasn’t coming hat in hand. Insouciance was the ticket, not gravitas.

Fancy words for a cop.

Well, he was a fancy kind of a cop, always had been. Always had the expensive clothes and the extensive vocabulary, and knew when to trot them out and when to leave them in the closet. Growing up in Park Slope, he’d been as well liked as Willy Loman ever hoped to be, and he was good enough in sports and enough of a cutup in class to mask an ambition that got him a full scholarship to Colgate. That was the next thing to Ivy League and a healthy cut above Brooklyn College, which was where most of his classmates went, if they went anywhere at all. He’d surprised them by going away to a fancy school, and he surprised his classmates at Colgate by going straight from the campus to the NYPD. He’d scored well on the LSAT and got accepted at four of the five law schools he’d applied to, told them all thanks but no thanks and went on the cops.

He stopped at the bar to say hello to Claudia Gerndorf, who’d profiled him for New York magazine shortly after he was appointed commissioner. She introduced him to her companion, a labor leader he’d met in passing, and he gave the man a nod and a smile but didn’t offer to shake hands. The guy had never been arrested, not so far as Buckram knew, but that didn’t mean his hands were clean enough to shake.

“I’ve got a column now in the New York Observer,” she said. “You know, we really ought to sit down one of these days and catch up.”

“We’ll do that,” he said. “Meanwhile, there’s a table of fellows I’ve got to sit down with right now.”

And you can put that in your column, he thought. Former Police Commissioner Francis J. Buckram — and don’t make it Francis X., assuming that every Francis gets stuck with Xavier for a middle name, and for God’s sake don’t make the last name Bushman — that Francis J. Buckram was spotted at a fashionable East Side eatery, sharing vichyssoise and frogs’ legs with three real estate heavies. He might not get anything out of the evening but heartburn and a headache, but a little ink linking his name with some serious New York money couldn’t do him any harm.

They were on their feet when he reached their table. He knew Avery Davis, who said, “Fran, it’s good to see you. You know these fellows, don’t you? Irv Boasberg and Hartley Saft.”

He shook hands all around, apologizing for keeping them waiting, and was assured they’d just gotten there themselves. They had drinks in front of them, and when the waiter came over he ordered a Bombay martini, straight up and extra dry, with a twist. Hartley Saft, who had a drinker’s complexion, took a refill on the Scotch. Davis and Boasberg said they were fine.

The conversation throughout the meal steered clear of Topic A. Ongoing terrorism got some of their attention, along with speculation about the eventual development of the Ground Zero site. Someone brought up a current scandal involving the health inspector’s office. “I remember when the papers used to print a weekly list of restaurants that got cited for violations,” Irv Boasberg said. “You’d look at the list, terrified you’d find your favorite Chinese restaurant on it, and what did it mean if you did?”

“That somebody forgot to slip the inspector a couple of bucks,” Hartley Saft said. “But it killed your appetite, didn’t it? You know what? Let’s not talk about restaurant violations.”

So they ate French food and drank California wine, and he made everybody happy by telling cop stories. That was always safe because everybody liked cop stories, and Fran Buckram had a batch of them that had stood the test of time.

Not every former police commissioner could say the same. Buckram was atypical in that he had come up through the ranks. New York’s top cop more often than not lacked any real police experience. The position was largely administrative, and the present holder of the office had previously served as fire commissioner in Detroit; he’d never been a policeman, or a fireman either, as far as that went.

It made a certain amount of sense. The president of the United States, after all, was commander in chief of the armed forces, but that didn’t mean he had to have been an army general in order to do the job.

As far as most cops were concerned, anyone fairly high up in the NYPD was light-years away from the street, and chiefly concerned with covering asses, his own and the department’s. The man at the top, the commissioner, was first and foremost a politician, then an administrator, and not a real cop at all.

Still, the street cops liked it when the top slot was filled by someone who’d been on the job himself. Buckram, who started out walking a beat in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn and put in his time as a detective with Major Cases, eventually parlayed a saloon-born friendship into a stint as police commissioner of Portland, Oregon. He spent three years there, and got a ton of good press; the crime rate dropped, and the Portland cops went up a few notches in everybody’s esteem, not least of all their own.

He’d liked the job, but he missed New York every single day he was out there. Portland was a good place, it had a lot to offer, but it wasn’t New York, and that was the thing about New York — if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world.

Out of lust and boredom, he had an affair with a TV reporter, and that only made things worse. He’d had affairs before, he neither chased women nor ran away from them, but affairs seemed to mean more in Portland, somehow, and by the time this one had run its course, so had his marriage. His wife, who’d never wanted to go to Oregon in the first place, moved back to New York and took the kids with her. He stayed where he was, hating it now, and when the New York offer came he had to hold himself in check to keep from appearing too eager. If he didn’t get the job, he decided, he was moving back anyway. He’d go into private security, he’d open a restaurant, he’d sell shoes, but whatever it was he’d damn well do it in New York.

He got the job. The mayor who gave it to him wanted someone who would jump right in and make waves, and Buckram gave him what he wanted and then some. He’d tried out some theories in Portland, his own and some other people’s, and he’d learned how to make a police force proactive, not just responding to crime but targeting career criminals and getting them off the street. Crime dropped when there were fewer criminals out there to commit it, and there were perfectly legitimate ways to take them out of the game without trampling all over their civil rights. It had worked in Portland, and it damn well worked in New York.

He did so well it cost him the job.

There’s no limit to what a man can accomplish if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.

He’d heard the line somewhere, and he didn’t know the source and wasn’t sure of the precise wording, but a few weeks ago he’d been fooling around on his home computer and he dummied it up, printed it out, and kept forgetting to pick up a frame for it. It belonged on the wall over his desk, but what was the point? He’d learned the lesson, though not in time to save his job.

Because the commissioner’s job wasn’t just about covering asses. It was also about kissing one — specifically, the mayor’s. And this particular mayor had wanted the credit for every positive thing that happened on his watch, and couldn’t stand it when any of it went to somebody else.

Buckram had known that (though no one had known the full megalomaniacal extent of it) but the media loved him and he was great on camera, the expensive clothes showing to good advantage on his lean frame, the natural wave in his styled hair, the easy smile on his lips, the glint in his Irish blue eyes. The mayor was pudgy, with a narrow chest and a potbelly, and a comb-over that might have been endearing on a humbler man. Buckram spoke in bracing sound bites; the mayor’s on-camera remarks seemed harsh and mean-spirited at best, and out of context they often came across as heartless.

Three and a half years on the job, and the crime rate dropped and the streets got safer and people felt great about the city, and hotel room occupancy soared with an increase in convention bookings, because suddenly New York was everybody’s favorite city. Foreign tourists flocked to it, and midwesterners, who for years wouldn’t even change planes at JFK, were pouring in, rushing to see lousy musicals and stand in line outside cookie-cutter theme restaurants on Fifty-seventh Street.

The mayor got plenty of credit, and deservedly so, but he wanted it all, and Buckram was too cocky to get out of the way whenever somebody showed up with a camera and a notepad. So one day he was out of work, and the city was up in arms about it for a few minutes, but the crime rate kept on dropping and the tourists kept on coming, and that was that. The mayor got re-elected and Fran Buckram signed up with a lecture bureau, giving after-dinner speeches for $3,500 a pop.

He was forty-three when he got the job, and had just turned forty-seven when he had to give it back. Now he was fifty-three, and the mayor had finished his second term a hero, elevated to that status by his performance during 9/11 and its aftermath. The voters would have given him a third term — they’d have made him dictator for life if they’d had the chance, and awarded him both ears and the tail in the bargain — but constitutional term limits forced him to step down, and his replacement was halfway through his first year in office and seemed to be doing just fine.

The new man had three and a half years to go, plus four more if he ran again and won. So it was far too early for anyone to enter the lists to succeed him, but people had a pretty good idea who was in the running.

Buckram’s name was at the top of the Maybe column.

And that was what this dinner was about. He knew that, and his three dinner partners knew it, and so did Claudia Gerndorf and that demi-hoodlum from Local 802 of the Amalgamated Federation of Widget Makers. Anyone who recognized the four of them could figure out why they were sitting there together, washing down sole meunière with pinot grigio.

Meanwhile, he told his cop stories. The three men seemed to enjoy them.

“NOW THAT’S INTERESTING,” MAURY Winters said. “To your left, four men sitting together, the waiter’s just now pouring their wine.”

She looked, saw three men in suits and one in a blazer, and asked what was interesting about them.

“That they’re here together,” the lawyer said. “Recognize anybody?”

“No,” she said, and considered. “The one in the blazer looks familiar. Who is he?”

“Nobody at the moment, but a few years ago he was police commissioner.”

“Of course, Buckley, but no, that’s not right. Buckman?”

“Buckram, sweetheart. Like a fine binding. First name Francis, but don’t call him Frank. He prefers Fran. The other men, well, I recognize two of them, and they’re both real estate machers, and so’s the third, I’d be willing to bet you. Do you suppose they’ve banded together to help our former top cop find an apartment?”

“I have a feeling the answer is no.”

“But to find a job, that’s another possibility altogether. How’s your tornado?”

Her dish was tournedos Rossini, filet mignon capped with foie gras, tender as butter and wonderfully savory, and his mispronunciation was an affectation, a part of the diamond-in-the-rough image he’d perfected. His gray hair was shaggy, his suit imperfectly tailored for his fleshy physique, and his tie showed the odd food stain. She wasn’t sure of his age but knew he was well into his sixties, and the years showed in his face and carriage. And yet he remained an extremely attractive man, and how fair was that? If a woman let herself go like that, no one would look at her twice. With a man, well, if he had the right sort of energy emanating from him, you overlooked some of the flaws, called the rest character, and wound up with wet panties.

“My tornado is gale force,” she told him. “If there’s a trailer park in the neighborhood, its days are numbered. How’s your veal?”

“It would make a PETA activist rethink his whole program. I’ll tell you, it’s a pleasure to watch a woman with an appetite.”

“Oh?”

“People say they hate to eat alone. What’s so terrible? You go to a nice restaurant, you take a book, you eat a meal at your own pace. Listen to me, but do I listen to myself? I’m out five nights a week with someone adorable, and they’re all either trying to lose weight or trying to keep from gaining it, and either way, as far as their value as company, you’d be better off going to a whorehouse with Ed Koch. See, you laugh. They don’t get my jokes, or maybe they just don’t think they’re funny. You eat, you laugh, Susan, you can call me for free legal advice for the rest of your life.”

“As long as I keep on eating and laughing.”

“Why would you want to stop? You never gain an ounce, you got a better figure than the models.”

“Why do you go out with them, Maury?”

“Besides the obvious?”

“You don’t have to take them to L’Aiglon for that.”

“Them I don’t take to L’Aiglon. Them I take to someplace flashier, so they can say they’ve been there. But what they are is arm candy, darling. Look at that alte kacher, out with that sweet young thing. He must have something, the old bastard.” He shrugged. “Anyway, they’re cute, they’re cuddly, they’re adorable, they’re like a kitten or a rabbit. You don’t expect to have a conversation with a bunny rabbit, do you?”

“It would be one-sided.”

“But you’d still want to pet it,” he said, “and stroke it behind the ears.”

“So why did you call me? Old times’ sake?”

They’d had an affair, if you wanted to call it that, a dozen years ago, not long after her marriage came apart. They’d already known each other — her ex was an assistant district attorney whom Maury had befriended after excoriating him in court, and who had since crossed the aisle and set up as a defense attorney, and you could bet she’d never call him for free legal advice, the asshole.

He hadn’t taken her to L’Aiglon, but it had been something comparable, Le Cirque or La Côte Basque, something French and fancy, and over Drambuie he told her he kept an apartment in town, for when he had to stay over, and he’d like nothing better than to show it to her.

She’d said, “You’re married, right?”

“Absolutely!”

“Good,” she’d said. “Because you’re a very attractive man, Maury, and I’d love to spend a little quality time in your apartment, but I don’t want to get involved any more than you do.”

“What I figured,” he said. “The fellow who introduced me to Drambuie told me you had to sip it and savor it and make it last, but you know what?” He tossed off his drink. “Turns out he was full of crap. Drink up, Susan. I’ve had a yen for you for the past hour. Well, longer than that, but you were married. C’mon, how long are you gonna keep an old man waiting?”

Now, twelve years later, he said, “Why did I call you? For the pleasure of your company. And because it doesn’t hurt for the world to see me now and then with a woman of substance instead of an adorable airhead. A woman like that, she could be with anybody, and she’s with him? What’s he got?”

“What’s he got? He’s got an awfully good line.”

“My stock-in-trade. This silver tongue has kept a lot of worthy young men out of prison. Of course” — he showed her the tip of it — “that’s not all it’s done.”

She felt herself blushing. “Dirty old man.”

“C’est moi, chérie.”

“Speaking of prison...”

“Oh, is that what we were speaking of?”

“I see they made an arrest in my friend’s murder.”

“She showed you an apartment. It’s not like you were sorority sisters in Chi Zeta Chi.”

“My acquaintance, if you like that better, but—”

“Now that was one joke you didn’t get. Chi Zeta Chi? In Yiddish that means Chew, Grandpa, chew.”

“They arrested a writer. The name’s familiar, but I’ve never read anything of his. Blair Creighton?”

“John Blair Creighton, but he drops the John on his books. And that’s as much as we’re going to talk about him, or your late lamented real estate person.” And, when she looked blank, he added, “Because I’m representing him, sweetie, and I can’t talk about the case.”

“You’re representing him? But he...”

“Killed somebody, except we don’t know that, do we? And that’s what I do, darling. People kill each other, and I represent the survivors.”

When the coffee was poured, Irv Boasberg wondered aloud if anyone had dessert anymore. “My granddaughter turned down a piece of Shirley’s chocolate cake last week,” he said, “announcing that she had to watch her weight. A, she’s not fat to begin with, and B, she’s all of eleven years old.”

“I don’t know what it is, society or the parents,” Avery Davis said. “If they’re not obese you find yourself worrying that they’re anorexic. Life doesn’t cut a person much slack nowadays, does it? Fran, you could have dessert. I’ll bet you haven’t put on an ounce since you walked a beat.”

“If he hasn’t,” Hartley Saft said, “maybe that’s why he hasn’t. How’d you escape the cops-and-doughnuts syndrome, Fran?”

“Just dumb luck,” he said. “I never had a sweet tooth.”

“That’s luck, all right,” Davis said. “I don’t have dessert because if I did I’d want six of them. Now there’s a man who’s not skipping dessert, and he looks as though sometimes he has the whole pie. And, unless we’re supposed to believe that’s his niece, the pleasures of the table aren’t the only sort he enjoys. Do I know him? Because he looks familiar.”

“All fat men look alike,” Saft said, “but I know what you mean. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him before.”

“Probably in restaurants,” Boasberg said.

“I think you’re right, Irving, and if it’s the man I’m thinking of he’s always got something young and fluffy across the table from him. As a matter of fact, they’re usually younger and fluffier than the current example. She looks as though she actually has a thought in her head from time to time.”

“Less of a tootsie and more of a trophy wife,” Avery Davis suggested.

“His name’s Maury Winters,” Buckram told them. He’d spotted the lawyer when he first sat down, and would have said hello if he’d caught his eye. “He’s a criminal lawyer, a good one, and like most of them he’s something of a character.”

“Of course,” Davis said. “I’ve seen him on television. He was on Larry King, along with three or four other experts, talking about that little girl in Colorado. You never had anything to do with the Boulder Police Department, did you, Fran?”

“I taught them everything they know.”

They laughed. “He had one great line, Winters did. I think he must have used it before, because he sort of shoehorned it in. It didn’t particularly fit, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He prefers murder trials, and do you know why?”

“I know the line,” Buckram said, “and you’re right, he’s used it before.”

“One less witness,” Davis said.

“That’s it.” He took a sip of coffee. The others had ordered decaf, but his was the real deal. He told himself decaf never tasted right to him, but maybe that was only true if he knew it was decaf. Maybe he just plain wanted the caffeine.

Either way, L’Aiglon d’Or’s coffee was delicious, a richly aromatic French roast you could sip like a tawny port. He put his cup down and said, “Maury must be feeling good. Great food and attractive company, and he’s got a murderer to defend.”

“Oh?”

“That writer, I forget his name. The one who strangled that woman in the Village.”

“Crichton,” Boasberg said.

“That’s a different writer, but now I remember, and you’re close. It’s Creighton.”

“And you figure he did it?”

“I don’t know enough to have an opinion,” he said, “but they’ve evidently got enough to charge him. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve got enough to convict him, far from it, but it shows you they believe he did it, and they’re usually right.”

“Anybody read anything he’s written?”

Nobody had.

“Well, now he’s got something new to write about,” Avery Davis said. “You ever think about writing a book yourself, Fran?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

“I’ve been approached a few times.”

“I should think so. It’d sell a few copies.”

“I don’t know, Avery. In this town, maybe, but would anybody out in Idaho give a rat’s ass? And what do I know about writing a book?”

“Would you have to write it yourself?”

“Oh, everybody was quick to tell me I’d never have to touch a keyboard or look at a computer screen. I’d work with a writer.” He rolled his eyes. “God knows there’s enough of them in this town. Of course most of them are loaded down with work. That’s why it’s standing room only every night in Stelli’s.”

“There’s one I can think of who’s going to have some time on his hands,” Saft offered. “Unless our fat friend over there gets him off the hook in a hurry.”

“There you go. I’ll collaborate with the Charles Street Strangler. Maybe that’ll get their attention in Pocatello.”

They laughed, and Boasberg said, “You could just tell some stories like the ones you told tonight.”

“War stories? No, they’d expect more than that. Some personal history, the story behind the story, and how much of that does a man want to get into? Plus what what’s-his-name would call ‘the vision thing.’ ”

He’d intended that as an opening, and they seized it as such; he caught Avery Davis shooting a glance at each of his companions before leaning forward and narrowing his eyes. “The vision thing,” he echoed. “You know, Fran, a lot of people are looking at you with more than the bestseller list in mind. I’m sure you’re happy living where you are, but I’d be surprised if you haven’t thought now and then of moving a few blocks uptown and closer to the river.”

In other words, Gracie Mansion.

“And you’ve probably thought about some of the changes you’d like to implement if you found yourself living there.”

He considered this. “Be hard not to,” he acknowledged.

“Impossible, I should think.”

“You pick up a paper or turn on New York One, you hear speculation. Not so much now, but a year or two ago, say.”

“A lot of people thought you might take a shot at it last fall.”

“The timing was wrong,” he said. “I’d have been running against Rudy, and he wouldn’t have been running, and you just look like you’re kicking a guy when he’s down, between the prostate cancer and the divorce. Of course that was before anyone knew he’d turn out to be a national hero, which made running against him completely impossible.” He grinned. “So now they’re talking about 2005, and it’s way too early for that, but even so you have to think about it. Whether it’s what you want, and what you’d do if you got it.”

“And?”

“And what do I see myself doing? Or at least championing?”

He let the moment stretch, then looked off into the middle distance. “Landmark areas,” he said. “Every time an older building gets pulled down, a piece of the city’s history is lost forever. It’s vital that we protect what we’ve got by designating more landmark areas, and that doesn’t mean only the remote past, the obviously historical. What about the white-brick apartment buildings that went up in the sixties? They’re not building any more of them, and once they’re gone they’re gone forever. Fortunately there’s still time to save them.”

“Landmark areas,” Hartley Saft said.

“Hand in hand with that,” he went on, “is rent control. A noble experiment, as I’m sure you’ll agree...”

They were nodding, a little more sanguine now. Brace yourselves, he thought.

“...but time has made serious inroads on rent control, and both working-class and middle-class tenants are being priced out of the market. All new housing, including conversions of factory and warehouse space to residential use, has to come under rent control, and the process of decontrol has to be stopped in its tracks and reversed. Otherwise where are we?”

God, the looks on their faces! He kept his own straight for as long as he could, then let his merriment show.

“Jesus Christ,” Irv Boasberg said.

“Guys, I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. Look, I’m not about to make a policy statement, on or off the record. At this stage you probably know as much as I do about what I’d be likely to do as mayor of New York.”

“If nothing else,” Davis said, “you just demonstrated a subtler sense of humor than the last man to hold the office.”

Or a stronger suicidal streak, he thought, talking up rent control and preservationism to three titans of New York real estate.

“Sweetheart, you’ll excuse me,” Maurice Winters said, and pushed back from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

He didn’t wait for a response, but headed straight for the men’s room. When his bladder prompted him, social graces were a luxury he couldn’t afford. He had to respond in a hurry.

And then, of course, he would wind up standing in front of the urinal trying to trick his prostate into getting out of the way long enough to allow the stream to flow. Magically, peeing became the only thing more difficult than resisting the urge to pee. It was a hell of a thing, getting old, and the only thing that made it remotely attractive was when you considered the alternative.

Which was something he’d been forced to consider more and more lately, ever since he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Eight months now. Back in August his internist did a PSA and made an appointment for him with a urologist, and then the fucking Arabs killed three thousand people for no reason whatsoever, and he canceled the appointment and forgot to make another until his internist called him, all concerned, and got him into the urologist’s office for an ultrasound and a biopsy in early November. Both procedures were literally a pain in the ass, and they only confirmed what everyone had pretty much known from the PSA, which was that he had prostate cancer, and that it had very likely metastasized.

There were choices, the urologist assured him. You could have surgery or you could have radiation, and if you took the latter course you could have radioactive seeds implanted that avoided some of the worst effects of radiation therapy. What he’d recommend, himself, was surgery first, to remove the prostate and if nothing else make urination less problematic, followed by a course of radiation to zap whatever adventurous cancer cells might have migrated outside the walls of the prostate gland.

And then, should the cancer return, then they could knock it back with hormonal treatments. What that amounted to, he learned, was chemical castration, although nobody liked to call it that because it sounded as though they were going to cut off your balls. Which they sometimes did as an alternative, as it saved you from having to go in for the shots, and it was guaranteed one hundred percent effective. Not at curing the cancer, but at shutting down your production of testosterone, which propelled the cancer.

It also shut down your sex life. Coincidentally, Winters had run into an old friend, a law school professor in his eighties who’d still been sexually active until he’d had the shots as a last-ditch effort to delay the cancer long enough to — what, die from something else? “I dreaded this,” the fellow told him. “I thought this means the end, you’re not a man anymore, you’ve got nothing to live for. But the shots took away everything, including the desire, the interest. I couldn’t do anything, but I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t care!”

Wonderful.

If not caring was such a blessing, he could take a fistful of sleeping pills and not care about anything.

He did some research, and the surgery the urologist wanted to do wasn’t like having a hangnail trimmed. Assuming you didn’t die on the table, you could look forward to a minimum of several months of incontinence and impotence, either or both of which could turn out to be permanent. So you walked around leaking pee into an adult diaper, and you still had the desire for sex but couldn’t do anything about it, and, the best part of all, the cancer came back and you died anyway.

He talked to two men who’d had radiation, and they both said the same thing: If I’d known it was going to be anywhere near that bad, I would never have put myself through it.

Wonderful.

“Finally,” the doctor said, reluctantly, “there’s watchful waiting. You come in every three months for a PSA, and we keep a close eye on it, and see how it goes.” Why, he wondered, did he have to come in for those PSAs? “So we’ll know how you’re doing.” But if he’d already decided that he wasn’t going to have any treatment, regardless of his PSA score? “Well, we want to keep tabs on this thing. We want to keep our options open.”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “looking back, I’ve got just one regret. If I had it all to do over again, I’d never have gone into criminal law.” He’d waited, and the poor schmuck had to ask what he’d have chosen instead, and he said, “Malpractice litigation. It barely existed as a specialty when I got out of law school, but if I’d seen the handwriting on the wall I could have cashed in. And even if I didn’t make so much money, think of the emotional satisfaction!”

And he got the hell out of there and never went back.

He was taking herbs now, which maybe did him some good and maybe didn’t, he’d have had to take another PSA to tell. It was only a needle stick, any doctor could do it, but for what?

He hadn’t said a word to anybody. Except his old law professor, but he wasn’t going to tell anybody, and, hormone shots or no hormone shots, it didn’t look as though the guy was going to be around too long. Except for Ruthie, there wasn’t really anybody he had to tell.

Sooner or later he’d have to tell her. They’d been married forever, they went down to City Hall two days after he found out he’d passed the bar exam, and if he lived seven more years they’d celebrate their fiftieth. He’d be seventy-four, and it would be nice to live longer than that, it would be nice to last until ninety if you could walk and talk and think straight, but he’d settle for seventy-four. If somebody offered him a deal, seventy-four, no more no less, he’d sign on the dotted line.

The urologist couldn’t offer him that deal. He stood as good a chance on his own, thank you very much.

And, in the meantime, he’d just enjoyed every minute of a wonderful dinner with a beautiful woman, and he wasn’t done enjoying the evening, not by a long shot.

And, miracle of miracles, he’d managed to empty his bladder.

Washing his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. Everybody said he looked terrific, which was a neat trick because he was a fat old man who hadn’t looked so great when he was a thin young man, so how terrific could he possibly look, cancer or no cancer? But he didn’t look so bad.

He went back to the table, and evidently he’d been gone long enough for the waiter to bring dessert and for Susan to answer her own call of nature, because she was absent and his cheesecake and her fresh strawberries were on the table, along with a pot of coffee and two cups.

He sat down and regarded his cheesecake, and his mouth watered. He picked up his fork, then decided he could wait. It wouldn’t take her that long, she didn’t even have a prostate gland.

He reached for the coffee, stopped himself when he felt a hand on his thigh.

Jesus Christ, she was under the table! What did she think she was going to do down there?

And wasn’t that a stupid question?

If there was any doubt, it was erased quickly enough. Her hand moved to his groin, her fingers worked his zipper, and in seconds he felt her breath on him, and then she had him in her mouth.

He sat there, thrilled beyond description, and wondered if anyone in the room had a clue what was going on. Someone must have seen her get under the table. Did anyone know? And did it matter?

Oh, hell, nothing mattered but the sheer pleasure of it. It wasn’t just that he was getting a secret blow job in a public place from a beautiful woman, but that it was a remarkably artful blow job in the bargain. And she was in no hurry, either, she was taking her time, the little angel, she was making it last.

Well, she was already having her dessert, wasn’t she? Feeling devilish himself, he took a bite of the cheesecake.

“I’ve had my problems with Rudy,” Fran Buckram said, “but most of them were with him personally, not with the directions he took. Most of my policies probably wouldn’t differ all that greatly with what you saw for the past eight years.”

“We’re in better shape than we were eight years ago, Fran. Of course we’ve got a financial crunch we didn’t have this time last year, thanks to 9/11.”

“And that’ll be a lot better or a lot worse by the time 2005 rolls around, so there’s not much point in telling you how I’d respond to it. I can’t contrast my style with Michael’s because he doesn’t have one yet.”

“Rudy Lite,” Hartley Saft suggested.

“As a manager, well, I’d do what I did at One Police Plaza, and in Portland before that. Pick good people, make them accountable, and then let them do their jobs. Keep my eyes on them and my hands off.”

They were nodding. Good.

“I’d try to run the city more for the benefit of the people who live in it and less for the convenience of those who drive in to do business and then go home. That might mean pedestrianizing parts of Midtown Manhattan, it might mean limiting truck deliveries to off-peak hours. I’d need to run feasibility studies first, but those are both attractive options.”

More nods. They were less certain about this, but open to it.

He elaborated, giving them an informal version of the speech that brought him $3,500 when he delivered it to civic groups and fraternal organizations. He’d increase the budgets for the Parks Department and the library. He’d keep support for the arts a priority, but he’d hold off telling a museum curator what to hang on his walls. All in all, he’d be guided by the principle that a city had to serve its citizenry, guaranteeing their personal security and well-being while providing the most supportive framework possible for their growth and self-realization.

He broke off when the waiter brought Hartley Saft a brandy and refilled the coffee cups, and when the man was out of range he said, “Without being obvious about it, you might want to glance over at Maury Winters’s table.”

“He’s all by himself,” Boasberg said. “What did she do, walk out on him?”

“If she did, it didn’t break his heart. She left him the cheesecake, and I have to say he looks happy with it.”

“More than happy,” Buckram said. “Try ecstatic.”

“I grant you he’s enjoying himself.”

“And she didn’t walk out,” he told them, “and she didn’t go to the can, either.”

“What did he do, devour her? Little black dress and all?”

“You’re closer than you realize,” he said. “I think she’s under the table.”

“How the hell—”

“I’m a trained observer,” he said. “Once a cop, always a cop. Look at the expression on his face, will you? That’s more than cheesecake.”

God, it was exquisite.

The feeling of utter submission, kneeling unseen before him, servicing him invisibly, almost anonymously. And, one with it, the sense of being wholly in control.

His penis in her mouth was an iron rod in a velvet glove, so sweetly soft on the surface, so iron-hard within. She cupped his balls in her hand, ringed the base of his cock with her thumb and forefinger. He gasped when she tucked the tip of one finger into him, and she thrilled at that, and at the way the sphincter tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed...

She was in charge, and she at once played him like a flute and conducted him like an orchestra, raising the pitch, building toward a climax, then easing off, tightening her grip on the base of his penis to choke off his orgasm before it could start. Then building again, moving toward the finish, and backing off, and resuming, and...

There were women who hated to do this. There were women who point-blank refused to do it. Fewer with each generation, from what she heard, and girls Chloe’s age seemed to regard a quick BJ as an easy way to satisfy a man, less intimate than intercourse and not much more than a step up from a goodnight kiss. Her own generation saw it as more intimate, and her mother’s generation saw it as unacceptably intimate.

Did her mother give her father blow jobs? Well, not now, obviously, but when he was alive? That was something she didn’t want to think about, so she forced herself, pushing against the resistance, and for a moment she became her mother and she was on her knees sucking her father’s cock.

God, if people could read her mind they’d lock her up...

Maury played his own part so perfectly. Not a sound, except for that one sharp intake of breath when she’d worked her finger into him. He’d been silent since then, and utterly passive, and he kept his hands above the table, not reaching down to stroke her hair, or, God forbid, holding her head in place. He didn’t need to be in control, he could let her be in control, and this was delicious, just delicious, and she could let it go on forever, but she couldn’t, not really, and it was time, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it time?

This time she let the crescendo reach all the way to the coda, and his semen spurted and she drank it down and fancied that she could feel the energy of it radiating outward through her whole body all the way to her fingers and toes. She kept him in her mouth and sucked him, but gently now, gently, and felt him soften and shrink, and she sipped the last drop from him and wiped him dry with her napkin and tucked him back into his pants. And zipped him up.

She couldn’t have enjoyed the orgasm more if it had been her own.

After a long moment she said, softly, “Is anyone looking our way?”

“I can’t tell.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, and reached to remove an earring. She got out from under the table, holding up the earring in triumph, and refastened it to her ear before sitting down again.

He looked transformed, radiant. “You amaze me,” he said.

“If anyone was watching,” she said, “they saw a woman who dropped an earring and managed to find it again.”

“Unless they’ve been glancing over here off and on for the last ten minutes.”

“Is that how long I was down there?”

“I wasn’t checking my watch, you’ll be surprised to learn. You don’t care if anybody knows what just happened, do you?”

“No.”

“You even get a kick out of the idea.”

“A little bit,” she admitted. “I’m a naughty girl.”

“I was planning to take you home and punish you,” he said, “but I don’t know if I’ve got the strength. And I’ve got a bail hearing first thing in the morning.”

“For the case we’re not allowed to talk about?”

“I’m allowed, I’m just not inclined. And yes, for my newest client.”

“I should keep you up all night and let the bastard rot in jail. But I don’t mind an early night myself, Maury. Get the check and you can put me in a cab.”

“You won’t feel...”

“Unfulfilled? What we just did, I think I got as much out of it as you did.”

On the street she said, “I didn’t even tell you about my new artist. A black kid, he walked in while I was talking to you the other day with pictures of the sculptures his crazy uncle has been making out of junk he finds on the street.”

“Good?”

“Better than that, I think. Important. You’re going to buy a piece.”

“All right.”

“I’m giving him a show in the fall, and you’ll get to see it ahead of time, and we’ll pick out the best piece together. Unless you don’t like the work, but I think you will.”

“You generally know what I like.”

She squeezed his hand. “It’ll be late October or early November. And don’t worry, I know I’ve got jury duty the beginning of October. Maybe I’ll be on your jury.”

“My jury?”

“Your new client.”

He shook his head. “We won’t go to trial until the spring,” he said. “Maybe later than that. And you couldn’t be on the jury anyway.”

“Because I’m smart and chic and in the arts?”

“Because you knew the deceased, because you’ve already formed an opinion about the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and because you’ve enjoyed an intimate relationship with defense counsel.”

“Enjoyed is the word, all right. Also intimate. Maury? Do you think a blow job is more intimate or less intimate than fucking?”

“I think that’s your cab,” he said, and stepped to the curb and hailed it.

“If he could run for reelection tomorrow,” Avery Davis said of the current mayor, “he’d win in a walk. But a lot can happen in three and a half years. Everybody’s been waiting for him to step on his dick.”

“He hasn’t so far,” Saft pointed out.

“No, he’s handled himself well, which doesn’t surprise me, I must say. He’s the mayor now, not the head of a private corporation, and he’s bright enough to know the difference and behave accordingly.”

Boasberg said, “ ‘Yes, I tried marijuana. And I enjoyed it.’ ”

“So? That makes a refreshing change from I never inhaled. But it’s all moot, because he’s not going to run again in 2005. Either he’ll decide he’s had enough fun in politics, or he’ll try for Albany in oh-six. Pataki’s going to win this year, everybody knows that, and four years later his second term’ll be up and why wouldn’t Mike want to trade up?”

But wouldn’t he first run for reelection and use that as a springboard for Albany?

“He’ll have to pledge that he’s going to serve a full term. If he waffles it’ll hurt him during the campaign, and if he reneges on his promise that’ll hurt him, too. But, as we’ve been saying all evening, it’s all a long ways off.”

Everyone agreed that it was.

“Now the big question,” Irv Boasberg said. “Mets or Yankees?”

Buckram laughed, and they joined him. “Naturally, I support all the local teams. It’s my private opinion that anyone over the age of sixteen who still cares deeply about the outcome of a sports event more than half an hour after it’s over is a pretty clear case of arrested development. Unless he’s on the team, of course. Or owns it.”

“You read my mind,” Boasberg said. “I was just thinking of a particular club owner, and you can probably guess which one. But he is a case of arrested development, so the hell with him.”

“I agree all across the board,” Saft said, “except when it comes to the Knicks. That’s different.”

Someone told a sports story, and that led to another. A few minutes later Avery Davis looked up from signing the check and said, “Well, I think this was a good meeting, Fran. We’ll walk away from it with a better sense of who you are, and hopefully you’ll know us a little better as well.”

Outside, Davis held up a hand, and half a block away a limousine blinked its lights in acknowledgment. “I’m going to run these bozos home,” he said. “How about you, Fran? Can we drop you anywhere?” He said thanks, but he thought he’d like to walk off some of his dinner. “Which is one more reason why you haven’t put on weight,” Davis said.

The two other men got into the limo, and Davis drew Buckram aside. “You made a good impression,” he said. “It’s early days, but, just so you know, if the time comes that you decide to take your shot, I think you’ll find the support you need.”

“That’s very good to know,” he said.

“It’s always a consideration.”

It was, he thought. But first he’d have to figure out if he really wanted the job.