The private dining room at the standard-issue athletic club on East Sixty-Ninth Street didn't have windows. It had dark mahogany wainscoting that had been treated with three generations of linseed oil, a low ceiling covered in acoustic plaster that swallowed the scrape of silver knives, and an absolute, unyielding privacy that couldn't be bought by anyone who had earned their capital after the implementation of the interstate banking acts.
Victor Hawthorne didn't look at his watch when the heavy timber door clicked open. He didn't have to. The automated grandfather clock in the reception hall had just finished its third stroke for the half-hour, its brass weights dropping with a muffled, industrial thud that traveled straight through the floorboards into the heels of his English oxfords.
