your time. We will be waiting to hear from you, Montaro.”
“You’re welcome, Colette,” he said.
They shook hands firmly. Caine was impressed to find that her hand was dry—there was no sign of nerves. She’s cool, this one. A clever dealer, sharp beyond her years, he thought, then steered his visitors to the door.
“Montaro, if you find you can accommodate us tomorrow, we would appreciate it if you would make the procedure a private affair, limited to just the three of us,” Freich said before Caine opened the door into the reception area.
Caine stood staring at the door long after his visitors had disappeared into the main hallway. Nancy MacDonald hovered quietly by.
“Get ahold of Michen Borceau in Research. Tell him I’ll be coming into the lab tomorrow for a few hours,” Caine finally told her. “Cancel everything for tomorrow.”
“Everything?” she asked.
“Everything.”
“But, Mr. Caine, you have half a dozen meetings tomorrow.”
“Reschedule all of them,” Montaro said. “Then, get busy with Borceau. I want to know when he can make the lab available tomorrow. Then, call Freich and Beekman to set up the time. They’re at the Waldorf Towers, Suite 2943.”
“Mr. Caine?”
“Nancy, please, just do as I ask,” he said, and then he closed his door.
4
THE STUDY OF MONTARO CAINE’S HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD COLONIAL in Westport, Connecticut, was as well appointed as that of any belonging to his neighbors, who included investment bankers, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs like Montaro himself. A portable bar was set up in front of a bay window that overlooked the patio and Cecilia Caine’s lovingly tended garden. But today, all these exquisite trappings provided little comfort to Montaro as he sat in a black leather Eames sofa beside his wife and daughter, listening to the harsh words spoken by his family’s bespectacled, nearly bald lawyer, Gordon Whitcombe. Montaro’s professional life at Fitzer Corporation was nearly shattered, he was meeting with Herman Freich and Colette Beekman the following morning about a mysterious coinlike object, and now there was this.
“I have to know everything that the chief of police knows,” Whitcombe was saying, leaning forward in his chair and repeatedly stabbing a finger at seventeen-year-old Priscilla Caine for added emphasis. “And everything the dean knows. Then, I gotta know some things they don’t know.” He tugged at his tie, stretched his collar with an index finger, and stared intimidatingly at Priscilla, a tall, slender young woman who had inherited her father’s self-assurance but not yet his capacity for making smart decisions.
Montaro’s weary, expressionless face offered little sympathy for his daughter, so Priscilla cast a pleading glance at her mother while Whitcombe relentlessly probed her for information. He said he wanted to know all about Priscilla’s life at Mt. Herman, the boarding school where she had been threatened with expulsion and possible criminal charges for supposedly dealing marijuana and cocaine. Priscilla cast her gaze down toward a dainty, wrinkled handkerchief—white and embroidered with strawberries—which had been severely stressed by her nervous fingers.
Priscilla said nothing. Montaro felt his wife stiffen next to him as tears welled up in her eyes and began slowly rolling down her cheeks. He saw Cecilia’s lips begin to tremble as she watched Gordon Whitcombe stripping away Priscilla’s defenses.
“Now,” Whitcombe continued, “how many times per week did you use?”
“I told you,” Priscilla mumbled.
“No, you didn’t. You said more than once. Exactly how many times is more than once?”
“I’m not an addict.”
“I know you’re not, Prissy,” Whitcombe monotoned.
“Then stop treating me like one.”
Cecilia Caine made as if to change positions on the couch so that she could sit next to her daughter and comfort her, but Montaro’s arm restrained her. “No. Stay out of it,” he said, recalling a time when he had been a boy and his grandfather had stopped his mother from comforting him. Montaro had had to make adult decisions from the time he was eight years old, and he knew that, at seventeen, Priscilla was more than old enough.
“Let me go, damn it,” Cecilia told her husband in a sharp whisper.
“I said stay out of it,” said Montaro. “She’s a big girl now. And she’s going to have to deal with this without you.”
Cecilia gave in to her husband’s hold and slumped back into the sofa. For his part, Whitcombe seemed to pay no attention to the little drama that had just flared up between Priscilla’s parents. Instead, he got up and ambled toward the portable bar, the contents of which represented Montaro’s own drug of choice. Montaro could have used a scotch at this very