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again.
     
    Oliver had misfired during a brief fling with international banking. He responded to logic, however, and it was logical for him to rebound into broadcast journalism as a career. From that came an application to Columbia University at twenty-three and tuition bills approaching thirty thousand. Lou’s pension from twenty-five years of military service was a start, but now he needed more than that, lots more.
     
    Under the World Trade Towers, Lou stepped out of the car as the doors slid open. He strode to the escalators and through the turnstile, and then stepped nimbly onto the long escalator that carried him to the promenade level of the complex. Another short escalator ride deposited him at street level in downtown Manhattan.
     
    He made a right turn coming out of the World Trade Center and walked past NYU, through the Trinity Churchyard, across Broadway. He walked into the shadows of Wall Street, a chill wind burning his face, a kind of low roar joining the dusty air, pushing furrows through American flags that lined the marble canyon walls.
     
    The main offices of Pierson Browne were on the second floor of 14 Wall. It was exactly nine-thirty when he told the receptionist, a woman who could've been Terri Garr, that he was Mr. Christopher. Patricia was expecting him. The receptionist asked him to please have a seat behind the potted plants while she checked Ms. Buck’s availability.
     
    It was nine-fifty when Terri Garr opened the door and said, “Come on in, Mr. Christopher,” then quietly slipped out behind him.
     
    Buck was out of her chair and halfway across the room by the time he got in the door; her handshake was a brief, hard clasp. She wore a short brown skirt, a beige blouse that hugged slightly across her breasts, and a signature scarf draped around her neck and pinned at the side. Her hair was black with one streak of gray, pulled back straight from her face. She wore a light shade of lipstick, and the whole effect made it look as if she had just emerged from a cabana.
     
    “Now that you’re here, I remember you very well, Louis. What was it, four years ago when we first chatted? Cal says you’re doing fine out there in Paramus.” She had small humor lines at the corners of, and just below, her large, black eyes. And when she smiled, her whole face seemed to flash—a flash that said, “look out.”
     
    “Good to see you again,” Lou said. If you’re expecting a “Ms. Buck” out of me, you’ll have a long wait.
     
    “You’re not used to the wind down here in Manhattan,” she said, glancing at his ruffled hair. “I like your shoes.” Flash. “How do you like Paramus?”
     
    “How could you not like Paramus?” he said, ignoring the dig at his hair.
     
    The office was immaculate. Buck used a Sheraton writing table as a desk, its surface barren save for a thin crystal bud vase and a yellow rose. Her chair was black leather. Next to it, by the large window that overlooked Wall Street, a tall dictionary stand held a cream telephone console that periodically blinked red.
     
    Buck motioned to the corner of the office where a camelback sofa sat between two big wingback chairs and faced one of those Chinese Chippendale tea tables. What had she paid for that little gem? Maggie would have flipped.
     
    “Would you like a cup of coffee, Louis? I’m going to have one. I can’t get started in the morning unless I have some caffeine.”
     
    “Yes, I’d like a cup,” he said, timing it so that he sat down on the sofa at just about the same time Buck dropped into one of the wingbacks and crossed her legs, exposing a healthy, tanned thigh.
     
    Okay, you have a hell of a thigh, but I’ll roast in hell before I ever let you catch my eyes on it. In fact, if I had a cup of coffee, I’d set it right out there on that thigh, saucer and all.
     
    “Winnie’ll be in, in a minute. How long have you been out in Paramus, Louis? Cal said it’s been long enough to start getting