Chapter 1

Though it was scarcely thirty minutes into twilight, darkness was beginning to settle thickly over the city of New York, and night's sudden approach was nowhere more apparent than by the fountain in Central Park. But the sudden encroachment of darkness was halted this particular evening, and the well-manicured lawns of the Park, still bearing the traces of summer green well into September, were brightly lighted with a half dozen carbon arcs, their bluish smoke-streams faintly trailing out behind them as they cast a daylight-bright glow onto the trio of fashion models being led through their practiced motions by one of the city's leading ad agency creative directors, Marty Felder. And mingled in with the crowd of curious passers-by and agency hangers on were two young people who viewed the fascinating scenario of television color commercials being created with particular interest, Jessica Richards and her boyfriend, Phillip Wright, had not chanced on this happening-in-the-Park; their presence had been carefully calculated, right down to the cost of the subway that brought them here from Jessica's aunt's brownstone house down near the Village. Actually, the scheming was more of Jessica's doing than of Phillip's, for she alone had a real and clearly defined reason for being present when Marty Felder put his models through their paces. Jessica, too, was a model; at least, she'd studied successfully with one of the east's top modeling schools and had been through the necessary requisites of fifteen dollar modeling assignments and posing for the mandatory badge of the modeling profession, the portfolio of stills every girl lugged from agency to agency until she found just that right break that tossed her into the hundred dollar an hour league and splashed her features across the country's biggest magazines. But Jessica Richards had not yet discovered that break, though she'd tried as diligently and determinedly as any girl in New York, and Marty Felder offered her the one shortcut available. But it was a painful shortcut she dreaded to take, one that would destroy everything between her and Phillips if he were to find out.

It was a week ago today, almost exactly to the minute, when she'd finally managed an interview with the heavy, beady eyed Felder in his plush paneled offices on the thirteenth floor of a Madison Avenue skyscraper. Phillip, true to their long-standing rules of job-hunting, had waited outside on the Avenue; he'd finished his own round of agency visits before noon, unsuccessful for the third week running in his hunt for an art opening where he could use his New York School of Fine Arts training better than at the bargain-basement department store advertising department he'd just quit. Most of the agency people had already cleared their desks and gone back to Connecticut and Long Island when Felder remembered his four-thirty appointment still sitting in his reception office, and with a flourish of obviously contrived courtesy, ushered her in for a quick cursory glance at her well-traveled portfolio, now slightly the worse for wear from being dragged from one agency to another, from modeling house to advertising agency to television package producers to network casting offices.

Marty Felder proved to be a man incapable of beating around the bush; but neither did he fail to choose his words oh-so-carefully, with the polished subtlety of a man long accustomed to propositioning eager young girls who searched him out in their quest for modeling success. He was just obvious enough to make his point, even with the paddle-headed adolescent he mistakenly thought she was; subtle enough to avoid being hauled into court by some sly, recorder-carrying gold-digger, in case his long-perfect appraisal of his young job-seeker proved grossly incorrect.

"It's easy to go a long way in this business, Miss Richards," he had smoothly purred that late afternoon, "It just depends on your looks, which you've obviously got, and your, uh..."--he paused here dramatically for a long, slow exploratory assessment of every rich full swell and hollow of her five-and-three-quarters feet, obviously impressed with the fullness and maturity nineteen years had brought to his blonde guest--"... cooperation," he continued finally, after satisfying himself, apparently, that the ripely blossoming teenager sitting before him was worth a few minutes of his busy day. She sat uncomfortably in silence for a few moments, while Felder retraced with his eyes his hungry path over her bulging knit sweater and matching belted hot pants, coursing down over her young body, following the rippling wave of her luxuriant, rich blonde hair as it spilled over the ripe swells of her breasts like sparkling water over polished stone. She had managed a feeble, stammering reply to his unveiled proposition, a proposition of her own that she'd have to think about his terms. Jessica had surprised even herself with her unabashed frankness that day, for she had never had to face such an enigmatic obstacle before. Until then, it was always a no, yes or nothing for her career as far as he was concerned...

Marty Felder glanced up from his crouching position, where he was squinting into a Minolta spot-type light meter the photographer was holding toward the carefully-poised form of Gloria Annenburg, an Austrian import who was one of Felder's discoveries and who, Madison Avenue legend has it, occupies a bedroom suite of her own in his mid-town penthouse, available at any hour to satisfy the terms of her meteoric success in a most unique manner. He spotted Jessica, smiled openly, then visibly cooled as he checked out the dimensions of her escort. For though only twenty one, Phillip Wright was excellently built, broad through the shoulders and chest, but with a slim tapered waist that evidenced his morning three-mile runs and high-protein diet. Phillip determined long ago that, while he was definitely an artist, it wasn't necessary to effect that gaunt, teetering-at-starvation's-door appearance so many of his contemporaries seemed to carry like an identification card of their trade.