“I can’t believe that.”
“Go and talk to her, Louis,” Maurer said. “Handle her carefully. Don’t let her know you know who she is. See if she’ll tell you. Try and find out what she’s doing here.”
Seigel nodded and went out.
“Do you know anything about her?” Maurer asked as Gollowitz sat down again.
“Not much. She’s a looker. I think at one time before she married, she did a bit of singing: small stuff, small fees: you know the kind of thing. They got married about three years ago.”
“What the hell can she be doing here?” Maurer said, pulling at his under-lip.
Gollowitz shrugged. He wasn’t interested in Janey Conrad. In a few hours, he was thinking, Maurer would be on the yacht. He would then be in charge of Maurer’s kingdom, something he had thought about as a remote possibility for the past three years, and now it was within his grasp. It would be he now who would be the power in the organization. No longer would he have to persuade or even beg to have his advice followed. He would decide something should be done, and it would be done immediately.
His mind shifted from the taking over of Maurer’s power to something else that Gollowitz had looked at with envious eyes and frustrated desire ever since he had first met her: Maurer’s wife, Dolores.
Just to think of that tall, red-haired, green-eyed woman made Gollowitz short of breath. To his mind there had never been any woman more desirable and intriguing than Maurer’s wife, and yet Maurer seemed scarcely to be aware she existed. How could he have had an affair with that Arnot woman when Dolores was his? Gollowitz wondered. How could he?
“What’s on your mind, Abe?” Maurer asked sharply, his eyes on Gollowitz’s face.