"Out to this little company I told you about. Macro Mix I want you to meet my partners. I want to set up a rig like we had here and you give a demo."

"No solicitations!"

"Nothing like that. Well, maybe some kind of advertising. If we could line up the rights, suppose some lady answers the phone and it is Paul Newman inviting her to come down to her what sis agency and drive one of the new models."

She looked sidelong at him.

"What am I being so picky about? I'm unemployed, right? And I've never set foot in California, ever."

She put her hand out and once again they shook hands, grinning at each other.

At ten o'clock on Thursday night, Jenny Albritton sat Buddha fashion on her bed, wearing a brief yellow nightgown, facing Jenny MacBeth, who lay supine on her own bed, telling about Harold Sherman's conversation with her.

The single light was behind Jenny Albritton, leaving her lovely face in shadow. The coolness from the air-conditioning duct in the wall behind her stirred the strands of long blonde hair.

"He's such a self-satisfied little turd," Jenny MacBeth said.

"I.

have tried to tell myself that management theories and practice differ from one manager to another. But I can't believe he is any good at all."

"It makes me furious to think anyone could be rude to you."

"Wait until he gets around to Public Relations. Then you'll find out what he's like. He just doesn't have the slightest idea how good Finn was, how he was subtle and tough and elegant all at once and how much fun it was working for him and pleasing him. I think it is going to be pretty terrible around here from now on. Old Matthew would never have hired a man like that, and certainly never have put him in charge. What is John Tinker thinking about?"

"I heard that Finn Efflander recommended Sherman."

"Not so. He wouldn't do that to us after how hard we've worked for him. I've got it right from the source. Finn wanted thirty days to bring in somebody and train them but John Tinker turned him down and appointed Sherman. And everything is going to go to hell, no pun intended, while the preachers learn their sermons."

"And that'll give Sherman time to really mess it up."

"Are you happy here?"

Jenny Albritton took her time thinking it over. She shook her hair back and sighed.

"Well, on balance, yes. I guess I'd be pretty happy anywhere with you. But I guess there could be better places for us in the world."

"I'd like to leave. That damn man took all the fun out of it in five minutes by the clock. There are places where we'd be more accepted, hon. San Francisco, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale. Colonies where people would understand and be glad for us. But before we go, I would really like to clip that money room for a very large chunk."

"Hey now, Jenny Mack, anywhere doesn't include jail."

"Oh, I won't do it if there is the slightest chance of our getting caught. I say "our" because I think I am going to need your help. I mean, a very vague plan is taking shape. It is going to take weeks and weeks to work out all the details. There will have to be a couple of dry runs. Both of us, you and I, will have to agree that it is going to be worth the chance. I'm going to depend on you to look at the plan like some kind of cop, and punch holes in it."

"How much are you going to try to take?"

"Three hundred thousand in fives, tens and twenties."

"This is probably a very dumb question, but won't they miss it?"

"You can bet your sweet whatever they'll miss it. It'll be like kicking over a beehive. What has to be worked out is the absolute and complete impossibility of my having taken it, or arranged for it to be taken."

"You can do that?"

"I don't know yet. I won't know for weeks and weeks. But until I either decide I can or decide it's too risky, I am going to keep my head down. I am going to be humble and cowed, and I am going to tell Harold Sherman what a great man he is, how bright, how intelligent, how shrewd. Over and over. That's what will work with him. I can tell. And you and I, we'll go over my plans. Over and over and over, as I refine them. You are very bright, honI need your advice. There may be things I can't see because I am too close to them."

"But what does it involve?"

"Substituting one money bag of newspapers for one money bag of money. And some indirection. And some way I can manage to be in two places at the same time. And some way of implicating one of the security men. I have a nasty one in mind.

He leers and smirks and, on occasion, gives my roller-skating Angel a little pinch on the fanny."

"But if we leave right after that, won't they..."

"Leave? That would be dumb. We'll plan and plan and plan, and then we'll walk through it a few times until we know it's foolproof, and in the meanwhile we'll have worked out a good place to hide the bag of money, where nothing can harm it.

And then, say six months later, while they are still sniffing around after the money, and they have interrogated me five hundred times, we might get just a little bit careless about our personal life. And they'll throw us out into the street, believe me, with Mrs. Macy calling the signals. And we go away without the money and maybe get jobs and work for six months or a year. And then we come back here, quietly and carefully. We make certain we're not followed, we go gather up all that money and repackage it somehow, maybe into cute stuffed animals, and off we go into the sunset. Palm trees, beaches and rum collinses, dear."

Jenny Albritton looked troubled.

"But if it should go wrong, couldn't it turn out to be very, very ugly? Like jail?"

"But, my darling, I keep telling you. Unless we can come up with an absolutely perfect plan, we just won't do it at all."

"Don't be cross with me."

"I'm not cross, Jenny A."

"I guess you've been thinking about this for a long time."

Jenny MacBeth smiled across at her young lover and winked and said, "Practically all my life."

Nineteen.

When the Reverend Walter Macy arrived at his office on the ground floor of Administration, Eliot Erskine was waiting for him, sitting on the couch across from the desk, under the photo mural of the Meadows Center, sitting so stolidly, impassively, Macy had the momentary impression the man had been there all night.

He did not arise or move or speak when Walter Macy came in, merely watched him with his small pale eyes, slack fists resting on the big thick thighs. There was a faint blush of sunburn on the fair skin of Erskine's forehead and cheeks.

Macy stared at him, then turned and closed the office door quickly and said, "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

Eliot Erskine gave himself a slow count of five before answering. It was a device he had used when he had been on the interrogation team in Atlanta. It had been easier there, because they could rotate play good guy, bad guy, skeptic, old buddy, maniac barely under control whatever the situation seemed to require. And when one approach began to work a little bit, they could use that to pry the suspect open. He had used the slow count in poker games, before betting or folding. It worked well there too.

"I just thought it was time we had a little talk."

"But I told you not to come here. Not ever. I mean, unless it is about something else."

Slow count.