Rick Corday did more than burn it.
After the note was charred black gossamer wings, he dumped them in the toilet and flushed them down.
Bastard. Unfaithful bastard.
He went back to the bed where he'd been propped up against the headboard reading the latest Tom Clancy novel. This time, instead of the novel, he picked up a manilla envelope from which he shook out two black-and-white photographs.
Everything about the man bespoke the kind of sleek ego that seemed endemic to the world of advertising. There was something silly and hollow and theatrical about these peoplemen and women alikebut they didn't seem to be aware of it.
This one, for instance.
Standing on the dock next to his yacht, wearing the whites and blue blazer of a man who had conquered several nations and would conquer several more before his time was finished on this world.
Eric Brooks.
Hardly to the manor born, despite an official bio that got more creative each year.
Father a worker at the Caterpillar heavy equipment plant in Peoria. (Is this the same father you would later list as an astronomer, Mr Brooks?)
2.8 college average at the state university.
Three failed marriages, two paternity suits, and the loss of a major client because Brooks kept plugging the client's wife on the side.
Now sole owner of the only Chicago agency to ever win six Clios in one year.
Now sole owner of a Maserati, a Cessna that sat eight and a hunting cabin in Idaho that Ernest Hemingway had owned briefly back in the forties.
Corday looked at the second photo now.
Mr Brooks all gussied up in his handball T-shirt and his handball shorts and his handball scowl. Sweaty, gritty black-and-white, this photo, and how the macho Mr Brooks must love gazing upon it.
That's one tough hombre, that Mr Brooks.
Corday smiled.
He was going to ruin Mr Brooks' life and there wasn't a thing Mr Brooks could do about it.
Not a single solitary thing.
But first Rick had to stop by Jill Coffey's place…