Finally, the issue of payment. Ten thousand pounds, to be paid in two halves, the first 
upon agreement of the contract, the second after its completion.
  "Chant has the money," Estabrook said.
  "Shall we walk, then?" Pie said.
  Before they left the trailer, Estabrook looked into the cot. "You have beautiful 
children," he said when they were out in the cold.
  "They're not mine," Pie replied. "Their father died a year ago this Christmas."
  "Tragic," Estabrook said.
  "It was quick," Pie said, glancing across at Estabrook and confirming in his glance the 
suspicion that he was the orphan maker. "Are you quite certain you want this woman dead?" 
Pie said. "Doubt's bad in a business like this. If there's any part of you that 
hesitates-"
  "There's none," Estabrook said. "I came here to find a man to kill my wife. You're that 
man."
  "You still love her, don't you?" Pie said, once they were out and walking.
  "Of course I love her," Estabrook said. "That's why I want her dead."
  "There's no Resurrection, Mr. Estabrook. Not for you, at least."
  "It's not me who's dying," he said.
  "I think it is," came the reply. They were at the fire, now untended. "A man kills the 
thing he loves, and he must die a little himself. That's plain, yes?"
  "If I die, I die," was Estabrook's response. "As long as she goes first. I'd like it 
done as quickly as possible."
  "You said she's in New York. Do you want me to follow her there?"
  "Are you familiar with the city?"
  "Yes."
  "Then do it there and do it soon. I'll have Chant supply extra funds to cover the 
flight. And that's that. We shan't see each other again."
  Chant was waiting at the perimeter and fished the envelope containing the payment from 
his inside pocket. Pie accepted it without question or thanks, then shook Estabrook's 
hand and left the trespassers to return to the safety of their car. As he settled into 
the comfort of the leather seat, Estabrook realized the palm he'd pressed against Pie's 
was trembling. He knitted its fingers with those of his other hand, and there they 
remained, white-knuckled, for the length of the journey home.
  
  
  2
  
  DO THIS FOR THE WOMEN OF THE WORLD, read the note John Furie Zacharias held. Slit your 
lying throat.
  Beside the note, lying on the bare boards, Vanessa and her cohorts (she had two 
brothers; it was probably they who'd come with her to empty the house) had left a neat 
pile of broken glass, in case he was sufficiently moved by her entreaty to end his life 
there and then. He stared at the note in something of a stupor, reading it over and over, 
looking-vainly, of course-for some small consolation in it. Beneath the tick and scrawl 
that made her name, the paper was lightly wrinkled. Had tears fallen there while she'd 
written her goodbye, he wondered? Small comfort if they had, and a smaller likelihood 
still. Vanessa was not one for crying. Nor could he imagine a woman with the least 
ambiguity of feeling so comprehensively stripping him of possessions. True, neither the 
mews house nor any stick of furniture in it had been his by law, but they had chosen many 
of the items together-she relying upon his artist's eye, he upon her money to purchase 
whatever his gaze admired. Now it was all gone, to the last Persian rug and Deco lamp. 
The home they'd made together, and enjoyed for a year and two months, was stripped bare. 
And so indeed was he: to the nerve, to the bone. He had nothing.
  It wasn't calamitous. Vanessa hadn't been the first woman to indulge his taste in 
handmade shirts and silk waistcoats, nor would she be the last. But she was the first in 
recent memory-for Gentle the past had a way of evaporating after about ten years-who had 
conspired to remove everything from him in the space of half a day. His error was plain 
enough. He'd woken that morning, lying beside Vanessa with a hard-on she'd wanted him to 
pleasure her with, and had stupidly refused her, knowing he had a liaison with Marline 
that afternoon. How she'd discovered where he was unloading his balls was academic. She 
had, and that was that. He'd stepped out of the house at noon, believing the woman he'd 
left was devoted to him, and come home five hours later to find the house as it was now. 
He could be sentimental at the strangest times. As now, for instance, wandering through 
the empty rooms, collecting up the belongings she had felt obliged to leave for him: his 
address book, the clothes he'd bought with his own money as opposed to hers, his spare 
spectacles, his cigarettes. He hadn't loved Vanessa, but he had enjoyed the fourteen 
months they'd spent together here. She'd left a few more pieces of trash on the dining 
room floor, reminders of that time: a cluster of keys they'd never found doors to fit, 
instruction documents for a blender he'd burned out making midnight margaritas, a plastic 
bottle of massage oil. All in all, a pitiful collection, but he wasn't so self-deceiving 
as to believe their relationship had been much more than a sum of those parts. The 
question was-now that it was over-where was he to go and what was he to do? Martine was a 
middle-aged married woman, her husband a banker who spent three days of every week in 
Luxembourg, leaving her time to philander. She professed love for Gentle at intervals, 
but not with sufficient consistency to make him think he could prize her from her 
husband, even if he wanted to, which he was by no means certain he did. He'd known her 
eight months-met her, in fact, at a dinner party hosted by Vanessa's elder brother, 
William-and they had only argued once, but it had been a telling exchange. She'd accused 
him of always looking at other women; looking, looking, as though for the next conquest. 
Perhaps because he didn't care for her too much, he'd replied honestly and told her she 
was right. He was stupid for her sex. Sickened in their absence, blissful in their 
company: love's fool. She'd replied that while his obsession might be healthier than her 
husband's-which was money and its manipulation-his behavior was still neurotic. Why this 
endless hunt? she'd asked him. He'd answered with some folderol about seeking the ideal 
woman, but he'd known the truth even as he was spinning her this tosh, and it was a 
bitter thing. Too bitter, in fact, to be put on his tongue. In essence, it came down to 
this: he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or more of her sex were 
doting on him. Yes, he knew his face was finely made, his forehead broad, his gaze 
haunting, his lips sculpted so that even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a 
living mirror to tell him so. More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find 
something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some undiscovered self 
that would free him from being Gentle.
  As always when he felt deserted, he went to see Chester Klein, patron of the arts by 
diverse hands, a man who claimed to have been excised by fretful lawyers from more 
biographies than any other man since Byron. He lived in Notting Hill Gate, in a house 
he'd bought cheaply in the late fifties, which he now seldom left, touched as he was by 
agoraphobia or, as he preferred it, "a perfectly rational fear of anyone I can't 
blackmail."
  From this small dukedom he managed to prosper, employed as he was in a business which 
required a few choice contacts, a nose for the changing taste of his market, and an