The Gentlemen's Hour

159

Later that morning, Petra watches Alan Burke peruse the flow chart that she created on her computer.

He’s dead silent for a good, long minute, then asks, “You have documentation of all this?”

“Yes.”

Alan walks over to the window and looks out at the city. “Do you have any idea how many friends, colleagues, and business associates of mine could be implicated by this?”

“I would expect quite a few,” she says.

She is, as usual, polite and proper, but he notices that the deferential tone that she normally adopts is missing. Its absence is simultaneously alarming and promising. “Well, you expect correctly.”

Petra hears the gentle mockery and wonders what it means. Is its import that Alan will fire her, run for cover, and pull the lid down over his head? That would be the smart thing to do, and Alan has built his career on doing the smart thing.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“That must have been very frightening.”

“It was.”

Yeah, he thinks, looking at her, you were so terrified that you found the pistol in your bureau drawer and calmly gunned down a professional hit man. How can I let talent like that walk out my door? “You realize that there are going to be about eight zillion lawsuits coming out of your chart here? And that many of them will be politically difficult for me, and for the firm? Do you know the pressure that’s going to come down on us from on high?”

“Absolutely.”

Alan turns away and looks out at the city again. Maybe, he thinks, it needs shaking to the core, maybe it’s time to take it apart and rebuild it, and maybe there are worse things to do in the last phase of your career.

He turns back to Petra and says, “Okay, start contacting homeowners and signing them up. Do an assets search on Paradise and its related companies with an eye to freezing them, and . . . why aren’t you already moving?”

“I want to be made partner,” she says.

“Or maybe I should just fire you,” Alan answers.

“I’ll require a corner office, of course.”

He trains his plea-bargaining, settlement-negotiating evil stare on her. She doesn’t blink.

Alan laughs. “Okay, gunslinger. Partner. Call maintenance and make it thus. But Petra—”

“Yes?”

“We’d better win.”

“Oh, we’ll win,” she says. “Alan, what about Corey Blasingame?”

“We have a meeting with Mary Lou in thirty,” he says.

“Did she give any hint?”

He shakes his head.