“I understand.”

“So whatever we do, will I be able to go to practice? Will I be able to play in the opener Sunday?”

“Yes.”

Brenda nodded. “Okay then,” she said. “And thank you.”

They drove to her dorm room. Myron waited downstairs while she packed a bag. She had her own room, but she wrote a note to her suite mate that she was staying with a friend for a few days. The whole enterprise took her less than ten minutes.

She came down with two bags over her shoulders. Myron relieved her of one. They were heading out the door when Myron spotted FJ standing next to his car.

“Stay here,” he told her.

Brenda ignored him and kept pace. Myron looked to his left. Bubba and Rocco were there. They waved at him. Myron did not wave back. That’ll show them.

FJ leaned against the car, completely relaxed, almost too relaxed, like an old movie drunk against a lamppost.

“Hello, Brenda,” FJ said.

“Hello, FJ.”

Then he nodded toward Myron. “And you too, Myron.”

His smile did more than lack warmth. It was the most purely physical smile Myron had ever seen, a byproduct strictly of the brain giving specific orders to certain muscles. It touched no part of him but his lips.

Myron circled the car and feigned inspecting it. “Not a bad job, FJ. But next time put a little muscle into the hubcaps. They’re filthy.”

FJ looked at Brenda. “This the famed Bolitar rapier wit I’ve heard so much about?”

She shrugged sympathetically.

Myron motioned at them with his hands. “You two know each other?”

“But of course,” FJ said. “We went to prep school together. At Lawrenceville.”

Bubba and Rocco lumbered a few steps closer. They looked like Luca Brasi Youth.

Myron eased between Brenda and FJ. The protective move would probably piss her off, but tough. “So what can we do for you, FJ?”

“I just want to make sure that Ms. Slaughter is honoring her contract with me.”

“I don’t have a contract with you,” Brenda said.

“Your father—one Horace Slaughter—is your agent, no?”

“No,” Brenda said. “Myron is.”

“Oh?” FJ’s eyes slithered toward Myron. Myron kept up the eye contact, but there was still nothing there, like looking into the windows of an abandoned building. “I’d been informed otherwise.”

Myron shrugged. “Life is change, FJ. Gotta learn to adapt.”

“Adapt,” FJ said, “or die.”

Myron nodded and said, “Oooo.”

FJ kept the stare going a few more seconds. He had skin that looked like wet clay, as if it might dissolve under heavy rains. He turned back to Brenda. “Your father used to be your agent,” he said. “Before Myron.”

Myron handled that one. “And what if he was?”

“He signed with us. Brenda was going to bow out of the WPBA and join the PWBL. It’s all spelled out in the contract.”

Myron looked at Brenda. She shook her head. “You have Ms. Slaughter’s signature on those contracts?” he asked.

“Like I said, her father—”

“Who has no legal standing in this matter whatsoever. Do you have Brenda’s signature or not?”

FJ looked rather displeased. Bubba and Rocco moved closer still. “We do not.”

“Then you have nothing.” Myron unlocked his car door. “But we’ve all enjoyed this too brief time together. I know I’m a better person for it.”

Bubba and Rocco started toward him. Myron opened the car door. His gun was under his car seat. He debated making a move. It would be dumb, of course. Someone—probably Brenda or Myron—would get hurt.

FJ lifted a hand, and the two men stopped as though they’d been sprayed by Mr. Freeze. “We’re not mobsters,” FJ said. “We’re businessmen.”

“Right,” Myron said. “And Bubba and Rocco over there—they your CPAs?”

A tiny smile came to FJ’s lips. The smile was strictly reptilian, meaning it was far warmer than his other ones. “If you are indeed her agent,” FJ said, “then it would behoove you to speak with me.”

Myron nodded. “Call my office, make an appointment,” he said.

“We’ll talk soon then,” FJ said.

“Looking forward to it. And keep using the word behoove. It really impresses people.”

Brenda opened her car door and got in. Myron did likewise. FJ came around to Myron’s window and knocked on the glass. Myron lowered the window.

“Sign with us or don’t sign with us,” FJ said quietly. “That’s business. But when I kill you, well, that will be for fun.”

Myron was about to crack wise again, but something—probably a fly-through of good sense—made him pause. FJ moved away then. Rocco and Bubba followed. Myron watched them disappear, his heart flapping in his chest like a caged condor.

They parked on a lot on Seventy-first Street and walked to the Dakota. The Dakota remains one of New York’s premier buildings, though it’s still best known for John Lennon’s assassination. A fresh bouquet of roses marked the spot where his body had fallen. Myron always felt a little weird crossing over it, as if he were trampling on a grave or something. The Dakota doorman must have seen Myron a hundred times by now, but he always pretended otherwise and buzzed up to Win’s apartment.

Introductions were brief. Win found Brenda a place to study. She broke out a medical textbook the size of a stone tablet and made herself comfortable. Win and Myron moved back into a living room semidecorated in the manner of Louis the Somethingteenth. There was a fireplace with big iron tools and a bust on the mantel. The substantial furniture looked, as always, freshly polished yet plenty old. Oil paintings of stern yet effeminate men stared down from the walls. And just to keep things in the proper decade, there was a big-screen TV and VCR front and center.

The two friends sat and put their feet up.

“So what do you think?” Myron asked.

“She’s too big for my tastes,” Win said. “But nicely toned legs.”

“I mean, about protecting her.”

“We’ll find a place,” Win said. He laced his hands behind his neck. “Talk to me.”

“Do you know Arthur Bradford?”

“The gubernatorial candidate?”

“Yes.”

Win nodded. “We’ve met several times. I played golf with him and his brother once at Merion.”