Crimson spots burned on Zandra's cheeks, but she refused to be cowered. Turning to the tourists with born and bred dignity, she said, "I apologize for this rude intrusion. It really was lovely meeting all of you."
Avoiding her eyes, they quietly set down their drinks, gathered up coats and purses, and exodused en masse.
"Right cozy, this place is," said the cigar-smoking tough once the tourists and butler were gone. His grin was a rictus. "Wouldn't mind stayin' 'ere meself fer a while. Now ... whyn't you make it easy on yerself? Just tell us w'ere the bloke calls 'imself yer brother's 'idin'."
Zandra stared at him. "How can I, if I don't know?"
"Pity."
He seemed suddenly absorbed in his cigar, rolling it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger while blowing gently on the glowing tip. Finally he glanced up at her.
"But you 'eard from 'im, din't ya?" His voice was softly menacing.
"Yes, he called me this morning," Zandra admitted. She couldn't take her eyes off the cigar. Fear, like a suffocating wall, was closing in on her from all sides. "But he wouldn't tell me his whereabouts. I really don't know where he is!"
"Yeah? Hope you ain't expectin' us to swallow that."
"Believe what you will." Her eyes rose to meet his. "To tell you the truth," she added with contempt, "I wouldn't help you even if I could."
Swift as a cobra, he clamped one steely hand around her left wrist and jerked her toward him. "We'll see about that," he said into her upturned face, "won't we?"
Slowly, deliberately, he brought the glowing cigar end to within an inch of her bare forearm. Heat radiated from its ashy tip, causing her arm muscles to twitch involuntarily.
"Now, why make it so 'ard on yerself?" he asked, looking at her with eyes as cold as ball bearings. "All you hav'ta' do is tell us where 'e is."
"But I already have!"
Clucking his tongue chidingly, he moved the cigar half an inch closer to her flesh. Her pupils dilated wildly as the radiating heat intensified, and she stared down at herself in horrified fascination.
"Goddammit!" she whispered. "What will it take to convince you I'm telling the truth?"
"How about this?"
And grinning, he ground the cigar out on her forearm.
Excruciating pain seared her flesh, bolted through her like white- hot lightning. Tears sprang to her eyes, and it was all she could do not to scream.
He did it twice more, relighting the cigar each time, and burning her in that exact same spot so that a huge, blistering wound immediately swelled up. Yet somehow, she found the strength to refuse him the satisfaction of crying out.
When it became obvious that she really had nothing to tell, one of the men went around the apartment, methodically tearing out all the telephone wires except for the extension in the drawing room. Then Zandra's torturer took her upstairs to her bedroom.
"If yer brother 'ad 'alf the balls you've got," he said, "we wouldn't 'ave 'ad to 'urt you."
She shot him a withering look. "If you had half the balls I've got," she retorted, "you wouldn't get your kicks torturing women!"
That said, she stepped voluntarily into the bedroom—and slammed the door on him.
She heard him lock it from the outside. Then, pressing her ear against it, she listened to his receding footsteps.
Not wasting a moment, she sprang into action. First, she stripped off her "countess" gown, applied rudimentary first aid to her arm, and pulled on jeans, cable-knit sweater, and scuffed leather motorcycle jacket.
Second, she rummaged in her dresser, where she kept her passport and a stash of nearly three hundred pounds hidden beneath her underwear.
Third, she stuffed the barest essentials in her giant shoulder bag.
And fourth, she quietly raised the window, where a thick branch of the ancient elm in the backyard was obligingly within reach.
Heaving out her bag and boots, she waited a few minutes to see if the men had heard them drop. When she was convinced they hadn't, she climbed over the sill, took a deep breath, and leapt to the branch.
The climb down was swift; her disappearance stealthy.
By the time they discovered she'd escaped, she was already at Heathrow, boarding pass in hand.
Still, it wasn't until the British Airways jet was well over the Atlantic that she finally began to relax.
Now, taking a seat on the Manhattan-bound bus, she silently cursed the cause of her predicament.
Rudolph von Hohenburg-Willemlohe. Her brother the count.
Some count.
First-class shit was more like it!
Chapter 4
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, Decorat
ions, 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.
Bl
essed 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.
Too Damn Rich Page 4
