up as a phony miniature coral reef, complete with brightly colored tropical fish extinct in the wild and worth their weight in caviar. Rattan tables and great woven peacock chairs than on second look turned out to be crafted from weatherproof synthetics. In a silver ice bucket sat some tropical punch, heavily laced, no doubt, with rum or gin and probably both. The only thing missing was the grass skirts and slaveys with palm-frond fans.
A South Seas island.
As reconstructed from old twentieth-century advertising videos bysomeone who had never been there. Never seen the sere, desiccated scrub of what little remained above the waterline. Never broiled in the actinic sun. Never swum above the dead-white corpses of the reefs overrun with starveling starfish.
To Monique, who had seen and done these things in the grim line of duty, the landscaping of Prince Eric Esterhazy’s terrace had all the charm of that hideous virtuality re-creation of the legendary Great Barrier Reef, replete with singing tropical fish and dancing sharks, that she had once been dragged to in downtown Sydney.
Esterhazy steered her to chairs beside the table holding the ice bucket, and poured her a tall drink that was somehow both blue and brownish. It was sickeningly sweet and unsubtly powerful. It was called a “zombie.”
It somehow seemed perfect.
Monique sipped at it very gingerly indeed.
“Shall we get down to business . . . Prince Eric?” she said.
“That would be a waste of a lovely sunset, Ms. Calhoun,” Eric Esterhazy said. “However, I will offer you one deal right now—I get to drop the Ms. Calhoun, and you get to drop the Prince.” He gave her a smile that must’ve melted a thousand panties. “Have we got a quid pro quo . . .
Monique?
”
“It’s a beginning,
Eric
. . . But as we say on the sunken sidewalks of New York, money talks, bullshit walks.”
Esterhazy smiled right through it.
“Then I will not risk the latter by pretending that your last offer was a whisper in the wind,” he said. “One million eight hundred and fifty thousand wu for ten days’ rental speaks loud and clear. However . . .”
However, Monique thought, an arms dealer or a rug merchant or a camel trader never takes an offer, no matter how foolishly magnanimous it might be, until the customer is about to stomp out the door in outraged frustration.
And 185,000 work units a day, they both knew damn well, was more than a princely offer.
La Reine de la Seine
’s cash flow might not be public record, but its capacity was, and so were the prices on its menu and at the bar, nor was the little casino a serious high-roller operation, and a simple spreadsheet program easily enough revealedthat 100,000 wu a day would probably be stretching it.
Posner hadn’t told her to bargain hard or given her a limit, but this was already approaching the ridiculous and her own professional pride would not let her be taken for more than two million tops by the likes of Prince Smarming.
“However, not being a mathematician or computer-literate, you would find a somewhat rounder number easier to calculate?” Monique suggested. “Like one million nine?”
Esterhazy gave her a look that, like the zombie cocktail, seemed a clash of incongruous elements—one part suppressed amazement, one part greed, one part some kind of wistful regret—and hence entirely unreadable.
“Two million would be even rounder,” he said larcenously, but sounding as if his heart wasn’t in it.
“
Ten
million is a one followed by seven zeros,” Monique snapped. “It doesn’t get any rounder than that!”
“
You’re serious?
”
“Are you?”
He flashed her a brilliant golden boy smile. “I was seriously interested in meeting you, Monique,” he said.
“To do what? Pour me full of rum and gin and then carry me into your bedroom and make mad passionate love to me?”
Eric Esterhazy kept the smile, lidded his eyes to half-mast as he stared into hers. “If you were
A South Seas island.
As reconstructed from old twentieth-century advertising videos bysomeone who had never been there. Never seen the sere, desiccated scrub of what little remained above the waterline. Never broiled in the actinic sun. Never swum above the dead-white corpses of the reefs overrun with starveling starfish.
To Monique, who had seen and done these things in the grim line of duty, the landscaping of Prince Eric Esterhazy’s terrace had all the charm of that hideous virtuality re-creation of the legendary Great Barrier Reef, replete with singing tropical fish and dancing sharks, that she had once been dragged to in downtown Sydney.
Esterhazy steered her to chairs beside the table holding the ice bucket, and poured her a tall drink that was somehow both blue and brownish. It was sickeningly sweet and unsubtly powerful. It was called a “zombie.”
It somehow seemed perfect.
Monique sipped at it very gingerly indeed.
“Shall we get down to business . . . Prince Eric?” she said.
“That would be a waste of a lovely sunset, Ms. Calhoun,” Eric Esterhazy said. “However, I will offer you one deal right now—I get to drop the Ms. Calhoun, and you get to drop the Prince.” He gave her a smile that must’ve melted a thousand panties. “Have we got a quid pro quo . . .
Monique?
”
“It’s a beginning,
Eric
. . . But as we say on the sunken sidewalks of New York, money talks, bullshit walks.”
Esterhazy smiled right through it.
“Then I will not risk the latter by pretending that your last offer was a whisper in the wind,” he said. “One million eight hundred and fifty thousand wu for ten days’ rental speaks loud and clear. However . . .”
However, Monique thought, an arms dealer or a rug merchant or a camel trader never takes an offer, no matter how foolishly magnanimous it might be, until the customer is about to stomp out the door in outraged frustration.
And 185,000 work units a day, they both knew damn well, was more than a princely offer.
La Reine de la Seine
’s cash flow might not be public record, but its capacity was, and so were the prices on its menu and at the bar, nor was the little casino a serious high-roller operation, and a simple spreadsheet program easily enough revealedthat 100,000 wu a day would probably be stretching it.
Posner hadn’t told her to bargain hard or given her a limit, but this was already approaching the ridiculous and her own professional pride would not let her be taken for more than two million tops by the likes of Prince Smarming.
“However, not being a mathematician or computer-literate, you would find a somewhat rounder number easier to calculate?” Monique suggested. “Like one million nine?”
Esterhazy gave her a look that, like the zombie cocktail, seemed a clash of incongruous elements—one part suppressed amazement, one part greed, one part some kind of wistful regret—and hence entirely unreadable.
“Two million would be even rounder,” he said larcenously, but sounding as if his heart wasn’t in it.
“
Ten
million is a one followed by seven zeros,” Monique snapped. “It doesn’t get any rounder than that!”
“
You’re serious?
”
“Are you?”
He flashed her a brilliant golden boy smile. “I was seriously interested in meeting you, Monique,” he said.
“To do what? Pour me full of rum and gin and then carry me into your bedroom and make mad passionate love to me?”
Eric Esterhazy kept the smile, lidded his eyes to half-mast as he stared into hers. “If you were
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