Lara took a deep breath and stepped inside. The reception office was smaller than she had expected. It contained one scarred desk with a bottle-blond secretary behind it.
"Good morning. Can I help you?"
"I'm here to see Mr. Martin," Lara said.
"Is he expecting you?"
"Yes, he is." There was no time for explanations.
"And your name?"
"Cameron. Lara Cameron."
The secretary looked at her quizzically. "Just a moment. I'll see whether Mr. Martin can see you."
The secretary got up from behind the desk and disappeared into the inner office.
He's got to see me, Lara thought.
A moment later the secretary emerged. "Yes, Mr. Martin will see you."
Lara concealed a sigh of relief. "Thank you."
She walked into the inner office. It was small and simply furnished. A desk, two couches, a coffee table, and a few chairs. Not exactly a citadel of power, Lara thought. The man behind the desk appeared to be in his early sixties. He had a deeply lined face, a hawk nose, and a mane of white hair. There was a feral, animal-like vitality about him. He was wearing an old-fashioned pinstripe double-breasted gray suit and a white shirt with a narrow collar. When he spoke, his voice was raspy, low, somehow compelling.
"My secretary said that I was expecting you."
"I'm sorry," Lara said. "I had to see you. It's an emergency."
"Sit down, Miss..."
"Cameron. Lara Cameron." She took a chair.
"What can I do for you?"
Lara took a deep breath. "I have a little problem." A skeleton twenty-four stories of uncompleted steel and concrete standing idle. "It's about a building."
"What about it?"
"I'm a real estate developer, Mr. Martin. I'm in the middle of putting up an office building on the East Side, and I'm having a problem with the union."
He was listening, saying nothing.
Lara hurried on. "I lost my temper and slapped one of the workmen, and the union called a strike."
He was studying her, puzzled. "Miss Cameron...what does all this have to do with me?"
"I heard you might be able to help me."
"I'm afraid you heard wrong. I'm a corporate attorney. I'm not involved with buildings, and I don't deal with unions."
Lara's heart sank. "Oh, I thought...isn't there anything you can do?"
He placed the palm of his hands on the desk, as though he were about to rise. "I can give you a couple pieces of advice. Get hold of a labor lawyer. Have him take the union to court and..."
"There's no time. I'm up against a deadline. I...what's the second piece of advice?"
"Get out of the building business." His eyes were fixed on her breasts. "You don't have the right equipment for it."
"What?"
"It's no place for a woman."
"And what is the place for a woman?" Lara asked angrily. "Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen?"
"Something like that. Yeah."
Lara rose to her feet. It was all she could do to control herself. "You must come from a long line of dinosaurs. Maybe you haven't heard the news. Women are free now."
Paul Martin shook his head. "No. Just noisier."
"Good-bye, Mr. Martin. I'm sorry I took up your valuable time."
Lara turned and strode out of the office, slamming the door behind her. She stopped in the corridor and took a deep breath. This was a mistake, she thought. She had finally reached a dead end. She had risked everything it had taken her years to build up, and she had lost it in one swift instant. There was no one to turn to. Nowhere to go.
It was over.
Lara walked the cold, rainy streets. She was completely unaware of the icy wind and her surroundings. Her mind was filled with the terrible disaster that had befallen her. Howard Keller's warning was ringing in her ears: You put up buildings and borrow on them. It's like a pyramid, only if you're not careful, that pyramid can fall down. And it had. The banks in Chicago would foreclose on her properties there, and she would lose all the money she had invested in the new building. She would have to start all over, from the beginning. Poor Howard, she thought. He believed in my dreams, and I've let him down.
The rain had stopped, and the sky was beginning to clear. A pale sun was fighting its way through the clouds. She suddenly realized it was dawn. She had walked all night. Lara looked around and saw where she was for the first time. She was only two blocks from the doomed property. I'll take a last look at it, Lara thought, resignedly.
She was a full block away when she first heard it. It was the sound of pneumatic drills and hammers and the roar of cement mixers filling the air. Lara stood there, listening for an instant, then started running toward the building site. When she reached it, she stood there, staring, unbelievingly.
The full crew was there, hard at work.
The foreman came up to her, smiling. "Morning, Miss Cameron."
Lara finally found her voice. "What...what's happening? I...I thought you were pulling your men off the job.'
He said sheepishly, "That was a little misunderstanding, Miss Cameron. Bruno could have killed you when he dropped that wrench."
Lara swallowed. "But he..."
"Don't worry. He's gone. Nothing like that will happen again. You don't have a thing to worry about. We're right back on schedule."
Lara felt as though she were in a dream. She stood there watching the men swarming over the skeleton of the building and she thought, I got it all back again. Everything. Paul Martin.
Lara telephoned him as soon as she returned to her office. His secretary said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Martin is not available."