The Hinky Bearskin Rug (3 page)

“Are you the
boss now, Maida?” Tannyhill said nastily.

Jewel thought
for a minute that Ms. Sacker would cave. Then the woman stood up slowly and
looked Tannyhill in the eye.

To Jewel’s
surprise, Tannyhill left.

Maida Sacker turned an face of covert triumph to Jewel. “It’s
difficult for me to talk about possible negative aspects of our corporate
culture. Part of my job is keeping those aspects under control and preventing
them from becoming public knowledge. Those are two very different tasks. It all
depends—”

“Whether the
cut-up is a boss or a secretary. Or both.”

Maida closed
her eyes. “Administrative assistant. Well. Let’s get on with our entry
interview.” Her lips twitched. “Can you type?”

o0o

Luckily for
Jewel’s patience, Maida handed her over to Sharisse, one of the secretaries,
I beg your pardon, we call them
administrative assistants,
for orientation, after it was established that,
yes, Jewel knew her way around a computer. Sharisse showed Jewel her own corral
and made sure she could find the files she would need. Pretty girls in cheap,
fragile, girlish, flirty-tailored outfits passed by, one at a time. Sharisse
introduced the new temp. Jewel felt like a milch cow trying to pass as a
racehorse.

Sharisse was
the assistant of Hugh Boncil, surviving partner and now the only principal
since old John Baysdorter had handed in his dinner pail. In a confidential tone
she informed Jewel that Mr. Tannyhill, who had been “First Senior” for years,
whatever that meant, would soon add his name to the company.

“Lovely. And I
care because?” Jewel snarled before she could get control of her mouth.

Sharisse
looked at her with huge, shocked eyes. “But you’re Steven’s temporary
assistant.”

Jewel
whistled. Maida hadn’t had the nerve to tell her this. Either that or Maida had
a sadistic sense of humor. Jewel stared at Sharisse and wondered which of them
was getting punished, the undercover temp or Mr. Tannyhill. “That dickhead is
my boss?”

A tiny smile
creased the corners of Sharisse’s mouth.

Jewel
whispered, “I don’t suppose you drink mudslides.”

Sharisse
dimpled. “Maybe Wednesday lunch?”

“It’s a date.”

Sharisse was a
lot more relaxed after this, and Jewel began to see past her glossy finish to
the shy, earnest girl underneath. She sat with Jewel in her new corral and
helped her puzzle through the paperwork stacked up in Steven Tannyhill’s
assistant’s tray.

Steven showed
up at length, striding right past Jewel into the window office behind her,
swinging a briefcase as if it were a tennis racket. In spite of his attempt to
bully Maida Sacker this morning, his taut, well-groomed machismo appealed to
Jewel. He gave off the message,
I can
have any woman in this room.

This was not
to be encouraged, however.

“Yo, temp,” he
commanded casually, sticking his head out of his office. “Call me a cab.”

Sharisse
glanced sideways at Jewel.

Jewel called
back to him, “Is your finger broken? Call it yourself.”

Sharisse
gasped.

Steven stared
at Jewel, his head showing past the door sideways like a hound dog peering
around a fence. A puzzled smile crossed his face. He sighted along his
pistol-finger. “Bang.” Then he disappeared into his office.

“Holy shit,”
Jewel said. “That guy is spoiled rotten.”

Sharisse
tittered. “C’mon on, Jewel, tell us how you really feel.” She seemed more
shocked by Jewel’s language than by her defiance to the next partner of BB. She
whispered, “He doesn’t treat his girl near as nice as the other guys do.”

Jewel would
have asked a question, but at this moment an older man walked up to her corral
and laid a slightly trembly, age-spotted hand on the top rail. He said cozily, “Sharisse,
honey, did I give you that Franklin letter?”

Sharisse
looked up with a dazzling smile. “You did, and I finished it. It’s in your
briefcase.”

“Thanks. No,
don’t get up, I’m fine.” He patted the mahogany rail as if it were Sharisse’s
head. “You just keep on with what you’re doing.” With a pleasant,
denture-assisted smile, he strolled on.

“My boss,”
Sharisse said with pride. “Mr. Boncil.” There was a funny little tone in her
voice, and Jewel turned to look searchingly at her.

Sharisse
raised her eyebrows. “What?”

“You’re
sleeping with him,” Jewel blurted. Then she shook her head. “Never mind.” She’d
never get the informant outside of a pitcher of mudslides this way. “Sorry I
spoke.”

Sharisse went
back to the file she was sorting. “I’m a single mother,” she said quietly.

“I see,” Jewel
said, wondering what the hell she had stepped into. And, because of those
yet-undrunk mudslides, she added, “Of course.”

“Might I
indeed be arrested for driving with too much spirit?” Randy said to Clay as
they waited in Jewel’s Tercel for Jewel to get off work.

Clay shrugged.
“I guess.”

“But on
television only criminals and comely women are detained for driving.”

“Sadly, life
is not enough like TV. I wish she wasn’t doing this stupid job.” In Clay’s
view, undercover should take place only in the haunts of the rich and famous.

It was
four-thirty. Men in fancy suits came out of the office tower, looking at their
fancy watches, talking on their phones. They jumped into cabs or private cars
or marched briskly into the bar on the street level of the tower.

Clay drummed
on the steering wheel. “Where’s all the women?”

“Is that why I
am not permitted to drive this evening?” Randy said with an edge in his voice.
Good, it was about time he started acting needled. Clay had been needling him
for nearly three weeks, since the end of the last job. He’d begun to think the
haughty Englishman had no nerves at all.

When Clay didn’t
answer, Randy said drily, “Perhaps I drive not too badly but too well.”

Bingo.
The mark takes the fly.
“It’s rush hour,
dude,” Clay said in a kinder tone. “You’d hash it, and she would hate that.
Didn’t they have traffic cops when you came from?”

“We had no
traffic control of any kind. Bow Street Runners had more important things to do
than to harass gentlemen for the speed of their horses.” Randy was silent a
moment. “I once drove from London to Brighton in four and a half hours. Not at
‘rush hour,’ as you call it. By moonlight, before dawn. Match bays, two teams,
one stabled in town, one on the Brighton road.” He sounded wistful and
off-guard.

“Fast, huh.
How fast was considered fast?”

“Sixteen miles
an hour at a canter. Faster if you put ’em along, but one could not, of course,
spring ’em in town.”

“And you never
hit anything?”

“I was no
whipster,” Randy said with amusement. “Any man may own blood cattle if he can
afford them, but he won’t drive them hard more than twice. Horses are tricksier
than cars.”

“Cars are
hard,” Clay said indignantly. “Try handling a clunker like this on the
expressway in the rain at rush hour.”

“It’s not
raining now.”

Clay let that
remark lie between them a couple of beats. “Don’t think I don’t know what
you’re up to.”

“I want to
drive. There is no subterfuge.”

Clay huffed. “Criminy!
All right, all right.” He switched seats with Randy.

Randy settled
behind the wheel with a satisfied little wiggle.

“Seat belt,”
Clay said.

“We are
stationary.”

“Seat belt.”

“Such petty
tyranny,” Randy said.

“It’s the law.”

“Which you
honor so much.”

Clay said with
as much annoying patience as possible, “A con artist has the sense not to get
busted for a lousy seat-belt charge.”

At that moment
the office building started tossing out dozens and dozens of women. Out they
poured, fat ones, skinny ones, tall ones, short ones, every single one dressed
like a real female, high heels flashing, all legs and hair and flirty clothes,
chattering and giggling and shouldering against each other through the door of
the bar on the street level.

Clay sighed. “Ed
should have sent me in there.”

Randy looked
at his watch. “She’s late.”

“She’s the
boss. And she won’t let you drive.”

“She wants me
to acquire independence.”

“The least you
could do is stay home once in a while and, like, do the laundry or something.
Run the vac. Cook dinner.”

“If you have
tired of teaching me,” Randy said pointedly, “I will ask her.”

“All right,
all right. Let’s work on your identity. What’s your social security number?”

“Two zero
four, nine one, nine eight five three.”

“Born?”

“Guam, 1980.”

“Employment?”

Randy paused. “Companion,”
he grated.

“I’m thinking
we change that to houseboy,” Clay said thoughtfully. “A companion doesn’t skank
off and bone the suspect in the middle of an undercover operation and then
disappear for days when the person he’s companioning needs backup,” he said,
referring to how Randy had messed up on their last undercover case.

“You
found my absence convenient,” Randy said, now sounding
pissed off.

“I certainly
did. Jewel knows who she can count on. Plus, she’s good company,” Clay said,
alluding delicately to the fact that he’d got Jewel into bed twice while Randy
was waiting for Jewel to rescue him from being magically trapped in the
suspect’s bed. “I was surprised you gave us a chance for quality time — surprised
and grateful.”

Randy grunted.

Clay pushed. “I’ve
been meaning to ask you, how many times did you do my stepmother while you were
haunting that bed?”

“I never kiss
and tell,” Randy said drily, and Clay felt himself go hot. “She’s a very sweet
woman.”

Sheesh! So
Clay had a little Oedipal something for his stepmother. Randy sure knew where
to stick the knife in. Clay said with less than his usual finesse, “One thing
Jewel told me. She can’t wait to get you shut of this curse. She’s sick of
having you underfoot.”

“I’m sick of
the curse myself. Perhaps when I am shut of it, and can support myself, I’ll be
able to woo her in form.”

“Woo
her!” Clay blurted. “Is that what you call it? Sending her
to work bowlegged every morning?”

The one area
where he felt definitely outclassed was this sex demon thing. If Jewel had been
one of these giggly virgins clattering out of this office tower on high heels,
she’d have tried Randy for one night and never slept on that brass bed again.

On the other
hand, if Jewel had been one of those virgins, Clay wouldn’t be the least bit
interested.

“Do you call
what you do wooing?” Randy sounded genuinely curious.

Clay didn’t
have an answer to that one. He’d put off closing the deal with Jewel a hundred
times this summer, blaming Randy’s eternal underfootedness. He couldn’t pursue
his interest in her until Randy was out of the way. Could he?

While he
pondered this question, Jewel opened the driver’s door of the Tercel. “Out.”

“Clay said I
might drive,” Randy said, sounding like a four-year-old.

“Not after
yesterday’s performance. Out.” She seemed to be in a temper.

They played
musical car seats. Clay got out and got into the back seat. Randy took the
front passenger seat, looking smug.

Clay felt pretty
smug, too.
Let him think he has an
advantage, sharing the front seat with her when she’s like this.

Randy could
take the edge off her.

And then Clay
could soothe her.

Jewel got in,
handed her purse to Clay in the back seat, and banged the door. “Morons.”

Nobody said
anything while she turned on the traffic report, then switched to “Ask Your
Shrink.”

Ask Your
Shrink was taking call-ins.
“—Wife is
never interested! Is that fair?”

“No, it isn’t,”
said the soothing voice of Your
Shrink.
“You could take her to dinner or
a spa. Offer her chocolate. Get her drunk.”

“It’s ruining my marriage!”

“Or, if the marriage is more important
than the sex, you can try taking salpetre to match your libido levels to hers—”

Jewel slapped
the radio button to off.

“How was your
first day at work?” Clay said.

“Sucked. My
boss is hot and knows it, the girls screw their bosses, and the office manager
is a wimp. My best informant so far is taking child support, and pipe, from a
man forty years too old for her.”

“It must have
been bad.”

“Why do you
say that?” she said dangerously, changing lanes and cutting off a taxi.

“You’re
driving crazy.”

“Fucking
moron!” she yelled at the taxi.

“And swearing.”

“Forced
abstinence. Those girls—” She snorted. “I’d call them women, but they’re so desperately
afraid to seem adult. They dress up like ice cream frappès to fucking type and
answer the phone, they sneak and they backbite and they get chewed up in
politics between the white guys in suits, they get sexually harassed, and then
they lose their rag because I cuss a little.”