Page 6 of Havoc

"His word."

Warden doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to — everybody in here heard it land.

Blitz leans in on his elbows. "What'd she take?"

"He didn't say."

"He didn't say?"

"He didn't say. I didn't ask." Storm's voice doesn't go up. It never goes up, and it's the reason the room goes tight when it doesn't. "You want to ring him back and ask him yourself, I'll write down the number for you."

Blitz sits back in his chair.

Tyrant's already got the book open in front of him with a pen laid across the page. "Is this against the debt or on top of it?"

"He says it comes off."

"How much off?"

"He didn't put a number on it."

"Then it ain't off." Ransom sets the ring down. "A favor with no number on it ain't a payment, it's a leash. Somebody in this room tell me the balance. Anybody. What do we owe those people?"

Nobody answers him.

Twenty-two years and the man who counts every dollar this club touches can't tell you the balance, and the man who founded it doesn't offer one, and we all sit there and let the silence do what it does.

"Turn it over," Storm says.

Warden's nearest. He puts two fingers on the corner, flips it, pushes it out to the middle where everybody can see.

She's on a sidewalk. Half turned, caught mid-step by somebody she didn't know was takin' her picture. Dark hair pulled back off her face and a jacket too heavy for New Orleans in August, canvas bag over the near shoulder, one hand up shieldin' her eyes from a sun that's comin' in behind whoever's holdin' the camera.

She doesn't look like anything.

She looks like a woman on her way to work.

My chest goes tight, and I put it down to Deacon havin' the stove on and this room bein' too damn small for ten men in August.

"No," I say.

Storm looks at me.

"We don't do women."

"Nobody's said we're doin' anything yet."

"It's the one rule we got." My hands are flat on the table. I don't remember puttin' 'em there. "No women, no kids, nothin' that comes in a needle. Fifteen years I've heard you say it to every prospect who ever came through that door. It ain't on the wall but it's in this room, and it's been in this room longer than I have."

"It has."

"So say it."

"I ain't said different."

"You ain't said same, neither."

Down the table Deacon's got his arms crossed over his chest and his chin dropped and his eyes closed, and he opens them.