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“So I imagined,” Roarke said mildly. “I’m sorry to interrupt you.”
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded of the horrified receptionist. “Haven’t I told you I don’t want people fussing around in my office?”
“Yes, but—”
“Scoot. Scoot.” He scooted her personally, waving his hands at her like a farm wife scattering chickens. “What do you want?” he said to Roarke and slammed the office door smartly.
“It’s nice to see you again, too, Stiles.”
“I don’t have time for chitchat and politics. We’re working on the new heart regenerative serum.”
“How’s it going?”
“It has momentum, which you’re stopping by calling me out of my lab.”
He sat, gracelessly, a beefy man with the shoulders of an Arena Ball fullback. His face was dominated by a nose that sliced down the center of his face like an ax through granite. His eyes were black and brooding, his mouth set in a permanent frown. His hair, a dingy gray he refused to change, sprang up out of his scalp like steel wool.
He was ill-mannered, ill-tempered, surly, and sarcastic.
Roarke liked him very much.
“You worked here when Allegany was associated with J. Forrester.”
“Hah.” Stiles took out a pipe he hadn’t filled in fifteen years and chewed on the stem. “I’ve worked here since you were still sucking your thumb and drooling on your chin.”
“Fortunately I grew out of both distressing habits. The partnership had to do with a particular project.”
“Sexual dysfunction. People didn’t worry about sex so much, they’d get more done.”
“But what would be the point?” Roarke lifted a box filled with what appeared to be a decade’s worth of periodical discs, set it on the floor.
“Married now, aren’t you? Sex goes out the window.”
Roarke thought of Eve rising over him in the dark. “Is that what happened to it?”
The amusement in the tone had Stiles snorting out what might have been a laugh.
“In any case,” Roarke continued, “I need information about the partnership, the project, and the players.”
“I look like a fucking data bank to you?”
Roarke ignored the question. More, he ignored the delivery, something he wouldn’t have done for many. “I’ve already accessed considerable data, but the personal touch is helpful. Theodore McNamara.”
“Asshole.”
“As I believe that’s your affectionate term for nearly everyone in your acquaintance, and out of it, perhaps you could be more specific.”
“More interested in profit than the results. In glory than the big picture. Administrate you to death and back again just for the enjoyment of proving who was pushing the buttons. Wanted a name for himself. He was top dog around here then, and he made sure we all knew it by pissing on everyone as often as possible. Courted the media like a publicity whore.”
“I take it you didn’t get together for a quick beer after a hard day over the petri dish.”
“Couldn’t stand the son of a bitch. Can’t knock his professional skills. There’s a brilliant mind in that puffed up prima donna.”
He sucked on his pipe a little, thinking. “He hand-selected most of the teams. Brought his doormat of a daughter in on it. What the hell was her name . . . Hah, who gives a shit? Good brain, worked like a dog, and had nothing to say for herself.”
“Can I assume from this the project was primarily McNamara’s baby?”
“He made the majority of decisions, made the blueprints for the direction the work took. It was a corporate project, but McNamara was the figurehead, spokesperson, main son of a bitch in charge. There was a lot of money riding on the deal. Corporate money, private investors. Sex sells. We had some luck in a couple areas.”
