"Well, you gotta admit one thing," said Killian in a cheer-up voice, "this thing has made you a giant on Wall Street. One freakin' giant, bro. Juh see what Flannagan called you in the I Daily News! 'Pierce & Pierce's fabled chief bond salesman.' f Fabled. A legend in your own time. You're the son of 'the aristocratic John Campbell McCoy,' former head of Dunning Sponget & Leach. You're the fabled investment banking genius aristocrat. Bacon probably thinks you got half the money in the world."

"If you want to know the truth," said Sherman, "I don't even know where I'm gonna get the money to pay . . ."He motioned toward the library, where Occhioni was. "This civil suit mentions everything. They're even after the quarterly share of profits I was supposed to get at the end of this month. I can't imagine how they knew about it. They even referred to it by the in-company name, which is the 'Pie B.' They'd have to know someone at Pierce & Pierce."

"Oh, I know these chaps," said Steiner, "and the old ones are the worst. They've made their fifty million or their hundred million—that's what the Texans call a unit. Did you know that? They call a hundred million dollars a unit. I think that's delightful. A unit, of course, is a starting point. In any case, this sort of chap makes his great colossal pile, and he goes to a dinner party, and he's sitting next to some pretty young thing, and he's getting a bit of the old tingle—but she hasn't the faintest notion who he is. A hundred million dollars!—and she's never even heard his name, and she isn't interested in who he is when he tries to tell her. What can he do? He can't very well go about with a sign around his neck saying financial giant. At that point, believe me, they begin to lose some of their purported scruples concerning publicity."

Fallow believed him. It was not for nothing that Steiner had founded The City Light and kept it going at an operating loss of about ten million dollars a year. No longer was he merely another financier. He was the dread buccaneer of the dread City Light.

The first course arrived. Fallow had ordered a vegetable pate. The pate was a small pinkish semicircle with stalks of rhubarb arranged around it like rays. It was perched in the upper left-hand quadrant of a large plate. The plate seemed to be glazed with an odd Art Nouveau painting of a Spanish galleon on a reddish sea sailing toward the ... sunset. . . but the setting sun was, in fact, the pate, with its rhubarb rays, and the Spanish ship was not done in glaze at all but in different colors of sauce. It was a painting in sauce. Ruskin's plate contained a bed of flat green noodles carefully intertwined to create a basket weave, superimposed upon which was a flock of butterflies fashioned from pairs of mushroom slices, for the wings; pimientos, onion slices, shallots, and capers, for the bodies, eyes, and antennae. Ruskin took no note of the exotic collage before him. He had ordered a bottle of wine and was becoming increasingly expansive about the peaks and valleys of his career. Valleys, yes; oh, he had had to overcome many disappointments. The main thing was to be decisive. Decisive men made great decisions not because they were smarter than other people, necessarily, but because they made more decisions, and by the law of averages some of them would be great. Did Fallow get it? Fallow nodded. Ruskin paused only to stare gloomily at the fuss Raphael and his boys were making over the big round table in front of them. Madame Tacaya is coming. Ruskin seemed to feel upstaged.

Ruskin swelled up to his story. He ordered some red wine, a heavy wine that started a delicious fire in Fallow's stomach. Fallow ordered a dish called veal Boogie Woogie, which turned out to be rectangles of veal, small squares of spiced red apples, and lines of pureed walnuts arranged to look like Piet Mondrian's painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. Ruskin ordered medallions de selle d'agneau Mikado, which was perfectly pink ovals of leg of lamb with tiny leaves of spinach and sticks of braised celery arranged to resemble a Japanese fan. Ruskin managed to down two glasses of the fiery red wine with a rapidity that was startling, given the fact that he did not stop talking.

"All the takeovers, buy-outs, mergers—all done with bonds," said Sherman. "The national debt? A trillion dollars? What do you think that is? All bonds. Every time interest rates fluctuate— -- up or down, it doesn't matter— -- little crumbs fall off all the bonds and lodge in the cracks in the sidewalk." He paused and smiled confidently . . . and wondered . . . Why had he used this hateful phrase of Judy's? ... He chuckled and said, "The important thing is not to stick your nose up at those crumbs, because there are billions and billions and billions of them. At Pierce & Pierce, believe me, we sweep them up very diligently." We\—at Pierce & Pierce! Even the little Tart on his right, Jacqueline Balch, nodded at all this as if she understood.

"Listen, Sherman. Do you think she honestly cares whether you're a gentleman or anything else at this point? Do you think she's gonna voluntarily Jeopardize her interests to help you out? She don't even tawk to you, f'r Chrissake."

"I don't know."

"I do know. You don't get the picture yet? She married Ruskin, f'r Chrissake, and whaddaya think she felt for him? I bet she studied the actuarial tables. Awright? I bet you she actually studied the fucking actuarial tables."

Upstairs, the door to the apartment was opened by a little man in uniform who appeared to be Indonesian or Korean. Kramer stepped inside—and the sight dazzled him. This was to be expected, since it was designed to dazzle people far more inured to luxury than Larry Kramer. He glanced at Martin and Goldberg. The three of them were straight-out sightseers ... the two-story ceiling, the enormous chandelier, the marble staircase, the fluted pilasters, the silver, the balcony, the huge paintings, the sumptuous frames, any one of which, just the frame, cost about half a cop's annual pay. Their eyes were gobbling it all up.

And then he brought her in. Maria Ruskin came into the amphitheater from an antechamber, where a court officer manned the door. She was superb. She had struck just the right note in her wardrobe, a black dress with a matching jacket edged in black velvet. She had not dressed up, and she had not dressed down. She was the perfect widow in mourning who had business to attend to. And yet her youth, her voluptuousness, her erotic presence, her sensual self seemed ready to burst forth from those clothes, from that stunning but composed face, from that full flawless head of dark hair ready to be tousled with mad abandon— -- at any moment! -- —on any pretext! -- —with the next tickle! —the merest wink! Kramer could hear the jurors rustling and buzzing. They had read the newspapers. They had watched television. The Foxy Brunette, the Mystery Girl, the Financier's Widow -- —it was her.

"Do you remember when we used to live in the Village, the way I used to go off to work?"

"The way you used to go off to work?"

"When I first started working for Pierce & Pierce? The way I used to give you the raised left fist when I left the apartment, the Black Power salute?"

"Yes, I remember."

"You remember why?"

"I guess so."

"It was supposed to say that yes, I was going to work on Wall Street, but my heart and soul would never belong to it. I would use it and rebel and break with it. You remember all that?"

Judy said nothing.

"I know it didn't work out that way," he went on, "but I remember what a lovely feeling it was. Don't you?"