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reservation.”
    “Okay. But didn’t I read that you’ve said you’d rather eat at Burger King?”
    “I grew up eating Burger King,” Christian said, with a tight smile. “Never developed a taste for the finer things, I guess.”
    “Well, I’m not a gourmet, either. You clearly have somethingyou’re dying to tell me. Why don’t we save time, eat on the way to wherever it is we’re going?”
    ON the way to lunch, Matt decided he could get used to this way of life.
    The helicopter in Oregon had whisked him quickly to PDX, where one of Howard Christian’s private jets awaited. It was an all-black vintage Boeing 727 that had once belonged to Hugh Hefner. A bunny head had been painted on the tail. At the tower, he had been swept up into a high place, as Satan had done with Jesus; only, unlike Jesus, Matt had accepted the offer. Not that he intended to fall on his knees and worship at the monetary altar of Howard Christian, but he recognized the billionaire was now his boss, and he knew bosses could turn out to want many things, some of them impossible.
    Then down in the private elevator to the fifth subbasement, where there were a dozen fantastic automobiles. Howard Christian didn’t believe in letting his toys gather dust—he liked to get them out and play with them. He was probably the richest man in the world who actually drove very much.
    Matt paused at a pale yellow convertible with red trim that looked longer, taller, and wider than any car he had ever seen, and yet managed to seat only two people. It had big globe headlamps and four chromed pipes coming out of the hood cowl on each side.
    “I see you like this one. It’s a ’36 Duesenberg Model J, special built with a short wheelbase, standard Deusy V-12 engine.”
    “This is the
short
version?”
    “It was built for Clark Gable. He drove it to and from the studio while he was working on
Gone With the Wind.
Or up and down Hollywood Boulevard with Carole Lombard sitting beside him. Get in, we’ll take this one.”
    CHRISTIAN drove them out of the basement and down Wilshire Boulevard, both of them content to enjoy the soft purr of the engine, the smell of the pale yellow leather, the luxurious suspension and road-handling ability, and the stares of other drivers.Sports car enthusiasts might sneer, but only if they were profoundly ignorant of precision engineering.
    Matt asked, “Howard, could I buy this car?”
    “It’s not for sale.”
    “No, I mean, could I afford it?”
    Christian glanced at him.
    “What am I paying you?”
    “Two million dollars a year.”
    “You could make a down payment.”
    Christian looked over at Matt again, with a smile that was a bit smug but with enough sense of almost adolescent wonder that Matt could forgive him.
    He said, “They say in Los Angeles, you are what you drive.”
    “So what does that make you?” Matt asked.
    “Anybody I want to be.”
    THERE was no one in the drive-thru at the Jack in the Box. Christian pulled up to the window and nearly shut the place down as most of the patrons and employees craned their necks to get a better view.
    Warburton got out of one of the two heavily armored Mercedes SUVs that had been preceding and following the Duesenberg, each carrying two heavily armed men, and hurried to Christian as he was about to pull out with the sack of food sitting next to him. He handed Christian a brown envelope and went back to his car, where he would sweat profusely in the plush air-conditioned interior until his employer was back in the relative safety of a building Warburton controlled.
    Christian handed the envelope to Matt, who opened it and found one hundred new-minted thousand-dollar bills. At least, he supposed it was a hundred; it wouldn’t seem right to count it just then.
    “Now we’ve both held a hundred grand, cash, in our hands,” Christian said.
    *    *    *
    ON an impulse Christian drove to the Santa Monica Pier, where he parked in the lot and was instantly hemmed in