Page 49 of Havoc

"I want to buy it."

"Buy it."

"Eighteen thousand." I let it sit. "Cash, today, in a bag, my hand to yours. Nine more days on the clock. Day nine you get her and you get your property both, and if you don't, you come to this parish with whoever you want and I won't say a word about it."

The wind.

Here's what I'm listenin' for, and Ransom taught me it without ever knowin' he was teachin' me anything.

A man who works for a family says I'll have to run it past somebody.

"Where?" Lucien demands.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

He didn't ask what account it goes against. He didn't ask how it gets booked or who's told or how it shows up against a twenty-two-year balance that his uncle has been carryin' since before I could drive.

He asked where.

Eighteen thousand dollars is nothin' to the Arceneaux family. It ain't nothin' to a nephew holdin' a bag in a parkin' lot by himself.

"Gonzales," I say. "The Chevron off the interstate. Four o'clock. You come alone and I come alone, and if there's a second car in that lot I keep drivin' and you can explain to your uncle where the last nine days went."

"You're a careful man."

"Nope."

"No?"

"Careful men don't make this call," I say, and hang up.

* * *

Four o'clock in a gas station lot in Gonzales, and it takes eleven seconds.

He's older than his voice. Good shirt, good shoes, a rental car, and a face that don't do anything at all while he's countin' with his thumb through the bills in the envelope, and when he's done he puts it inside his jacket and looks at me for a while.

"You know what I like about this," he says.

"No."

"You didn't tell your president." He smiles, and it's a small one, and it goes nowhere near his eyes. "A man who's cleared it with his table doesn't drive an hour to a gas station by himself on a Sunday. He sends two prospects and a lawyer."

"Nine days."

"Nine days." He gets in the rental. "You and I are going to do a great deal of business, I think."

He pulls out and I stand there in the heat off the concrete for a full minute afterward with both hands empty.

The clubhouse is loud by eight because it's Sunday and Deacon cooked.

I sit at the end of the bar and I get one beer and I don't drink it, which is apparently a thing everybody in this buildin' has been noticin' for a week, and I put my hand flat on the wood on either side of it and I sit there.

Junie comes down the bar with the rag over her shoulder.

She doesn't say anything for a minute. She wipes a spot that doesn't need it.

"You want to come up?" she asks.