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The elevator alarm buzzed.
“Matthew, hurry—please!” Camilla Rose said, and smiled.
Payne moved quickly to the elevator. As he stepped in, his phone began ringing. He looked at it.
She moved her foot from the door. The elevator doors started closing.
“I have to take this,” he said, quickly turning sideways and stepping back off. “I’ll catch up.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her watching with a perplexed expression just as the doors shut.
The elevator ascended.
Payne put the phone to his head.
“Nice timing, Tony. Think I just dodged another bullet. What’s up?”
After listening to Harris, his phone vibrated and he quickly checked its glass screen. Camilla Rose had texted her unit number.
“Sure,” Payne then said to Harris. “I’m free.”
[ FOUR ]
The Union League
140 South Broad Street
Philadelphia
Thursday, January 5, 9:35 P.M.
Matt Payne was alone at the large, heavy wooden bar—there were only two other men, both in business suits, at the far end of the room—draining his third scotch whisky with a splash of water. He saw Baxter step into the doorway from the front desk stand, look toward Payne, and then with his left arm make a sweeping gesture into the room. Tony Harris then appeared from the corridor. He was carrying a large file folder.
Baxter, who had been at the Union League for as long as Payne could remember, and had to be in his eighties, scowled his disapproval as Payne raised his scotch glass toward him and smiled and waved.
Baxter then bowed slightly and slipped away as Harris crossed the room.
“I never get tired of this place,” Harris said as he took the seat next to Payne. “It’s like stepping back in time. The ambience drips of Old World Philadelphia circa 1862.”
Founded during the Civil War as a patriotic society, the Union League of Philadelphia long boasted a membership of great wealth and power. Its enormous historic brownstone—with its iconic pair of curved stone staircases dramatically leading up to the heavy wooden doors of the main entrance on the second level—occupied an entire Center City block in the shadow of high-rises housing the offices of Fortune 500 corporations and just steps south of City Hall.
Harris scanned the large, high-ceilinged room. The polished-marble floor highlighted the exotic rugs. There was rich wood paneling and leather-upholstered furniture. The corridors were lined with bronze and marble busts and sculptures, as well as presidential portraits and paintings of man-o’-wars sailing the high seas.
Harris then saw that Payne had his smartphone on the bar.
“Still having trouble not breaking rules, I see,” he said.
A sign was prominently posted near the front desk—ostensibly for guests but certain members required constant reminding—that League policy prohibited cellular telephone conversations. The signs also stated that the devices should be turned off.
Payne, like many others, simply put his phone on SILENT and, except for now, out of sight.
“No one here for me to annoy, unfortunately,” Payne said as the bartender approached. “What’s your poison?”
“Club soda for now, please,” Harris told the bartender, who nodded and turned away.
“You trying to make me feel bad? Or worse than I already do?”
“I might have something stiffer, in a bit,” Harris said, pulling papers out of the folder. He slid the top sheet on the bar in front of Payne.
