Agostini said, “Must be your hospitality, Marley,” as he reached the bar.
Pierce’s eyes held Marley like an animal fixing its prey. There was a tenderness in the look. The tenderness that a hunter might have for a deer. A deer that he knows he’s going to quarter and cook.
Marley was a tough old bird, and wily. “Well, Mister, they weren’t quite like yourself. Not sure there was too much more to them than a couple of shiny suits.” He poured a thick whiskey for Pierce and another for himself.
“Didn’t bring no pretty little fillies with them, neither.” The spark in his eyes made her want to jab them with a cocktail stick.
He didn’t offer anything to Callaghan or Calhoun. Nor to Princess, and she was glad about that.
“Can you bargain over a drink, Mister?” he asked Agostini. “I’m guessing you’re here to bargain.” Pierce remained standing as he lifted the glass to inspect the cloudy, amber liquor.
“I can, Marley.” Pierce showed his teeth as he smiled. “And thanks for the shot. Nothing but your finest rotgut, I’m sure.”
Marley said, “Mud in your eye,” like he meant it. The two men’s gazes stayed locked as they tipped the shot glasses straight into their open mouths.
As he set the glass down, Pierce raised an eyebrow. “You make that yourself?”
“Might be a better drink if I did.”
“I hope you’d use cleaner water.”
Marley poured again. “We can jab each other’s eyes all day if it’s what you want, Mister. I’m in no hurry to get down to it.” Princess’s stomach crawled as he looked at her again. “She part of your bargain, Mister?”
The side of Agostini’s fist banged on the bar. “You keep your eyes and your mind fixed on me.”
They both raised the shot glasses and drank again. Marley poured again. Princess was uncomfortable standing by the bar, but she didn’t want to sit on top of the sticky looking wood stools.
Pierce held his tumbler and said, “I’m interested in what you said back there.” Marley’s eye hardened.
“You said when Reagan closed the mines was the time that you came here.” Marley shifted his weight. “But the way you said it, you made it sound like it’s the reason you came.” Marley’s hand tightened.
“What of it?”
“You left for a different reason, didn’t you, Marley?”
“You a cop?”
Pierce smiled as he ran his thumb behind the lapel of his sleek suit coat. “You see a cop in a suit like this, that’s a man you want to do business with.”
“Do I want to do business with you?”
“I’d say you should consider it.” Pierce lifted the glass. Watched Marley as he sniffed the whiskey. “You should think about it very seriously. That would be my advice to you.”
Princess shifted uncomfortably. Pierce’s sinuous ease as he wrangled with the old man made her anxious and claustrophobic. It made her want to move about. To stretch. Hit something, maybe.
It seemed like a long time before Pierce said, “You mentioned somebody else came. I’m guessing they made you an offer.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’m also assuming that it’s an offer you haven’t accepted. I don’t know if that’s because you’re hoping for a bigger pot or better terms.”
“Could be I simply don’t want to sell.”
“If I knew the offer they’d made you, Marley, I would probably know that they didn’t aim to take anything away from you.”
Marley squinted. “Rights of excavation, is it? That was what the other guy told me. Maybe they didn’t know that I come from a mining town, but you do. Ain’t nothing to excavate under this blasted land.”
His lips pursed and he stared hard at Pierce. “Maybe there ain’t much on top of it, neither, but I’m no fool, and I know there’s nothing to be had from mining here.”
Pierce let his eyelids droop a little. Princess was learning him. She sensed his patience wearing thin.
He said, “You don’t want to worry about what the excavation might be for. As far as you’re concerned, it will bring you some trade while the work goes on.” Pierce paused as he looked around the bar.
“Get this place fixed up and offer some healthy food,” he continued, “you could have a few months of actual business from the men doing the work. All you need to know is that you’d have what you have now, Marley, only with a sack full of money to go alongside it.”
“So. You about to offer a bigger sack of money than the other guy?”
“Nope.” Agostini straightened. The hint of a smile pulled at his lips and eyes shone steady and firm.
“We could play that game. Go back and forth. We could do that for a long time. You might know the right number, the point in time to bring the hammer down, you might not.”
Agostini lifted his glass. Marley’s eyes narrowed as he reached for his own shot and listened. Agostini said, “Thing is, I’d have no way to know if you were going to sign with me at the end or not. That’s no good.”
Agostini put his glass back on the bar top.
Marley said, “Seems like you’ve got a problem.”
Agostini’s eyes shone. “No, Marley. You have the problem.” He lifted the glass again, rolling the last of the liquor to watch the shine. “You need to tell me right now what number you’ll accept, and you need to close it with me today.”
Marley drew back, straightened up. “Else what?” But then his eyes flicked up to Calhoun and Callaghan, who stood silent, barring the door with their hands clasped in front of them.
“Supposing I’m not minded to make a deal at all? Not with any of you. Then what?”
The silence was long and heavy. Agostini took a slow breath before he spoke. His voice was flat. “You don’t want to be answering with open-ended questions. Questions like ‘what if?’ Put all that from your mind, Marley. Focus on the answer.”
Pierce rolled the whiskey around in the glass. “You can be in the way of a big opportunity here, Marley. You tell me exactly what you want, we make a deal, and then you’d end the day a whole lot richer.” Their eyes locked.
Agostini’s lips pressed together. Princess watched Marley’s finger tremble as Agostini told him, “One chance, one number. Just tell me your number, straight out.”
Marley’s lips thinned. He watched Pierce for a while before he lifted his head and said, “Okay. That other suit offered me two point five million—” Before Marley finished his sentence, Agostini let his shot glass drop quietly onto the bar top.
Agostini pressed his lips together and blinked slowly as he drew a long breath through his nose. He shook his head sadly. “You disappoint me, Marley.”
Calhoun and Callaghan shifted on their feet. Like they were reminding Marley they were still there.
Too quickly, Marley said, “One point five. Give me one point five million, and I’ll sign your deal.”
Agostini lifted the briefcase onto the bar top. His voice was soft and a little sad. “Now that is the exact figure I had in mind, Marley.” He snapped the catches on the case. A smile pulled at Marley’s cheeks. Agostini said, “Shame we couldn’t have gotten there another way.”
From the case, Agostini took out a four-page contract and a fountain pen. He had Marley sign in four places. Then Pierce told Princess to sign and date as a witness.
Beneath where she signed, it said, In the presence of an attorney. Pierce held the pen out and Callaghan stepped over to add his signature and the date. Princess looked up into his dark glasses as he handed the fountain pen back to Pierce and returned to his position by the door.
Marley said, “I get to keep the bar. To carry on running it, right? In perpetuity, right?”
“Right up until your demise, Marley. It’s yours till death.”
“Then the rights go to my appointed heir. Right?”
“No, Marley. At that sad time, the rights, the bar, and all of its fixtures and fittings revert immediately to the Cayman Boundless Frontier Hurricane Tru
st.”
“That’s not what the other guy said.”
“Should always read what you’re signing, Marley. Though, for what difference it makes, I’m pretty sure you’re lying. Here’s the money.” Prince opened the briefcase and turned it toward Marley. His eyes widened at the neat piles of green bills. He reached for the case.
“Ah!” Pierce snapped. “The case is mine. You take the money and put it in your safe.”
Marley’s voice was low and shaky. “What makes you think I got a safe here?”
“What makes you think there’s anything I don’t know about a man I’m going to make a deal with, Marley? A deal that size.” Marley’s eyes gleamed as he stared into the case.
“When you came all this way from Pallton, it wasn’t the prime location for your salubrious roadhouse that made you come running, was it? That wasn’t what propelled you all this way.”
Marley gathered the money out of the case. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. We about done here now?”
“Back in Pallton, there were some questions you didn’t get around to answering.”
Marley hesitated a while and Princess thought he didn’t want to turn his back. He shuffled quickly into the back office. Agostini lifted a finger and Calhoun went in after the old man.
“Make sure he gets it stashed away safely.” Agostini called after him. “Wouldn’t want any unfortunate accidents.”
When Calhoun returned, Agostini asked him, “How’s the safe?”
“It’s a Liberty Fireproof.” Then he nodded. “It’ll hold.”
“Cool.” Pierce sipped his whiskey and his face twisted. “Damn. That shit is awful.”
Marley loomed back into the doorway of the office. His rheumy eyes burned with resentment and defiance.
Pierce closed the case. “Tell us a little more about Pallton, Marley. What was it put you in such a hurry to leave, what made you come in such a rush that this—what did you call it, this ‘blasted land’?—was better than whatever was behind you?”
Marley said, “I’m closing the bar now. You’re all going to have to leave.”
“Remember little Jamie Orins? He was from Pallton, wasn’t he?” Marley rushed toward the bar and reached underneath it. He was in too much of a hurry, though, and he fumbled.
Pierce said, “And Carol Anne Sweet. Remember her?” Marley’s lips pulled back over his gritted teeth. From under the bar he pulled out a short, fat, black double-barreled gun. Princess shrieked and jumped back.
Like there was all the time in the world, Agostini moved in front of her, between her and the old man. Slowly, as if he were picking a flower, Agostini raised a pistol.
Marley racked the gun. Agostini’s hand lifted as he squeezed. A tongue of pale fire spat and lit the drab room for an instant as the bang slapped her ears.
A mark like a poppy appeared in the center of Marley’s forehead. The red petals spread out from the ugly black blot in the middle.
His eyes froze in a questioning look and they dulled as he fell, straight forward, like a plank of wood. As he went down, his head cracked on the side of the bar.
~
In the car, all four were silent. A thick pall of black smoke rose behind them, straight up to the heavens. Marley’s Roadhouse and Grill crackled and sputtered as it burned.
After a couple of miles and some fresher air, still trembling, Princess said, “Are you really an attorney, Callaghan?” Her voice shook and she shivered like she was in an arctic wind.
“Wouldn’t be legal if I weren’t, Miss.” She saw Agostini looking at her. Could the look in his eye have been one of real concern? There was no way she could know for sure.
She said, “I thought if you shot a man, especially from a close range, he’d be knocked backwards.” She wished she could have fetched up another topic but she wanted to talk a little and it didn’t matter about what.
“Like in the movies?” Agostini said softly. “Looks good on screen, all that kind of thing. Very dramatic.” He was looking at her and it seemed like there was kindness in his eyes.
“In real life,” he told her, “if you fired a gunshot and it did that, it would knock you back with about the same force.”
After that, Princess kept her position, curled up in the far corner of the car, throughout the long drive. Agostini thought it best to leave her some time to get over that meeting.
She seemed to be coping well, though. This strange girl had reserves of strength on the inside, probably more than she knew.
He hadn’t planned for it to end as brutally as it had, but there had always been a risk. When Marley reached for the shotgun, he solved a big problem for Pierce.
Every fiber of him had wanted to kill the bastard, but he hadn’t expected Marley to provide him such a tidy justification as to pull a weapon.
After a long drive, Callaghan swung the car into the big lot, crowded with pickups and oversized SUVs. It was by the side of a low, wide metal barn.
Through the gaping side of the barn, he saw the mass of people that milled around inside. When Callaghan opened the car door for her and she stepped out, Princess’ shoes were unsteady on the wet shale.
They crunched across the lot and toward the yawning darkness inside. Pierce told her, “This will be an experience for you.” By the slump of her shoulders and her closed face, he knew she would rather wait in the car.
He slipped an arm onto her shoulder and squeezed. She blinked and her lips tightened. When she quickly looked up at him, unfamiliar feelings stirred in his chest. Gently, he took her hand, and she drew a breath, then nodded and squeezed his hand back.
He should have just fucked her when he got her back to the apartment. Got it out of the way. Once and never again. Fucking the hostage could bring complications, though. But just the thought stirred some tender longing, like an old, unfamiliar part of himself, deep inside of him.
Farm odors greeted them at the barn door and they got warmer as they stepped in out of the sun. Callaghan and Calhoun flanked Agostini and Princess as they walked over the sawdust in the hot, noisy shade. The tin barn echoed with men’s voices, some cattle mooing and the sounds of movement.
Ruddy and rugged men bustled in the big tin hut. Country men mostly, hard-working toilers of land and stock. Some dealers, too. Some of the outdoor coats and plaid wool shirts were well-cut from fine cloth.
Men in blue jeans herded around a pen where cattle were led around. Behind the pen, a crowd faced a stage. A stammering stream of babble like one-note, high-speed preaching came from the animated man and he waved his gangly arms behind a lectern on the stage.
He had on a gray suit and a white shirt, with a mustache and a cowboy hat. He called out and gestured with a black gavel.
On the lectern was a big book, and the man’s calls were in a crackling rapid-fire. As he gabbled, he pointed to men in the crowd, who would nod or shake their heads or raise a hand.
Pierce judged that the men who were the most experienced made the least movement. By the side of the auctioneer was an easel where a blown up photo showed a fine looking herd of horses.
Perfectly Bad: a bad boy romance Page 6
