Stuart Woods: Dirt

Henry didn’t open his eyes. “If I can,” he whimpered.

Amanda rearranged herself slightly, then bent over and took his penis into her mouth. Henry gave a little groan and began to respond.

At that moment, the doors to the suite’s bedroom burst open with a bang, and the room was filled with light.

“Over here, Amanda!” a man’s voice shouted as a flashbulb went off.

Amanda sat straight up in bed, her mouth open, her eyes wide. Her left hand still rested on Henry’s penis. “What?!” she screamed. There were all sorts of lights, those that flashed and those that burned steadily.

“Get out!” Amanda screamed, shaking a fist at the lights.

Henry sat frozen, dumbfounded.

“Just one more, Amanda!” the man’s voice shouted.

Amanda picked up a heavy clock from the bedside table and threw it at the light as Henry suddenly came to life. He started toward the intruders, but the bedroom doors were slammed in his face. He threw his shoulder against them, then howled in pain.

Amanda did what she most wanted to do in the world: she screamed.

An hour later, fully dressed but still trembling, Amanda fled the hotel, got into the back of the Cadillac, and was driven home. She looked over her shoulder but saw no witness to her leaving. She was in control again, and she had begun to assess the damage. It promised to be considerable.

Amanda walked into the office suite of her penthouse, dressed in her standard uniform of Chanel suit, Ferragamo shoes, plain gold jewelry, and a gold Cartier Panther wristwatch and bracelet.

Her staff of three, at their desks five minutes before her always precise nine o’clock arrival, leapt to their feet as one, welcoming her back and complimenting her on how tanned and rested she looked. She shook each of their hands, received their compliments, and sent them back to their desks, save her secretary, the trusty Martha, who had been with her for her entire career as a columnist.

“Ready for your messages?” Martha asked, holding up a batch of yellow slips.

“Not yet,” Amanda replied, slipping behind her little French desk. She loved the desk. Sister Parrish, the doyen of New York interior designers, had found it especially for her when she had done the apartment a few years before her death. “Before I do anything else, get me Bill Eggers at Woodman and Weld. He should already be at his desk.”

Martha returned to her desk, and a moment later the green light on Amanda’s phone flashed; her party was on the line, waiting. Amanda did not converse with other people’s secretaries.

“Bill,” she breathed into the phone. “How are you, darling?”

“I’m wonderful, Amanda,” the lawyer replied. “How was your holiday?”

“Just perfect. I’m fully rested and raring to go. What was Hickock’s reaction to our latest contract proposal?”

“I called him on Friday, but he’s putting me off,” Eggers replied. “He says somebody in the legal department is on vacation, but to tell you the truth, I think he’s just not giving it his full attention. After all, he’s got another two months and three weeks before your contract expires. He’s used to negotiating with the print unions right up to and past deadlines.”

Amanda frowned, then forced her facial muscles to relax. Having recently had some lines surgically removed, she didn’t want new ones cropping up. “He’s not going to have that luxury,” she said.

“You want me to call him again?”

Amanda thought for a moment. “No,” she replied. “Meet me in the lobby of the Galaxy Building at precisely ten minutes past one this afternoon.”

“Do you already have an appointment?”

“No, but he’ll see me.”

“If you say so, Amanda, but listen, I have to give you my best advice on this before you do anything rash; that’s my responsibility.”

Amanda sighed. “Go ahead, Bill.”

“Okay, you’re in a good negotiating position; your readership is slightly up in the home paper, and well up in syndication. You’re not overpaid, at the moment, and what we’re asking for is not out of line with the numbers involved. However, it’s almost never good to appear eager when you’re dealing with Dick Hickock; he’ll have you for breakfast, if he thinks he has any sort of edge. My advice is to wait, not even call him, just wait for his call. He knows exactly when your contract is up, and he won’t ignore the deadline and risk losing you to another paper. Sit tight, and you’ll get most of what you want. There, I’ve said it; what do you want to do?”

“Precisely ten past one, at the Galaxy Building.”

“See you there.”

Amanda hung up and began doing something she had forced herself to put off: She went through the New York and L.A. papers quickly, looking for any reference to the incident of the night before. As she had suspected, there was nothing. Every paper had closed well before the photographs were taken at the hotel, and nobody would have been fool enough to print the story without substantiation. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief; she had until early evening, when the show biz news programs came on, after the evening news.

Amanda got up, walked to the door, and leaned against the jamb, looking out into the open bay where her secretary and two assistants sat. Of the three, only Martha had known where she had spent the past weekend, and nobody, but nobody, could torture the information out of that woman. While the others hadn’t known, they might have somehow picked up something around the office. Still, each of them was well paid and, apparently, happy in his or her work. One, Helen, was a young woman of thirty who had been with her for three years; the other, Barry, was a gay man who had been with her for eight. There was not a naive bone in Amanda’s body, but her best judgment told her that the news had been leaked from somewhere else, most likely from her lover’s end, although he had denied any such thing. Most likely his wife had put a detective on them, but that remained to be seen.

“All right, Martha,” Amanda said, “let’s go through the messages.”

At nine minutes past one the elderly Cadillac glided up to the main entrance of the Galaxy Building, and Amanda stepped out; Bill Eggers was waiting in the lobby. It was lunchtime, and the two were alone together in the elevator.

“Amanda, won’t he be at lunch at this hour?” Eggers asked.

“Dick Hickock always has lunch at his desk on Mondays,” she replied. “Always.”

“Are you sure he’ll see you?”

“He won’t have a choice,” Amanda said.

“Jesus,” the lawyer said under his breath.

They stepped out on the thirtieth floor, into a paneled and hushed hallway. The receptionist’s desk was empty; a sign on the desk said,

THIS FLOOR IS CLOSED UNTIL 3:00 P.M. FOR ASSISTANCE, PLEASE GO TO THE MAIN RECEPTION DESK ON THE TENTH FLOOR.

“Follow me,” Amanda said. She strode down the hall, her footsteps silenced by the thick carpeting, through a double door marked “Chairman,” across a reception room, and into the office of Richard M. Hickock, chairman of the board of Galaxy Media. Dick Hickock sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves, his necktie undone, the Wall Street Journal open before him, eating a huge sandwich.

“Hello, Dick, darling!” Amanda enthused, walking behind the desk and planting a kiss on his cheek, leaving a smear of cerise.

Hickock had just taken a large bite out of his sandwich, and he struggled to get it chewed and swallowed so that he could speak. By the time he had, Amanda and her lawyer were seated in a pair of chairs to his right.

“You know Bill Eggers, don’t you?” Amanda asked.

Hickock nodded and washed down food with a glass of beer.