Free Due Diligence: A Thriller by Jonathan Rush Page A

background was well-to-do with family money on both sides. His father was a partner with a big advertising firm, they had an apartment in Manhattan and a house on Long Island, and Greg had gone to a fancy private school and then through Princeton. Rob, on the other hand, was working nights at a deli on Ninth to supplement his scholarship. But in their second year they shared a seminar course in torts and found themselves hanging out. Two more years of shared all-nighters studying for law exams cemented the friendship. After law school, Greg had joined the DA’s office. Wall Street didn’t interest him. Greg would tease Rob a little, asking him how a job at Roller Waite was going to help fulfill his great urge for social justice. Rob teased him back, saying it was easy to go work at the DA’s office when your salary was only the icing on the cake of your trust fund. Besides, Rob didn’t know that prosecuting a succession of pimps, thieves, and drug pushers had much to do with social justice. It seemed to him it had more to do with the opposite.
    Greg had been with his girlfriend, Louise, for about a year and a half. Louise was a thin woman with a large head, wide-boned face, and black hair cut straight across the forehead. She had a strange, striking beauty. Or maybe it was just unusualness. She did some kind of art thing in the Village with textiles and rubber that she never deigned to explain very clearly, obviously believing that people like Rob and Emmy would never be able to appreciate its true cosmic significance. Neither of them much liked Miss Snookums, as they called her between themselves. But Greg was besotted with her. He still was, unfortunately, because it had been clear for a while to anyone else that Louise was cooling toward him. Whatever had initially attracted her to Greg was gone. She had never exuded a lot of warmth, but her brusqueness toward him was worse each time Rob and Emmy met up with them. It was getting embarrassing to see it.
    Emmy had rescheduled the dinner for Wednesday night. Rob picked her up in a cab on the way uptown to the restaurant. Work was still going on in the war room, but Rob told Sammy he needed a couple of hours and that he’d be back, then he’d stay until whatever time it took. Cynthia had done the same thing the previous evening, so Rob figured he could as well.
    The cab ride was the first time they’d had together in days. Emmy told him about a manuscript she wanted to bid for. It was a story about a woman’s struggle to cope with her son’s mental illness, and Emmy thought it was beautifully written—honest, moving, without sentimentality—and would hit a spot with a female readership, maybe even turn out to be a bestseller. More important, she loved it. She desperately wanted to be its editor, but there was interest from other parties. The bidding had turned into an auction and she didn’t know if Fay Pride, the editorial director at Lascelle Press, was going to let her put in a high enough offer.
    “Doesn’t she like it?” asked Rob.
    “She likes it, but I don’t think she sees the potential like I do. And this woman can write, Rob. She can really write. There’s going to be more. Personally, I wouldn’t be bidding for just the one book. I’d be offering her a two-book deal.”
    “And you don’t think you’ll get it?”
    “I don’t know. We could have had it all to ourselves, that’s what’s so frustrating. The agent came to us first, thinking we’d be the perfect home for it, which we are, but Fay took so long deciding that the agent took it out to the market and now she says she’s got four publishers interested. When that happens, the price gets crazy. And you know us at Lascelle—we don’t do crazy prices.”
    They arrived first. Ercole came out from the back, beaming. He seated them and went to get a bottle of wine. Verdicchio, the wine of his home region in Italy.
    “Cheers,” said Rob. “Here’s to that book. Let’s hope you get