More Twisted

about the affair he’d been having with his secretary. But he was adamant about the divorce and soon he cut off all contact with her, except for financial matters involving their son, Randy.
    But would she actually hire a killer to get even with him?
    No way, he decided: Vicky’s reaction to the breakup was to play victim, not vengeful ex. Besides, York had done right by her. He’d paid alimony and child support promptly and, a few years later, hadn’t contested the custody order that took away his rights to see their son.
    York and his second wife were together only two years. She’d proved too brittle for him, too liberal, too NPR. That breakup was Holyfield-Tyson, pure combat. Susan, a high-powered commercial real estate lawyer, walked away with a lot of money, more than enough to salve her injured pride (York left her for a woman sixteen years younger and twenty pounds slimmer). She also took her career too seriously to risk it by doing anything illegal to him. She had remarried—a military consultant and former army colonel she’d met negotiating a contract with the government for her client—and York was sure he’d fallen off her radar screen.
    Ex-girlfriends? The usual suspects . . . . But, brother, where to start? Almost too many to count. He’d broken up badly with some of them, used some, lied. Of course,York himself had been used and lied to by women. On the whole it evened out, he figured. That was how the game worked; nobody sane would hire a hit man to kill a lover just because he’d dumped you.
    Who else could it be?
    Most likely, he decided, it was somebody he’d had business dealings with.
    But there were a lot of fish in that sea too. Dozens came to mind. When he’d been a salesman for a pharmaceutical company, he’d reported one of his fellow detail men for cheating on his expense account (York turned him in not out of company loyalty but to pillage the guy’s territory). The man was fired and vowed to get even.
    He’d also been involved in the acquisition of dozens of companies over the last ten years; hundreds of employees had been fired as a result. He recalled one of these in particular—a salesman who’d come to him in tears, after he’d been let go, begging for a second chance. York, though, stuck to his decision—mostly because he didn’t like the man’s whining. A week later the salesman killed himself; his note said he’d failed as a man because he could no longer take care of his wife and children. York could hardly be responsible for crazy behavior like that. But his survivors might not feel that way. Maybe Trotter was this man’s brother or best friend, or been hired by them.
    He recalled another incident: the time he’d had a private eye check out a rival venture capitalist and found he was gay. The client that they were both wooing was a homophobe. During dinner one night York subtly dropped the skinny on the rival, and the next day York’s outfit got the assignment. Had he found out and hired Trotter?
    Any other sins?
    Oh, you bet, York thought in disgust, reaching into the dim past.
    A dish served cold  . . .
    Recalling an incident in college, a prank gone wrong—a frat hazing that resulted in a pledge getting drunk and stabbing a cop. The kid was expelled, then disappeared not long after. York couldn’t remember his name. It could’ve been Trotter.
    A dozen other incidents flooded into his thoughts, two dozen, three—people ignored and insulted, lies told, associates cheated . . . . His memory spit out not only the serious offenses, but the petty ones too: rudeness to clerks, gouging an elderly woman who’d sold him her car, laughing when a man’s toupee flew off in a heavy wind . . .
    Reliving them all. It was exhausting.
    Another hit of scotch . . . then another.
    And the next thing he knew the sun was streaming through the window. He squinted in pain from the hangover and groggily focused on his watch. Oh, damn, it was nine . . . . Why hadn’t Carole wakened him? She knew he had two deals this morning. Sometimes that woman just didn’t have a goddamn clue.
    York staggered into the kitchen, and Carole looked up from the phone. She smiled. “Breakfast’s ready.”
    “You let me sleep.”
    She told her friend she’d call back and hung up. “I figured you were tired. And you looked just too cute, all cuddled up.”
    Cute. Jesus Lord . . . York winced in pain. His neck was frozen from sleeping in an awkward