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stepped into his office when Todd Foxworth, even more cheerful than yesterday, waved to him and asked him if they could have a chat. An ironic thought occurred to Monroe—that Foxworth had changed his mind and was going to give him a good raise after all. Would he still sell the confidential info? This was a dilemma. But he decided, hell, yes, he would. It’d make up for last year’s insulting five percent raise.
    Monroe sat down in Foxworth’s cluttered office.
    It was a joke in the agency that Foxworth didn’t exactly carry on a coherent conversation. He’d ramble, he’d digress, he’d even make up words. Clients found it charming. Monroe had no patience for the man’s scattered persona. But today he was in a generous mood and smiled politely as the rumpled old man chattered like a jay.
    “Charlie, a couple things. I’m afraid something’s come up and that invite for golf this weekend? I know you’d probably like to hit some balls, were looking forward to it, but I’m afraid I’ve got to renege on the offer. Sorry, sorry.”
    “That’s okay. I—”
    “Good club, Hunter’s is. You ever play there? No? They don’t have a pool, no tennis courts. You go there to play golf. Period. End of story. You don’t play golf, it’s a waste of time. Of course there’s that dogleg on the seventeenth . . . nasty, nasty, nasty. Never near par. Impossible. How long you been playing?”
    “Since college. I really appreciate—”
    “Here’s the other thing, Charlie. Patty Kline and Sam Eggleston, from our legal department, you know ’em, they were at Chez Antibes last night. Having dinner. Worked late and went to dinner.”
    Monroe froze.
    “Now I’ve never been there but I hear it’s funny the way the place’s designed. They have these dividers, sort of like those screens in Japanese restaurants, only not Japanese of course because it’s a French restaurant but they look sort of Japanese. Anyhoo, to make a long story short they heard every word you and Hank Shapiro said.So. There you have it. Security’s cleaning out your desk right now and there’re a couple guards on their way here to escort you off the property and you better get yourself a good lawyer because theft of trade secrets—Patty and Sam tell me this; what do I know? I’m just a lowly wordsmith—is pretty damn serious. So. Guess I won’t say good luck to you, Charlie. But I will say get the hell out of my agency. Oh, and by the way, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you never work on Madison Avenue again. ’Bye.”
    Five minutes later he was on the street, briefcase in one hand, cell phone in the other. Watching boxes of his personal effects being loaded into a delivery truck destined for Connecticut.
    He couldn’t understand how it’d happened. Nobody from the agency ever went to Chez Antibes—it was owned by a corporation that competed with one of Foxworth’s big clients and so it was off limits. Patty and Sam wouldn’t have gone there unless Foxworth had told them to—to check up on Monroe. Somebody must’ve blown the whistle. His secretary? Monroe decided if it was Eileen, he’d get even with her in a big way.
    He walked for several blocks trying to decide what to do and when nothing occurred to him he took a cab to Grand Central.
    Bundled in the train as it clacked north, speeding away from the gray city, Monroe sipped gin from the tiny bottle he’d bought in the club car. Numb, he stared at the grimy apartments then at the pale bungalows then mini estates then the grand estates as the train sped north and east. Well, he’d pull something out of the situation. He wasgood at that. He was the best. A hustler, a salesman . . . . He was grade-A.
    He cracked the cap on the second bottle, and then the thought came to him: Cathy’d go back to work. She wouldn’t want to. But he’d talk her into it. The more he thought about it the more the idea appealed to him. Damn it, she’d hung out around the house for