Eggers pressed a button on his phone.
“Yes, Mr. Eggers?” Jane asked.
“Come in, please.”
“We moved George Howard to a bigger office yesterday, didn’t we?”
“Yessir.”
“Give his old office to Herbert, and find him a decent secretary. Herbert is our newest senior associate. Send out the memo, and send a release to the papers and the law journals.”
“Yessir.”
“And who is our newest, greenest, most forlorn associate?”
Jane squinted at the ceiling for a moment. “That would be young Bobby Bentley,” she said.
“Tell him he works for Herbert now.”
“Yessir. Anything else?”
“Yes, type up a memo to payroll for my signature, giving Herbert a fifteen percent raise.”
Herbie made a loud coughing noise.
“All right, twenty-five percent.”
“Yessir!” Jane sped back to her desk.
Eggers looked at Herbie. “Why are you still here?”
“Thank you, Bill.” Herbie tried to leave without appearing to hurry.
11
Dino woke from a sound sleep with the sudden knowledge that his penis was in someone’s mouth, and that long, red hair was tickling his belly. He stuffed an extra pillow behind his head and watched, with growing excitement that ended in a veritable explosion. “Oh, God,” he moaned.
Shelley Bach moved up the bed to share his pillow. “Well,” she said, “I do know what you like.”
“I can’t deny that,” Dino said. He took a deep breath and said what he had to say. “Shelley, you can’t be here-it’s too dangerous for both of us.”
“You’re afraid that you’ll lose your job if you’re found consorting with a fugitive, right?”
“More than that, Shelley, I’m afraid that you’ll be in prison soon and that I will be, too. Can’t you understand that that is too high a price to pay for a good blow job?”
“A sublime blow job,” she pointed out.
“I agree, but they won’t put us in the same cell, and I can’t afford the tab when the FBI finally closes in on you.”
“They won’t,” she said. “Would you like to know the steps I’ve taken to prevent that from ever happening?”
“Good God, no! I don’t want to know a thing!”
“Listen, Dino, if it’s war between the FBI and me, it’s a fair fight.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute, but we have to end this and right now.”
“Oh, Dino,” she breathed, “you wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you? You know how I behave when people disappoint me.”