MacKenzie Turner, fleet of foot in her pink, white, and blue leather Reeboks (she kept a pair of low-heeled black dress pumps in the bottom drawer of her desk), tried to make up for lost time by speed-walking to work. A stickler for punctuality, she would have double-timed it, but running would have meant working up an unpardonable and most unladylike sweat—hardly appropriate for the hushed old- world atmosphere of Burghley's.
"Damn and blast Charley Ferraro all to hell!" she growled furiously under her breath as her cassis-colored leather shoulder bag bounced against her lats with every hurried stride. She was never late for anything—never!
Catching the DON'T WALK light at Madison and Seventy-fifth, Kenzie saw, a block away, her place of employment. Burghley's, the self- proclaimed museum where the art was for sale. Eyeing the regal edifice, a sudden feeling of apprehension fluttered inside her, like a trapped bird desperately seeking escape. For the first time she wondered what the workday would bring.
A change in ownership.
What did that mean? Were cutbacks to be effected? Pink slips being readied? A tighter ship to be run?
Squaring her shoulders, she reminded herself that nothing could be gained through speculation.
She would find out soon enough.
Burghley's occupied the length and breadth of an entire city block, and was located at the sumptuous heart of one of the western world's prime luxury shopping districts, the eastern side of Madison Avenue between Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Streets. The building was a six-story, neo-Renaissance palazzo of white marble, and worthy of Commodore Vanderbilt himself.
But with one major difference.
At Burghley's, even the air rights brought in big moolah. Rising from the steeply angled verdigris roofs were twin campaniles—two thirty-four story residential high-rises named, appropriately enough, Auction Towers—built and managed by Burghley's International Luxury Realty Division, and advertised as the address, "Where Life Imitates Art."
The Towers had its own separate entrance on Seventy-third Street, and boasted a private security staff, attended underground garage, and around-the-clock white-glove service.
The entrance to the auction galleries proper, however, was appropriately located directly on Madison Avenue, where a pair of baronially scaled, etched-glass doors almost, but not quite, reached the second floor, which sported a continuous carved fretwork frieze—a blatant copy from the Doge's Palace in Venice.
BURGHLEY'S
FOUNDED 1719
The plaque was brass, discreet, and polished; no giant letters were needed to trumpet this institution of the art world. But along the sidewalk, recessed eye-level windows held back-lit, blown-up slides of items in upcoming auctions—a Beykoz rosewater sprinkler, a Renoir, a gilt samovar, a Tiffany dragonfly lamp.
Today, since time was of the essence, Kenzie didn't so much as glance at the photographs. Even the uniformed doorman, all spit and polish, whom she normally engaged in a few pleasantries, was taken aback by the speed with which she tore past him, yanking open the heavy glass door herself before he could jump to.
Once inside, she sketched a wave at the armed security guards manning the vast lobby and strode rapidly toward the sweeping staircase, virtually flying up it to the second-floor galleries, where she made a shortcut through the carefully lit collection of Highly Important French and Continental Furniture, Decorations, and Clocks, which was slated to go on the auction block the following day.
It was an eye-popping, mind-boggling assortment of opulent treasures, including marble cassolettes, ormolu chenets, mahogany gueridons, gilded console tables, regal bureaus, desks, and commodes, and more chairs than you could shake a leg at—all the more amazing, since auctions of one kind or another at this, the world's ultimate recycling center, were a bi-weekly event, which proved that, with enough money to blow, a palace could indeed be furnished with one-stop shopping.
Pushing open a metal door marked FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY, Kenzie plunged "backstage"—the staff's euphemism for the whole of Burghley's to which the general public was not admitted. She took the flight of concrete fire stairs two at a time and rushed down a narrow carpeted corridor to her tiny office, located in the rear of the building.
Glancing at her watch as she ran, she whispered, "Eek! Gadzooks!"
She was late! To be exact, forty-two hair-raising minutes late on this, of all days, when Burghley's new majority shareholder was likely to drop by!
She burst breathlessly into her office, a windowless, fourteen-by- fourteen-foot cube of a cell which she shared with two other members of the Old Masters Paintings and Drawings staff. There was just room enough for the three gunmetal gray desks, all groaning under piles of reference tomes and catalogues, and each facing the kind of wall-mounted lightboard doctors used for viewing X rays—used, in this case, to peruse oversized slides of items whose provenances or values needed to be established.
The first thing Kenzie noted was that while her friend, Arnold Li, was at his desk, her nemesis, Bambi Parker, was absent from hers.
"Ah so!" greeted Arnold in his best Chinese takeout voice. Grinning up at her, he spun around on his swivel chair. "The prodigal daughter arrive at wrong rast."
"And late, too, dammit!" Kenzie cried, lunging for the bottom drawer of her desk to fish out the leather pumps she kept there. "Late!"
"Rate?" Arnold was slim, handsome, and Eurasian: Chinese father, Caucasian mother. Gay, too, and very sharp. He grinned slyly, one eyebrow arched. "Too much ruvemaking, eh?"
"Oh, do stop with that incessant routine!" she snapped in annoyance. "Oh, shit!" she moaned, plopping into her chair and gazing at one of her pumps in dismay. She repeated a string of curses, slamming the shoe on her desk to emphasize each word. "Shit." Bang. "Shit." Bang.
"Whoa!" said Arnold, reverting to perfect English. "What's the crisis?"
"This." She brandished one shoe malevolently. "I forgot that the heel of this damn thing broke off yesterday! Now what do I do?" she wailed.
"Tear off the other one," Arnold said calmly. "Then they'll match. Flats are all the rage, or haven't you heard?"
"D-do you have any idea what these ... these things cost?" she sputtered in outrage.
He eyed her feet. "Well, then wear your ghetto flyers."
"You know I can't. 'Ms. Turner, have you forgotten?' " She mimicked Sheldon D. Fairey's secretary, Miss Botkin, to perfection. " 'Sneakers may be appropriate attire out on the playing field, but here at Burghley's, they are highly inappropriate—not to mention offensive!' "
That cracked Arnold up, but Kenzie just stared mournfully at her one good pump. After a moment's hesitation, and purposely averting her head, she held out the shoe. "Here," she said, looking away. "You break it off. I can't bring myself to do it."
Arnold took it and she busied herself attacking the laces of her Reeboks, cringing painfully when she heard the sharp snap of the heel.
"All done." Arnold cheerfully got up and with a flourish placed the pump on her desk. "If the shoe fits, wear it."
"Veeeeery funny." Scowling, she wriggled her feet into what, until now, had been her best pair of shoes, and upon which she had recklessly splurged a full week's salary. "And what have you got to be so cheerful about, anyway?" she growled.
"Why shouldn't I be cheerful?" Arnold asked.
"Well, because ... aren't we supposed to line up outside and greet the new owner, or something?"
"Not that I heard." He sat back down and calmly unwrapped his breakfast bagel. "Relax." He took a bite and chewed. "The only person I know of who's coming to visit is Her Royal Highness."
"Her Royal Highness!" Kenzie snapped her head around. "Which Royal Highness? Queen Elizabeth? Queen Sirikit? Queen Beatrix? Queen Noor?"
He cast her a sidelong look. "Try Princess Goldsmith on for size."
"Oh, ho!" Abruptly frowning, she poked a thumb at the third desk in the cramped office. "And where, if I may be so bold, is Miss Locust Valley Lockjaw?"
"How should I know?" Arnold shrugged dismissively. "And anyway, why should you care? I'd have thought you'd be rejoicing that Bambi's not here."
"That's beside the point." Kenzie pursed her lips, momentarily lost in thought. Then she looked over at him and said, slowly, "I just find it highly peculiar that she's not in ... especially today of all days. I mean, you know how she likes to suck up to the powers that be."
"No!" Arnold feigned shock and sat forward in his chair. Its vinyl upholstery squeaked. "You don't mean it! Our Bambi Parker?"
Kenzie turned to stare at the unoccupied desk some more. "Not that I really care," she remarked, "but it does make me wonder . . . where is Miss Perfect Parker?"
"My!" Bambi Parker marveled in a soft whisper. "Oh, my! You're hard already!"
Her fingers deftly unzipped the fly of Robert A. Goldsmith's king-size trousers, felt around for the opening in his baggy silk boxer shorts, and then unsnapped the two gussets.
The better to be eaten, the porcine man slid farther down in the mouse-colored velour seat. They were in the back of his black stretch Caddy, the one-way windows, prudently drawn curtains, and hermetically sealed silence cutting off the raucous, hard-edged world outside.
"Just drive," Goldsmith had growled to his chauffeur/bodyguard after Bambi had climbed inside at the prearranged corner. "I don't care if we just keep circling the goddamn block."
Which was exactly what they were doing now—going around and around Burghley's, catching the red light at every corner.
Slithering between his splayed legs, Bambi sank to her knees on the velour carpeting, barely conscious of the fact that the vehicle was moving, so smooth was the ride.
With clever fingers she dug his phallus out of his pants. By now she was familiar with every last vein, curve, and contour. It was very thick. Very red. And, alas, very stubby, with a big mushroom of a skin-ruffed knob, which never failed to remind her of one of those Dutch portraits with necks swathed in layers of lace. Long ago someone had botched his circumcision—but royally.
"Yummy!" she murmured, licking her lips and pretending greedy passion.
He grunted. "Just don't get any goddamn lipstick on my pants!"
"Don't worry." Bambi was way ahead of him, already wiping Estee Lauder's Knowing Red from her mouth with a handy Kleenex. Shoving the rumpled tissue under the seat, she got busy. Dexterously undid the belt from around his forty-seven-inch waist. Loosened his pin-striped, pleated gray wool trousers. Pulled them and the ultimate turn-off—cerulean blue silk boxer shorts sporting a pattern of hot air balloons—down around his knees. Then lowered her head into his lap.
Like a supplicant.
Or a skilled whore.
As her educated mouth closed around his penis, the new owner of Burghley's shut his eyes and remained perfectly still, content to do nothing but sprawl back and enjoy the ride.
Bambi Parker knew exactly which buttons to push. Three weeks of almost daily assignations had made her an expert on the sexual proclivities of one Robert A. Goldsmith.
They had met while he'd been negotiating to buy the venerable auction house and Sheldon D. Fairey, Burghley's chairman, CEO, and chief auctioneer, had rolled out the red carpet for the potential new owner. During the VIP tour, the two men had stopped in the main exhibition galleries to watch the mounting of an Old Masters Paintings exhibit, which Bambi Parker had helped oversee.
Blessed with a peripheral vision second to none, Bambi instantly recognized the billionaire out of the corner of an eye. And knowing the opportunity of a lifetime when she saw one, Bambi instantly seized the moment. With seeming spontaneity—pretending to ascertain that a Romney portrait (which was hanging perfectly straight), was indeed hanging perfectly straight—she took one step backward and then another and another until—presto!—she'd "accidentally" bumped smack dab into her prey.
"Oooooh!" she'd squealed, eyes widening in counterfeit horror while one hand flew up to her mouth. And turning around, she gushed in her best, whispery little girl's voice: "Gosh, I'm sooooo sorry!"
Robert A. Goldsmith wasn't blind—with his twenty-twenty vision, what he saw was a twenty-four-year-old genuine Barbie doll come to life. Tall, gorgeous, and perfectly groomed, everything about Bambi Parker was so flawless as to seem plasticized: skin, face, body—you name it— including Mykonos-white teeth, courtesy of lamination, and that special way she had of fluttering her long golden lashes before lowering her eyes demurely.
She was Robert A. Goldsmith's wet dream-come-true: a blonde, blue- eyed, hard-bodied shiksa.
Their gaze held for a full fifteen seconds.
Whereas Robert A. Goldsmith saw a living Barbie doll, Bambi Parker saw a big galoof with a shambling gait, size twelve feet, and a body that was best not described. But no matter. He possessed something all the male models in the world couldn't compete with—sheer power.
A silent communication passed between them, and Robert A. Goldsmith, who couldn't tell a Leroy Nieman from a Nattier—or care less— suddenly developed a keen interest in Old Masters. He'd diplomatically dismissed Sheldon D. Fairey by suggesting that, "as a departmental expert," Bambi ("Ms. Parker" at the time) act as his personal guide for this particular exhibit.
Sheldon D. Fairey, not about to get on the wrong side of the man he guessed, correctly, would soon become his boss, had wisely made himself scarce.
As soon as he'd gone, Robert A. Goldsmith smiled lecherously at Bambi and said, "I've got a feeling you've got a lot to teach me, l'il lady."
And Bambi, giggling and wiggling and batting her lashes, cooed, "And I've got the feeling you'd make a great pupil!"
In three shakes of a doe's tail, they'd ended up in the back of his limousine, where she proved her credentials—a Ph.D. in Deep Throat—for the first time.
Now, holding his penis in one hand, she flicked her tongue playfully around its bulbous head before sucking him all the way in. Then her lips closed around the base and her head bobbed up and down, up and down, until he tensed, uttered a slight groan, and his penis twitched as he shot his load.
Right into her mouth.
It wasn't exactly an earth-shaking event. In fact, if it hadn't been for the thick spurts of sticky goo, she'd hardly have known he'd ejaculated at all.
Averting her head and hiding her grimace, she whisked the wad of Kleenex back out from under the seat and spat discreetly into it.
For a while he just sprawled there, breathing heavily, his hooded eyes still closed. She used the time to advantage, scrambling back into her seat and swiftly repairing her makeup. Soon her face glowed in a palette of burnt oranges, spicy paprikas, and Knowing Red.
Then she pulled up his boxer shorts and trousers, nimbly snapped the gussets, zipped him up, and buckled his belt. "Now remember, Robert," she told him, "I'm always at your beck and call. Always," she repeated, giving him a significant look.
When she got out of the car, she leaned down through the open door, smiled in at him, and furled and unfurled her fingertips childishly.
"Bye-bye!" she whispered in that breathy little girl's voice of hers.
He nodded absently, his fingers already pushing the buttons which drew aside the curtains and activated the opaque partition which slid down into the back of the driver's seat.
"Office," he tersely told his chauffeur/bodyguard, an ex-boxer with the flattened nose to prove it.
During the ride down to Wall Street, Robert A. Goldsmith unsnapped his briefcase, took out a draft of GoldMart's third-quarter report, and before tackling it, briefly reflected on Bambi Parker.
Maybe he wasn't one to show his emotions, but truth be told, he needed sex as much as the next guy—hey, maybe even more. And, in his book, there was nothing, nothing on earth quite like a blow job to start the day off on the right foot—especially when it was a blonde Locust Valley/Piping Rock Country Club ex-debutante shiksa of a blow job.
But out of sight, out of mind.
His reflection over, he tackled the report.
"Miss Turner?"
The voice was thin, but the ancient gentleman who pecked his head in through the partially open door was even thinner. "If it's not inconvenient, I shall be requiring your expertise this afternoon."
"Mr. Spotts!" Kenzie and Arnold chorused in unison, their chairs shooting away from their desks as they launched themselves to their feet.
"You're back!" Kenzie exclaimed, her heart leaping in delight as Arnold threw the door wide, and the threesome embraced in a warm but gentle hug.
Mr. Spotts kissed Kenzie on the forehead and tousled Arnold's hair with a palsied, paternal hand. Then, regarding them both from over the tops of his half lenses, which were perched at the very tip of his nose, he said: "Yes, I'm back. At least for now, my dears, for now ..." He cupped a hand to his mouth and cleared his wattled throat. "But that's something we can get into later."
Kenzie had to tilt her head way back to look up at him—A. Dietrich Spotts was that tall. He was also very brittle and, due to severe osteoporosis, very stooped. His eyes were moist topaz, his head bald save for some thin, longish strands of white hair he wore combed back, and his skin was translucent from age. As always, he was immaculately dressed. Today he had on a hand-tailored dark gray wool suit, white shirt with pale gray stripes running through the cotton fabric, a beautifully knotted bordeaux silk tie patterned with tiny rooks, and a matching pocket square.
For the moment the three of them stood there, contently soaking up one another's company. Despite more than a half century's difference in their ages, they got along famously.
"At least now that you're back, things will finally return to normal!" Kenzie said happily, giving the old man another tender hug.
"Well?" Arnold inquired. "What's the prognosis?"
Mr. Spotts clicked his tongue against his teeth. "The good news, according to the quacks, is that I'll live."
"Then why the long face?" Kenzie asked. "What's the bad news?"
"Bad," said Mr. Spotts, giving a feeble sigh. "Very bad."
"Well, just how bad?" Kenzie, exchanging glances with Arnold, inquired anxiously.
Mr. Spotts sighed, flicked a speck of lint from his sleeve, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, as though to stem the flow of pain. "Bad enough that I can no longer work," he warbled softly.
Kenzie and Arnold stared at him speechlessly.
"What do you mean, you can't work?" Arnold finally asked, once he found his voice.
"Those damn quacks insist that I take it easy. Told me I must retire and enjoy myself. Humph!" He shook his head, his wattle and dewlaps quivering with indignant outrage. "How can I enjoy retirement when art is my life's blood? Can you tell me that?"
"Oh, Mr. Spotts!" Kenzie moaned, looking crestfallen.
Mr. Spotts lifted a gnarled pale hand. "Enough of that. The last thing I want to discuss right now are my cardiovascular problems. In the meantime, Miss Turner, I've been invited to a party tonight by Prince Karl- Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen, one of our most valued clients. I always saw to him personally in the past, so I don't believe you ever had the opportunity of meeting him."
Kenzie shook her head. "I've seen pictures of him in the columns, but that's about it."
"Then all the more reason for me to introduce you. If you're free this evening, I'd be delighted if you would accompany me."
"You're asking me out on a date? Oh, Mr. Spotts! How sweet!"
"Not a date," he corrected, giving her a censorious look over his half glasses. "It's one of those loathsome high society events I usually go out of my way to avoid. However, in this case—" Mr. Spotts shrugged eloquently.
"I'd love to go," Kenzie assured him warmly.
"Good. Oh, and do dress up. It's black tie. Anyway, we'll talk more later. If you're both amenable, perhaps the three of us can have lunch together?" He looked inquiringly from Kenzie to Arnold.
"Sure!" Kenzie enthused.
"That'd be great!" Arnold added.
"Splendid. Lunch will be my treat." Then, lifting a trembly hand in a half wave, Mr. Spotts ducked back out. From the way he shuffled along to his office, it was obvious he was on his way to clean out his desk.
"Poor Mr. Spotts," Kenzie empathized as she slowly sank into her chair and swiveled around to face Arnold. "Retirement will kill him," she said quietly. "You know that."
"Only too well," he answered. "For him, Burghley's has always been home. If they'd have let him, he'd have eaten and slept here."
"You know, it's weird. But I really can't imagine this place without him."
"You're not the only one."
It was true. A. Dietrich Spotts was an institution—the only person left at the New York branch who had been there from the very day when it had first opened its doors, nearly forty-two years earlier. For over three decades now, he had headed the Old Masters Paintings and Drawings department, and neither Kenzie nor Arnold needed to be told that without him, things would never again be the same.
"Hi, guys!" intruded the bright, itty-bitty little chirp that set their teeth on edge as Bambi Parker breezed in, hoisting her Bottega Veneta bag onto her desk.
Mumbling desultory "Hi's," Arnold and Kenzie quickly buried their noses in work.
"Am I late?" Bambi asked, all wide-eyed innocence. "I think my watch has stopped." She made a production of shaking her wrist, frowning at the thin gold timepiece, tapping its face with a fingernail, and then holding it against her ear.
Arnold rolled his eyes; Kenzie, unable to help herself, glanced down at her nemesis's elegantly shod feet. Bambi's Roberto Vianni grosgrain pumps were perfectly intact, just as she'd known they would be. But then, Bambi's heels never broke, just as her palomino pantyhose never ran, split ends were unknown to her, and her fingernails never, ever chipped or broke.