The Matarese Countdown Read Online Free PDF

and recite something in your dulcet tones, and keep turning right and left. Your
profeel
, chap!”
    “That fucking bitch stole my
song!
”
    “You didn’t copyright it, darling. Do ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ or something!”
    “I don’t know all the words!”
    “Then hum and push your tits into their faces. The
record
boys are here!” And so it went; altruism will out.
    Among the congregation of great, near-great, non-great, and never-great was a quiet man, a modest man of wealth with little or no pretense. He was a research fellow, ascholar committed to the study of cancers, and was in Monte Carlo as one of the contributing sponsors. He had requested anonymity, but his largess prohibited it in the eyes of the Grand Committee. He had agreed, in the name of his Spanish family, to give a very short speech welcoming the guests.
    He stood behind a courtyard screen, prepared to walk out to the podium when his name was called. “I’m quite nervous,” he said to a stagehand who stood beside him, ready to tap him on the shoulder when it was his time. “I’m not very good at speaking in public.”
    “Make it short and thank them, that’s all you have to do.… Here, have a glass of water, it’ll clear your throat.”
    “
Gracias
,” said the genuinely titled Juan Garcia Guaiardo. He drank, and on his way to the podium he collapsed. By the time he was dead, the stagehand had disappeared.
    Alicia Brewster, Dame of the Realm by decree of the Queen, emerged from her Bentley in front of the family residence in London’s Belgravia. She was a medium-sized, compact woman, but her stride and the energy it implied made her appear much larger, a force to be reckoned with. She let herself into the colonnaded entrance of the Edwardian house, only to be greeted by her two children, who had been summoned from their respective boarding schools and were waiting for her in the large, polished hall. They were a tall, clean-cut, muscular young man and a shorter, equally attractive girl, he in his late teens, she a little younger, both anxious, concerned, even frightened.
    “I’m sorry to have called you home,” said the mother after briefly embracing each child. “I simply thought it was better this way.”
    “It’s that serious, then?” asked the older brother.
    “That serious, Roger.”
    “I’d say it’s long overdue,” said the girl. “I never liked him, you know.”
    “Oh,
I
did, very much, Angela.” Alicia Brewster smiled sadly while nodding her head. “Also, I felt you needed a man around the house—”
    “He was hardly tops in that department, Mother,” interrupted the boy.
    “Well, he had a tough act to follow, as they say. Your father was rather overwhelming, wasn’t he? Successful, famous, certainly dynamic.”
    “You had a lot to do with it, Mum,” said the daughter.
    “Far less than you think, my dear. Daniel was his own man. I depended a great deal more on him than he depended on me. The saddest part of his passing, I always think, is that it was so prosaic, so banal, really. Dying in his sleep from a stroke. Merely the thought of it would have driven him to his gym, swearing.”
    “What do you want us to do, Mother?” asked Roger quickly, as if to stem the flow of painful memories.
    “I’m not sure. Moral support, I guess. Like most weak men, your stepfather has a vicious temper—”
    “He’d better not show it,” the strapping young man broke in. “If he even raises his voice, I’ll break his neck.”
    “And Rog can do it, Mum. He won’t tell you, but he’s the Midlands interscholastic wrestling champ.”
    “Oh, shut up, Angie, there wasn’t any competition.”
    “I hardly meant in the physical sense,” interrupted Alicia. “Gerald’s not the sort. It’s all just screaming tantrums with him. It’ll simply be unpleasant.”
    “Then why not have your solicitor take care of it, Mother?”
    “Because I have to know why.”
    “Why
what?
” asked Angela.
    “To keep him more