Recoil Read Free Page A

away with me and set up my own independent agency again?”
    â€œThat’s however you’d prefer to do it, Fred. I certainly don’t want to steal your clients away from you. But if you’d like to sell your end of it completely, I’d be willing to pay a substantial hunk for your string of clients. Provided each of them was willing to be represented by me instead of you, of course.”
    â€œWhat’s a substantial hunk?”
    â€œYou pick a figure and we’ll dicker.”
    Mathieson said, “You wouldn’t have maybe sent out a feeler or two in the direction of my principal clients?”
    â€œI might have. But I made it clear it was hypothetical.”
    â€œI see. Something like, ‘If Fred should retire, or die, or anything, how would you boys feel about being represented by good old Phil Adler?’ Something like that, Phil?”
    â€œDon’t get mad at me, damn it. Don’t try to put a sinister cast on it. I’m not doing anything underhanded.”
    â€œI’m a little slow today but I still don’t understand why you want to dissolve the partnership. We’re making damn good money. We’re having fun—at least I am. What’s wrong with it?”
    â€œI want to be on my own. I don’t want to have to consult anybody about decisions. Call it power hunger, call it vanity. I can’t explain it, really. I just want my own business again. Look, Fred, you’re late, you’d better get on home to Jan and your guests. But just think about it, all right? Will you do that?”
    â€œYes, I’ll think about it.” He left the office uncertain whether to be angry or only sad.
    2
    The traffic on Sunset Boulevard had thinned out and he made good time up over the top of the canyon and down the turns to his house on Beverly Glen. He recognized the Gilfillans’ Chrysler wagon parked in the oval driveway: They lived only five hundred yards away but they had become true Californians. He navigated the Porsche into the garage beside Jan’s convertible and went inside.
    Roger and Amy Gilfillan were down in the Pit looking at television news. They rattled their highball glasses at him. Jan came out of the kitchen, cross with him but she put on her company smile. It changed the patterns of her freckles. They kissed with dry lips.
    â€œIt’s late, you’re sore and I’m contrite.”
    â€œAll right.” She glanced at the clock. “You may as well go and pacify our lonely guests. I’ll have it on the table in fifteen minutes.”
    He went down into the room. An aspiring television star had built the house in the era of the Conversation Pit and this one looked like an indoor Olympic pool that had been emptied for the winter. It dwarfed even Roger Gilfillan, who had made a career out of being big enough to stand up to Duke Wayne in Republic prairie operas before he’d won a Supporting Actor Oscar as a genial drunken Texas millionaire in a soapy MGM titillation. Forty-six and still bemused, he seldom made anything but mindless action movies but he stood well up in the box-office top ten.
    Amy was tiny and blonde and cherubic. “You look like you just got trampled in a thousand-cow stampede. Come and set and let Roger mix your drink.”
    Mathieson settled into black leather cushions. Roger was uncoiling his grasshopper legs. “Bourbon?”
    â€œGod no. See if you can find Bloody Mary mix in there.”
    â€œRough lunch?” Roger pawed through the bar refrigerator.
    â€œYou could say that. Like a combat mission.”
    Roger had a high whinnying laugh. “We ought to take Amy and Jan on patrol some time, let them find out how their warriors earn combat pay. Who was it?”
    â€œMcQueen’s people. Business manager and two lawyers.” Mathieson stretched his legs out and bent his head back until something cracked in his neck.
    Roger said, “Everybody trying to get you