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it?”
    “ Just go!” Antonio pleaded. He sank
down into his swivel chair and clutched his head in his hands. Then
his head suddenly whipped up. “Not that way! The back
door!”
    “ Okay, okay.” After a few seconds
he heard the door slam and he was alone.
    For a long time he sat there unmoving. He had no
desire to face the world. Not after this. He didn’t know how he
would ever hold up his head in front of Liz or Doris Bucklin
again.
    For once he just didn’t know what to do.
    The thought came out of the clear blue.
    Anouk. His wife. He had to call Anouk.
    He rubbed his hands over his sweating face.
    She would know what to do. Anouk always knew just
how to take care of any situation.
    With trembling fingers he reached for the phone and
stabbed his home number. He listened to the rings. One. Two.
    “ Anouk . . . Anouk . . .” he willed
aloud, drumming his manicured nails on the glass slab.
    Maybe she’d gone out already.
    “ She’s got to be there,” he
murmured. “Anouk . . . come on. Oh, please, dear God,” he
prayed, “let her be there. She’ll know what to do.”
    Four rings. Five. “Come on, come on!” he moaned as the telephone rang a sixth time in his apartment on
Fifth Avenue.

 
    Chapter
5
     
    “ One of these days,” Anouk de
Riscal warned sweetly as she glanced at the hairdresser in the
tortoiseshell mirror, “someone, someplace, is going to cut off your
pecker. And when they do, don’t come to me for pity.”
    “ Oooo!” Wilhelm St. Guillaume
shrilled in mock horror as he teased a handful of Anouk’s gleaming
soft raven hair with extravagant flourishes. “Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy! Didn’t we sleep well?” His voice had an unplaceable,
vaguely Continental accent.
    “ We slept perfectly well,
thank you,” Anouk said archly. She was seated in queenly splendor
in her luxurious aubergine velvet, nineteenth-century Russian time
capsule of a bedroom, and smiled at the reflection of her spidery
hairdresser, who, when she was in town, came every two days to work
his magic on her in the privacy of her apartment.
    Wilhelm leered suspiciously at her and flapped a
limp wrist. “Or is it because I, who know every beautiful square inch of your lovely head, and who has not seen you in a
month—”
    “ Of course you haven’t, dear
Willie. I was in Careyes and Las Hadas.”
    “ I would have thought Brazil,
also.” His fingers crept spiderlike along her skull. “You see, I
have a marvelous memory, and these itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny new scars
behind your pretty little ears were definitely not there
before you left.” Triumphantly he lifted a whole handful of her
hair and made a production of examining the backs of her ears
closely. “Definitely Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, I would say!” His eyes
glowed at Anouk in the mirror. “Madame has had another face lift!”
he announced in a stage whisper.
    She didn’t miss a beat.
    “ And William S. Williams, late of
Chicago, Illinois, has a big mouth,” she said succinctly, “which he
will keep firmly shut. Or else Madame is not only going to find
herself a new hairdresser, but she’ll also spread the word about
town that that phony accent of yours, as well as that minor title
which you conferred upon yourself— both of which are highly suspect
as it is—are really just the imaginings of a butcher’s offspring
from the South Side.” She raised her eyebrows significantly and her
pupils took on a hard topaz-chip brilliance. “Do I make myself
clear, Willie, darling?”
    His jaw clicked open and snapped shut. “How did you
know?” he hissed, forgetting himself momentarily and dropping his
accent.
    “ I’ve known for rather a long time,
actually,” Anouk said casually, drumming her fingertips on the
velvet arms of her chair. Then her voice grew irritable. “Now will
you get on with it? I do not have all day, you know.”
    Wilhelm St. Guillaume, a.k.a. William S. Williams,
knew when he was beaten. He hung his head in shame and, without
another word,