Read Online A Nasty Piece of Work by Robert Littell - Free Book Online Page A

of the couch with copies of an economic review set out on it like cards in a game of solitaire. I flipped through one to pass the time. It was filled with pages of graphs showing that if the money supply got tighter, interest rates would get looser. Or was it the other way around? Either or, I didn’t understand a word. France-Marie, my lady accountant in Las Cruces, would have felt right at home.
    After what seemed like an eternity, a well-groomed older woman with white hair tied up in a bun and one ankle bound in an ACE bandage limped through a door I hadn’t noticed the existence of. She lowered her head, a gesture that suddenly added a second chin to the one she already had, and sized me up over the silver rims of large oval eyeglasses. I was wearing faded khakis, loafers without socks, and a threadbare sports jacket over a particularly shabby sports shirt that I was very attached to because the collar didn’t chafe my neck.
    Apparently my attire brought out the latent arrogance in her. “Naughty, naughty,” she purred, wagging an accusing finger. “You haven’t phoned ahead to make an appointment, Mr. Gunn.”
    “Who are you, dear lady?”
    “My name is Miss Godshall. I am the secretary to Miss Wyman, who is the principal secretary to R. Russell Fontenrose. If you care to state your business, perhaps I can put you out of your misery.”
    “Are you a trained attorney?”
    “I am a trained secretary. I am trained to spot people who are unable to afford three hundred dollars an hour to talk with the gentleman who employs me.”
    “Look, Miss Godshall, why don’t you duck back through your secret door and tell Miss Wyman to tell R. Russell that Lemuel Gunn has come all the way up from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to talk to him about a bail jumper name of Emilio Gava. I lay you odds he’ll squeeze me in.”
    Pouting in disapproval, Miss Godshall raised her head in a huff, reducing her chins to the number God had distributed at birth, pivoted on the heel of a sensible flat-soled lace-up shoe and limped back through the secret door. Five minutes later I was ushered into the presence of Miss Wyman, a tall, elegant, flat-chested woman who looked like the dowager madam of a high-class brothel. Her hair was dyed red but I suspected it was already rusty underneath. Miss Wyman, in turn, ushered me into the presence of the man himself, R. Russell Fontenrose.
    His corner office came with wraparound windows double glazed to keep out everything except the sob of sirens, and even those sounded as if they came from another planet. The room was so vast I thought I’d need a motorized golf cart to get across it before he went out for his two-martini expense account lunch. Picture ankle-thick wall-to-wall carpet. Picture a king-sized mahogany desk. Work in the usual family photographs in the usual mother-of-pearl frames, a small Chinese bowl filled with monogrammed matchbooks, the usual law books in the usual leather bindings, a collection of antique globes on a long low glass shelf. Don’t forget to include the smell of saddle soap and furniture polish and money. Especially money. Through a partly open door, I caught a glimpse of a minigym—a rowing contraption, a pile of towels, a set of golf clubs. On one side of his desk was an electronic monitor listing the waiting phone calls, which were stacked up like jetliners in a holding pattern. R. Russell was perched against the edge of his desk, his back toward me, murmuring into a telephone. “I’ve laid the options out for him, Kenneth. He can snipe at them from the safety of the trees with writs of this and that, which will slow them down but won’t stop them. Or he can grab the bull by the horns and sue the trousers off them for breach of contract and watch them squirm.” He noticed my reflection in the window behind his desk. “I have someone with me. Let me get back to you.” He hung up and dog-paddled around to the front of the desk to get a better look at me, during