He had to be … had to be … From just beyond the door came the demanding wails of Master Pietari Päivärinta Peepgass, Master Pavvy Peepgass, Master P. P. Peepgass, Master Pietari P. Peepgass, Master Pete Peepgass—however it came out, it wouldn’t be your everyday name … Not but so many Peepgasses on the face of the earth … The whole situation was ludicrous. Truly, sex was God’s cosmic joke.

  At that moment Charlie Croker was sitting at his desk on the thirty-ninth floor of his dead elephant, the Croker Concourse tower, conferring with the Wiz. As always, the Wiz looked like an expensive digital appliance with all its diode lights waiting for the cue to wink.

  As far as he himself was concerned, Charlie hoped to God he didn’t look as bad as he felt. He couldn’t remember ever feeling more miserable. Last night his insomnia had been total. He hadn’t gone to sleep for so much as thirty seconds. Every time he told himself he was going to refuse to think about the bank’s seizing the G-5 and the Wyeth painting—in front of Lettie Withers—Ted Nashford—Howell Hendricks—his own son—and Herb Richman—and how could he have called the man Hebe in the first place!—and how many people in Atlanta had they already shot their mouths off to!—and was he a walking dead man—it was no use. There was no way he was going to shut those thoughts out of his skull.

  Charlie looked away from the Wiz and out the office’s big plate-glass windows toward the towers of Midtown and Downtown Atlanta, which you could see in the distance. They looked like tiny scale models, but you could see them. Southern exposures like this were not so great this time of year. By mid-afternoon the sun would be frying you alive, to the point where the central air conditioning could barely deal with it. But one of Croker Concourse’s selling points was that it had the best of both worlds, the sylvan spaciousness of Cherokee County and proximity to the city proper. So he had put the executive suites on the south side of the tower to persuade the tenants that they were not paying top dollar for some remote country outpost. They were … in the game. They could see Midtown and Downtown. Well … good luck, one and all. The one who was no longer in the game was himself … roosting up here atop a tower he had put his own name on … behind a desk big enough for a dictator, resting upon a carpet custom made with raised, interlocking C’s and G’s, in tan, on a slate-blue field … Such a riot of egomania!

  The G-5 had been merely the beginning. How long would it be before PlannersBanc came after the building itself? And Turpmtine … He’d been trying to get hold of his lawyer ever since yesterday afternoon, old John Fogg of Fogg Nackers Rendering & Lean. Maybe he was too old—

  “You’re outside the bandwidth, Charlie!” said the Wiz. Hurriedly he went into a dry chuckle to show that he was only making a pleasantry.

  “Bandwidth?” Charlie looked at the Wiz with a puzzled expression, and the Wiz did some more earnest, dry chuckling.

  “Just a figure of speech, Charlie. You looked like you were a thousand miles away.”

  “I did?” said Charlie. “Maybe I did. I was thinking about John Fogg. Might as well be a thousand miles away. It’s not just that I want to know how this thing with the G-5 slipped by them, it’s that I couldn’t get ahold a anybody when I needed them. Ordinarily, if it’s a weekend, I call John at home, and even if I have to leave a message I get a call back from somebody, Justin Nackers, somebody. This time nothing from nobody, and it’s almost nine o’clock Monday morning, and still nothing from nobody, and we’re giving them tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of business.”

  “Up to a point, Charlie,” said the Wiz, “up to a point. They may not see it that way. As I’m pretty sure I’ve told you, as our creditors go they have one of the biggest footprints. Lately, when I’ve talked to them, all they’ve done is growl.”

  “You’re not saying that therefore they’re giving this thing less than their best shot, are you? I mean, Jesus Christ. You’re not saying they’re dogging it on purpose.”

  “Not consciously,” said the Wiz. “On the other hand, they may not be as … incentivized as we might like to see them.”

  “Well, I’ve already got Marguerite putting in calls to Fogg. If I don’t hear from them within the hour, I’m going ov’eh and lay waste that damn place with a baseball bat. They gotta do something fast, while that plane and my painting are still at PDK.”

  Charlie and the Wiz were still talking about the G-5 and Jim Bowie on His Deathbed when the telephone on the credenza by Charlie’s desk emitted a soft burble. That would be Marguerite.

  “Cap,” she said, “I’ve got John Fogg on the line.”

  “Where’s he calling from?” He looked at the Wiz and mouthed the name for him.

  “I don’t know,” said Marguerite. “Shall I put him through?”

  “Aw yeah.”

  The voice in Charlie’s ear said, “Good morning, Charlie.” Good mawnin, Chollie; a soft Old Southern voice it was. “What brings you to the office so early?”

  “I wouldn’t call it early, John. I been trying to reach you or somebody in your firm for seventeen, eighteen hours now.” He said it sharply. “We got a critical situation facing us here, and we need a lotta help in a hurry, and I ain’t been able to get ahold a anybody.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry about that.” Charlie was not aware at first that the voice was becoming considerably less soft, courtly, and Old Southern. “Why don’t you tell me about your problem.”

  Charlie launched into a description of the scene at PDK, the court papers, the policemen, the repo pilots, and the blown engine, which he treated as a piece of mysterious good luck in an otherwise disastrous Sunday afternoon. He ended with: “Now, John, I thought you told me there was no way they could just go around attaching things. Well, they’ve just attached a pretty big thing, plus a valuable painting. I thought you and your firm were supposed to be on top of things like that.”

  “Sounds to me as if they’ve done some motion-jumping,” said John Fogg. “That loophole does exist from time to time, but I’ve never heard of anyone being so devious as to take advantage of it.”

  “The whole legal profession is devious, John,” said Charlie. “That’s what we pay you to do: stay one jump ahead of devious lawyers.”

  “Pay you” turned out be an unfortunate choice of words.

  “Sorry if you find us less than diligent, Charlie,” said John Fogg with no warmth whatsoever. “But as long as we’re on the subject of the relations between our two firms, there’s something I should probably mention, little as I’ve wanted to have to mention it to you directly. The fact is that on numerous occasions I have had to instruct people in my firm to get in touch with people in your firm about this, but they seem to have gotten nowhere. We’ve had a long relationship, and in the past Croker Global has met its obligations in a timely fashion, and so over the past six months or so we’ve been willing to accommodate you—but your unmet balance now stands at $354,000. I’m at a loss to see how I can insist that the firm continue to represent you unless the account becomes substantially more current.”

  Charlie was astonished. “Do you mean—”

  “I will pursue the matter of the arrest of the airplane and the painting, Charlie, and I will see what can be done and offer you my best advice. As things now stand, I don’t think we can go beyond that.”

  After they said their goodbyes, Charlie was in a dazed state as he put the telephone back in its cradle on the credenza.

  “What did he say?” asked the Wiz.

  “He said he’ll look into the court order PlannersBanc got for the G-5, and then …” He started to let it go at that. He didn’t want the word to get out. He didn’t want to start a wave of people jumping ship around here, least of all the Wiz. But the Wiz would have to know. Charlie depended on him too completely-in matters financial. “ … and after that they’re not gonna represent us unless we pay them a big chunk of our ‘unmet balance.’ That was what he called it, our ‘unmet balance.’ I don’t know where he gets these airs he likes to put on. His daddy was a clerk in a stationery and art-supply store on Houston Street. Wore a gray smock. Barely scraped by … Unmet balance … well—anyway—is there some way we can shift a couple of hundred thousand from someplace into Fogg Nackers Rendering & Lean?”

  “I don’t see how,” said the Wiz. “We don’t have $200,000 just sitting around parked someplace. Every dime of our cash flow is pre-dedicated.”

  “Well then, let’s start pre-dedicating it to Fogg Nackers,” said Charlie. “We can’t afford to have them shut down on us. Not at this point. He says we owe them $354,000.”

  “That’s true,” said the Wiz. “That’s the figure. But who do we divert it from to pay Fogg Nackers? We got noise all across the bandwidth as it is.”

  Just then a door opened and Marguerite came rushing in. A pale, slender woman in her late forties, she was dressed in a tweed jacket and skirt with a lush weave. Her dyed-dark-brown hair was done just so, in a pageboy bob. Charlie was so dependent on her, he was now paying her $90,000 a year. Marguerite had never married, and every penny went into her clothes, her hair, and her Mercedes. As usual, when she was perturbed about something, she pressed her lips together, distorting her even features. She came straight to Charlie.

  “Cap, your first visitor has arrived.”

  “My first visitor? Whattaya mean, my first visitor?” Charlie looked at his watch.

  “It’s that fat man, Colonel Popover. Sal—what’s his real name?”

  “Gigliotti?” said Charlie.

  “Right!” said Marguerite. “I never can remember it.”

  “What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “He says he wants his $17,000. Says we’ve owed it to him since last November.”

  Charlie looked at the Wiz and arched his eyebrows, as if to ask, “What’s the story?”

  The Wiz nodded. “He catered the Croker Concourse Caramba last year, last November. We owe him $17,000. Colonel Popover, Inc.”

  Marguerite said, “You probably don’t remember it, Charlie, but he showed up here late in the afternoon on Thursday.”

  “He didn’t have any appointment, did he?”

  “No, he just hung around. Says he hasn’t gotten anywhere by calling. He came back here Friday afternoon, but you’d already left for Turpmtine. So here he is, out in the waiting room again, and I wish you could take a look at him.”

  “Whattaya mean?”

  “Well, this time he’s not dressed in a suit. This time he’s dressed like Colonel Popover. He’s got on white shoes, white pants, one of these white—tunics do they call ’em?—the kind that chefs in the magazines wear—and a toque blanche, and he’s very fat.”

  “Toque blanche?”

  “You know,” said Marguerite, “one of those sort of white chimneys they put on their heads with a sort of puff of cloth on top—and he’s a very fat man. He’s already perspiring, and the day hasn’t even begun.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “I told him you have appointments all day.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he’d wait.”

  “Well, let him wait. He’ll get tired of it.”

  “I hope so—but he’s a little bit repulsive, Charlie. He’s very fat and very sweaty, and he’s got on this outfit.”

  She didn’t need to say any more. Charlie could see it vividly enough. He himself had insisted on having Colonel Popover for the Croker Concourse Caramba, which had been a party with so-called heavy hors d’oeuvres for the entire real estate community and every likely prospect in the business community. The idea was to stir up interest in the tower and the rest of the complex. The heaviest of the heavy hors d’oeuvres were Colonel Popover’s specialty, swans sculpted of ice with shelled lobster tails for feathers. The lobster tails were set in ridges in the ice. Cost a fortune; but in Atlanta real estate circles a party just wasn’t a party without Colonel Popover’s ice swans—and the Colonel himself. The presence of this very round, very fat, and, as luck would have it, very sweaty man in his chef’s rig and—what had Marguerite called it?—toke blonsh?—was the necessary trademark, telling one and all that this event had been done up as royally as an event could be done up in Metro Atlanta.

  And now the fat man—he must have weighed close to 300 pounds—was sitting out in the waiting room of the Croker Global floor in the same outfit, angry and sweaty. Now he was the trademark of the beginning of the end. God knew what he was likely to say to other visitors in the waiting room. Ought to throw him out, but who was going to do it? Guy was a blob of suet, but he weighed a ton. Not only that, he was altogether right in his complaint. Croker Global had stiffed him.

  Charlie looked at the Wiz. “Can’t we find $17,000 for this guy? He’s not a bad guy.”

  The Wiz said, “This is what I’m talking about, trying to shift money from one place to the other. Colonel Popover’s been on the PC’s list.”

  “PC’s?”

  “Stands for ‘patsies’—‘pat-sies’—the ones who are in no position to give us a lot of trouble. We hate to give up anybody on that list. But if Colonel Popover has found a way to be truly obnoxious, then we may have to take him off the list.” The Wiz looked at Marguerite. “Just let me know.”

  Charlie said, “Jesus Christ—is Sue Ellen in?” Sue Ellen was the receptionist.

  “Yes,” said Marguerite.

  “Well,” said Charlie, “turn the fat man over to her. You got other things to think about. Who’s my first appointment?”

  “Jerry Lovejoy and some of his people, from VectorCom, at nine.” Jerry Lovejoy and his people did, indeed, arrive at nine. His three people were, like Jerry Lovejoy himself, a bit on the flaccid side. Their jowls rose out of their shirt collars absolutely smoothly and, as is often the case with men not much over forty, in a way that doesn’t strike you as fat so much as young and swollen with rich food. Charlie had had Marguerite set things up at a round table in one of his office’s conference alcoves, with windows looking out toward Atlanta. He had her make a pot of New Orleans coffee with chicory and warm up some of Uncle Bud’s ham biscuits. It was time to do whatever he could to please Jerry Lovejoy, his sidekicks, and VectorCom. It was well known that this aircraft navigation giant was looking for new corporate headquarters, which could mean anywhere from four to eight floors of the Croker Concourse tower.

  At first, Jerry and his colleagues had turned down the coffee and the ham biscuits, but pretty soon the warm aromas got them, just as Charlie knew they would. Most men didn’t eat enough breakfast. In the case of hungry men like these porkers, the miraculous offer of Uncle Bud’s ham biscuits was irresistible.

  Jerry Lovejoy had popped a ham biscuit into his cheeks, and hadn’t even finished chewing, when he said, “This is great ham, Charlie! Speaking of good food, guess who we ran into out in your waiting room?”

  Oh shit, thought Charlie, but all he said was “Who?” The circuits began racing.

  “Colonel Popover, the caterer.” He flicked a glance that Charlie didn’t much like toward one of his people.

  Charlie made a big point of looking at his watch. “He’s early, sure’nough. Appointment’s not until the middle a the morning.”

  “Well, he’s there, all right, big as life, and he’s wearing his outfit—you know, that hat they wear?”

  “Aw, that’s his trademark,” said Charlie.

  “I know him—slightly,” said Jerry Lovejoy. “We’ve used him for a couple events—and so I said, ‘What brings you to Croker Concourse?’ and he says, ‘Seventeen thousand dollars.’” He beamed at Charlie.

  That fat buttery blob! Charlie had the urge to go out there to the waiting room and throttle—but he made himself focus on the here and now. He put on a big smile and reared back in his chair and said, “Godalmighty. I hope that’s not what he’s planning to charge us for our open house! We’re planning an open house.” He made himself chortle. “He’s a character, Sal is!”

  “That he is,” said Jerry Lovejoy, “that he is.”

  Charlie took a deep breath and tried to swell his chest with confidence, enthusiasm, energy, warmth, and manly charm. “Jerry, how about another ham biscuit?”

  “Uhhhmmmmm,” said Jerry, who already had a mouthful.

  “That ham’s cured in a smokehouse on a place a mine down in Baker County. Nothing quite like home-cured ham.”

  “Uhhhmmmmmm!” Jerry Lovejoy added a smile and arched eyebrows to his picture of cheek-popping gluttony.

  Charlie said, “Then I want to show you some space I think will interest you, just three floors below here. Has the same view.” He gestured with a sweeping grandeur toward the towers of Atlanta, which from this distance looked like a miniature Oz.

  Suddenly he had an overpowering urge to yawn. He had to fight his jaw muscles to keep them from flexing. The effort made his lips expand laterally. He hoped to God the porkers from VectorCom hadn’t noticed it.

  It wasn’t just the insomnia. Every day in this office—events propelled him in this direction and then whiplashed him back in that direction. One minute he’s in a sweat lying to creditors, double-talking creditors, hiding from creditors, and yes, even he, Cap’m Charlie Croker, beseeching creditors, beseeching like a drowning dog—and the very next he’s got to shift gears, recircuit his whole central nervous system, put on a whole new face, become a big, happy, hearty personification of confidence, omnipotence, charm, and trust, and talk people into leasing millions of dollars’ worth of space in a tower that had no business standing up forty stories high out in Cherokee County in the first place.