"Ally, you're not going to believe who called here ten minutes ago, asking for you. Winston Bartlett. My God, it's like Donald Trump called. Well, actually it was some male secretary or something. He said he was calling to confirm your ten o'clock appointment. At an address on Gramercy Park East. What's that about? Jesus, Ally, where are you? I don't know what you're up to, but this could be big. He owns entire buildings, for chrissake."
"Did you say I was coming?"
"I didn't know what to say. He left a number to call if you can't make it. Otherwise, he'll assume you'll be there. It's only two hours from now."
"All right, Jen, let's put together a 'folio’ of our biggest jobs. Lead with that gut rehab we did on the building down by the South Street Seaport. And put in those two floor‑through lofts we did on that conversion in TriBeCa. The ones with the slate bathrooms and the stainless‑steel countertops in the kitchen."
"I've already started. Do you know specifically what he has in mind?" She paused. "How did he find out about us, anyway?"
"My creepy kid brother works for him." She sighed. "It’s a long story. Be there in a couple of minutes." She clicked off the phone.
"Betty, thanks a lot. I've gotta run." She turned and gave Knickers a last rumple of the ears. "Be good, baby. I'll pick you up by six at the latest."
"What wrong?" Misha was concerned, twisting a white towel he was holding. "Big problem?"
"Nothing's wrong. Actually, something probably is wrong. I just don't know what it is yet." She headed out the door.
The design firm her father had started and she'd kept going, now with some architecture thrown in, was on the ground floor of an old industrial loft building whose upper floors had been converted into rental apartments in the early 1980s. The owner was an ex‑wrestler named Oskar Jacobi, who had turned Zen master (after a fashion) and had a studio upstairs, on the second floor. He had drifted from wrestling into karate during his thirties and thence into the life of the mind, or rather the life of "no‑mind," in his late forties. Now he taught meditation as well as karate and insisted they be learned in that order. He served as his own superintendent, mopping the halls and setting out the garbage on pickup days.