B009XDDVN8 EBOK (44 page)

“That guy you were waiting for, he showed up,” said Lucille, her voice as bored with Derek as it had been with us.

The man didn’t move.

“I’m going to Miami for a few days,” she said. “I’m taking the Explorer and staying with Lulu.”

The man at the bar lifted his right arm and gave his hand a little twist, like a beauty queen waving good-bye.

“You’re no fun when you drink, and you haven’t been fun for ages,” she said before walking out of the room. And still Derek Grubbins didn’t turn.

I had assumed if he knew I was coming, which he surely did, he’d have some protection, a few lugs with dead eyes and arms
like legs. But there was no protection here. If I had brought the gun I could have killed him right then and there and he wouldn’t even have heard the shot until he was already dead. What that meant I couldn’t figure, but he sure as hell wasn’t scared of me, at least not yet.

“Nice kid, that Lucille,” I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. “Not much older than my daughter.”

“You was supposed to be here yesterday,” said Derek, his back still turned. “I hope you don’t mind I started drinking without yous.”

“I want my daughter back.”

“I bet you do.”

“We’re going to end this once and for all, you and me, here and now.”

I expected him to turn around and spit, to berate the hell out of me for what I had done all those years ago. I braced for an onslaught. But when he did turn around he simply smiled at me, a strange sadness in his eyes. “Ending it once and for all,” he said as he raised his glass, half-filled with a pale amber liquid. “Isn’t that a pretty fucking dream?”

Derek Grubbins was smaller than I had expected, not that he was small, and older than I had expected, not that he was ancient. It’s just that after all these years I had expected a monstrous figure right out of the nightmares of my childhood, a terrifying minotaur riding a Harley, not this ordinary older man in black slacks, a long-sleeved silk shirt that looked like a paisley had thrown up all over it, and a poseur’s ponytail. His face, shorn of his beard, was the weathered face of anyone who worked outside for a living, a construction worker maybe, or a golf pro. His shoulders were wide, sure, but nothing that would make you blink twice in the free-weight section of the gym. And he had a white bandage wrapped around his left hand as if he had cut himself making cocktails.

“I brought out my priciest Scotch for the occasion.” He gestured toward a squat bottle with a stag’s head on the label. “You want?”

“No.”

“It’s a good single malt, not much younger than Lucille. You sure?”

“I didn’t come to drink, I came to make a deal.”

“A deal?” Derek seemed to ponder that for a moment. “No chatting about the old neighborhood? No telling each other how good we look after all these years?”

“You look like shit.”

He stared at me for a bit, startled, it seemed, and then he burst out laughing. “Life’s a bitch, or you just finding that out now? So what kind of deal we talking about, Moretti? How about you just give me back my money and we’ll call the whole thing even?”

“It wasn’t your money,” I said, “it was your gang’s money. And it was drug money, so even if it was your money it wasn’t your money.”

“It sure felt like my money,” he said, not with anger, but more with a wistfulness at the follies of youth. He turned his head to scan the room and the outside. “Where’s the third member of your little crew?”

“Third?”

“I already beat the shit out of Ben, and you’re here playing Monty Hall, so where’s the third? You know, that kid with the skateboard.”

“Augie,” I said.

“Yeah, Augie. I thought we’d wrap this all up neat in a bow with the three of you.”

“It would have been hard for Augie to put in an appearance,” I said, “considering that he’s dead.”

“Dead, huh?” said Derek. “That’s too damn bad. Last I heard he was fat and happy in Vegas.”

“He was until your man Clevenger went into his house uninvited, tied him onto the bed, and tortured him to death.”

Derek tilted his head and stared at me for a long moment, like a dog staring at a penguin, before downing his single malt as quick as if it were a hot shot of cheap tequila.

“You didn’t know?” I said. “Your debt collector didn’t tell you?”

“What does it matter?” said Derek as he refilled his glass.

“Who the hell is Clevenger?”

“The absolute wrong guy to have on your ass, I’ll tell you that. And you can’t say Augie didn’t get what he deserved, the snarky son of a bitch. But I’m sorry about this thing with your daughter. I wasn’t happy when I heard about your daughter.”

“Then call him up, tell him to let her go.”

“It ain’t that easy.”

“It better be. You signed an agreement, didn’t you, a witness protection agreement that got you out of jail and offered you protection so long as you told the truth and didn’t commit a felony? What would happen if the US Marshals Service learned you sent someone to kill Augie and are now involved in a kidnapping?”

Derek looked at his glass. “It wouldn’t be no good, that’s for sure.”

“And if the feds don’t take care of it, then maybe your friends in the Devil Rams will. The Fat Dog died in the prison you sent him to, the Fat Dog’s kid now leads the crew. What happens if a call is made to The Devil’s Brew and an address is whispered?”

“Is that dump still there?”

“Still standing and still smelling like a craphouse. I know, I was just there, and let me tell you, for some reason your name sends the Devil Rams into conniptions of rage. They want to mount your head on their wall.”

“Ah, the old gang. I almost miss the bastards.”

“They won’t miss if they find you. And in case you’re getting ideas, if anything happens to me, the calls will still be made. Ben’s been given the numbers and all the information.”

“You got me in a bind, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“You’re pretty good, I must say. You sound like you’ve been practicing that all night. You sure you don’t want a drink? What
I found is that a drink here or there makes everything just a little easier to take. Which is why I’ve been drinking a lot lately.”

“I don’t want a drink,” I said.

“Have one anyway.” He reached over the bar with his good hand and pulled back a glass. “A drink to seal the deal.”

“We have a deal?”

“We’re getting there,” he said with a wink.

My nerves eased as soon as I saw it, that wink. Things were moving so far outside my harsh expectations that I had a hard time processing it all. Derek wasn’t the fierce motorhead I had expected, he seemed instead somehow defeated. Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for the fight anymore. Or maybe just by finding him I had won the game and now all he wanted was to end the threat. Or maybe he had changed like his brother had changed. And maybe this vendetta against us had morphed out of his control and he intended now to rein it in and end it. God, I hoped that was it. But whatever it was, I had been in on enough negotiations to know when an agreement was going to happen, and right now, in this room, an agreement was going to happen. I thought of the moment I would hug my daughter; my eyes got a little misty and my throat tightened on me. And then I shut down the emotions and put myself back into my salesman mode: closing, always be closing. And if it took a drink or two to close, bring it on.

Derek poured two fingers of the Scotch into the glass and looked up at me. “A splash?”

“Sure.”

He tilted a bottle of ginger ale over the glass, pouring in just enough to loosen the whiskey, and handed the glass to me with a smile. “Tell me that ain’t nice.”

I took a sip.

“That is nice,” I said, and it was, truly, the liquor dark, with hints of vanilla and smoke, alongside the brightness of the sweet ginger. It gave me a sense of well-being, of developing possibilities;
it somehow eased all the tension in the world. A hell of a Scotch. I would have to make sure they stocked it in the taproom at the Patriots Landing Golf Club when I climbed back into my life.

“Dalmore,” said Derek. “A hundred and something a bottle, and worth it.”

“Yes it is.”

The front door slammed and I jumped a bit, but Derek just raised an eyebrow. “Lucille, off to South Beach.”

“She’s young.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t keep up with her. She wants to dance all night and screw for hours; I just want to sleep.” He burst out into laughter again, like everything about his life was a cosmic joke. “God, when did I get too old for someone that young?”

“What happened to your hand?”

“Fishing accident.” He looked at his Scotch for a moment. “So, Moretti, are we talking any money, too? Money always makes a deal a little sweeter, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it does,” I said, taking another sip. “There’s some, I suppose, if you insist on it.”

“How much?”

“Not as much as you would expect after all these years.”

“Okay, I see, there you are, lowering expectations so you can try to lowball my ass. And then I’m going to have to say it ain’t enough. And you’ll pretend to be shocked. And I’ll pretend to get pissed. And you’ll give another fucking speech and throw out another crap number. And so it will go until we’re both bored to tears. Let’s just get to the meat of it, okay? What’s the final number?”

I stood there and made a show of considering for a bit, playacting a decision not to playact. “A hundred.”

“That’s a nice number, yes it is. Round. Solid. Are we talking cash or a payment plan, because I don’t got the stomach for no payment plan.”

“Cash.”

“Neat. And then, after you hand it over, we each go our separate ways forever and ever.”

“That’s the deal. Ben and I get off the hook, you stay safe in your happy home, and I get my daughter back.”

“Pretty good. You built an attractive package. And what about this Augie thing? You and Ben okay with just letting it go?”

“No,” I said. “But we’ll swallow it to get my daughter out of harm’s way and to end it once and for all.”

“That’s a reasonable position, I must say. More reasonable than I thought you’d be. I thought you’d come in and shoot me in the fucking head.” He laughed, that insane overhearty laugh that made my teeth ache.

“I’m a businessman, not a killer,” I said.

“Me, too. Funny how that is.” He looked at me, gave a lopsided smile, reached out his hand. “Let’s go talk to Clevenger.”

“And you’ll tell Clevenger what we agreed to?”

“’Course I will. That’s what this was all about, right?”

“Okay,” I said, and I took hold of his hand, took hold as if it was a lifeline of sorts, which it was. I took hold and I shook the thing like it mattered. “Okay, yes. We have a deal.”

“Ben said you’re a mortgage broker.”

“I was.”

“I bet you were good. You got the touch. Too bad that business went to shit, too. But a guy who can cut a deal like you won’t ever have trouble making a living.”

And he was right, I could feel it in my bones. I had just saved my daughter, saved my family, created for all of us the possibility of a future. If I could negotiate this, I could negotiate anything. I felt, just then, like a powerhouse. Suddenly I wasn’t upset about my lost job, or my dire finances. Or even my wife kicking me out. I’d just negotiate her back. My life was ready for a refi and I was just the guy to pull it off. I couldn’t contain my smile.

Derek looked for a bit at his glass. “And you can get the cash to me right away?”

“The hundred’s already stacked.”

“Confident, were you?”

“Making deals is what I do,” I said, with a touch of false humility. “Ben will bring the money just as soon as my daughter is free.”

“Good old Ben.”

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it,” he said. “We’ll drive out to Clevenger, tell him what we agreed.”

“Why not just call him?”

“A deal like this, it’s best to deliver the terms in person. And I got something I want to discuss with you on the way. You might be wondering why I’ve been so agreeable.”

“Yes, actually.”

“It’s because I got bigger fish to fry than small fry like you and Ben. I’ll show you on the way out.”

“And my daughter?”

“She’ll be taken care of as soon as we see Clevenger. Is that good enough?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really.” He lifted the bottle with his good hand, gave me his warmest smile. “One for the road?”

I
NEED TO
ask your opinion,” said my new best friend Derek Grubbins in his blue Corvette, much like the one he had parked on Henrietta Road all those years ago. We were speeding due west from his house, a straight shot beneath Interstate 75 and past the high walls of development after development, until the developments petered out into great swaths of lakes and swamp. “You might have ideas, seeing as you’re in the business. Or you was in the business.”

“Sure,” I said, not really interested.

“You know, I got me this property I’m developing,” said Derek.

“Ben told me,” I said. “Everfair.”

“An upscale golf community, first class all the way. My buyers are going to need mortgages, and I was wondering what was the best way to go about giving them so that most of the fees don’t get sucked up by some fucking bank.”