“You’ve been kind of slow coming across with that.”
“Let’s get something straight,” Snake said. “You ain’t a high school quarterback and I ain’t no cheerleader. We got a deal. You’re gettin’ itchy. But you’ve moved more weight over the past two months than you did in the six months before that. And I’ve taken a ton of heat off your gun trade. You’ve probably doubled your profits there, too.”
Lars said nothing, which told Snake he’d been dead-on.
“It’s not just the surveillance,” Snake said. “I need some soldiers. And not the guys trained by this clown. I need shooters. Guys who’ve been in the shit and know how to stay cool. Who can hold their fire until it’s time and won’t piss themselves when things get dicey.”
“You mouthy old fuck,” Toons said, lunging forward with a flash of steel.
“Freeze!” Lars barked.
Toons froze. “Why?” he asked, panting with rage. “We don’t need this old fool.”
“Because he’s no fool,” Lars said quietly. “Are you, Snake?”
Snake reached into his pocket and took out a quarter. He held it out to Toons.
“What the fuck is that?” Toons asked.
“Your life.”
“What?”
Snake tossed the quarter on the ground between them. Two seconds later, a rifle shot cracked through the darkness, and all five men in leathers hit the dirt. When no further shots sounded, they got to their feet, nervously looking around.
“Where’s your quarter, Toons?” Snake asked.
Toons looked down at the ground, then bent at the knee and plucked the deformed piece of metal from the dirt.
Snake felt a little twinge of pride at his son’s marksmanship. Blood always tells, Frank used to say. “You can have the next one through your eye, if you like,” Snake said.
“You made your point,” Lars muttered. “Who you planning on killing tomorrow?”
Snake wasn’t about to answer this question. “That’s my business.”
“Not the way things are going. We’ve got the FBI shaking us down from here to Texas. I don’t want you using my men to hit FBI agents.”
This ponytailed bastard has good instincts, Snake thought. “I may not be killing anybody. I just need to remove a certain threat.”
“And for that you need shooters?”
“Have you got ’em or not?” Snake snapped, hoping his exasperation would forestall further inquiry.
After a long look, Lars nodded. “You’ll get your men. Where?”
“Here. Tomorrow, eleven a.m. I’ll need them for twelve hours.”
“No problem. But let me ask you something. That trial. How come the mayor isn’t defending his father? I heard he was a hotshot prosecutor when he lived in Houston.”
“His daddy don’t want him,” Snake said.
“Why not?”
Snake considered how much to tell Dempsey. At length, he said, “Daddy’s got secrets he don’t want his boy to know.”
Lars nodded. “Don’t we all. Do you know what his are? The doc’s?”
Snake smiled. “Good night, gentlemen.”
Dempsey reached out and tapped Toons on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Lars turned and started back to the turnaround, but Toons didn’t follow. He remained rooted to the ground, scanning the tops of the great columns for any sign of a sniper. When he failed to find one, he jabbed a finger at Snake.
“You and me ain’t finished, old man.”
“You’re begging for a bullet, retard. Take some advice. Don’t be with the group coming tomorrow. You’re not cut out for real action.”
Snake turned his back on the VK security chief and walked between two plinths into the darkness.
Chapter 48
Serenity and I are sitting up in the kitchen, drinking tea and waiting to hear from Quentin. Jenny just went upstairs with a migraine; Mom and Mia are watching television with Annie in the den. I’m trying to decide whether they smelled liquor on Tee and me when we came in from our meeting with Kaiser in the Corner Bar. I know Annie smelled smoke, because she mentioned it. If anyone smelled alcohol, it would have been Mia.
“What’s the deal with Jenny?” Tee whispers, twirling her forefinger in her mug, from which she has not removed the tea bag.
I shrug, my mind on the likelihood that the FBI will allow Devine to testify in Dad’s trial—and in time. “She gets migraines.”
Serenity glances at the door to the den, as though Mia or Annie might hear her. “I mean, of everyone in your family, she seems the least like she fits.” Whatever my facial reaction, Serenity feels encouraged to go on. “And why does she live in England?”
“It’s complicated. Jenny was seven years ahead of me in school, and she was a star. But she didn’t want to teach back then. She wanted to write. She majored in English lit and spent her first four postgrad years writing two novels that together sold about three hundred copies. I, on the other hand, never set out to be a writer. It was simply something I stumbled into after tiring of my career as a prosecutor.”
“Oh boy.”
“You can imagine the rest. When my first novel sold at auction, then hit the bestseller lists, Jenny began taking visiting professorships overseas. Ultimately, she married an Englishman and remained over there to raise her children. Jenny would say ‘rear’ her children, of course, but that kind of grammatical precision will get you a cup of coffee if you add three dollars to it.”
“Do you feel guilty about that? Her reaction?”
Before I can answer, my mother appears in the door that leads to the den. “How are you two doing? Is there anything going on with Tom’s case that I don’t know about?”
Serenity and I share a look. Though she doesn’t change her expression, I sense she’s telling me to come clean with my mother. Without giving her too many specifics, I tell Mom that an original Double Eagle is about to turn state’s evidence against his fellow criminals, and there’s a chance that he could testify tomorrow in Dad’s trial.
“If the U.S. attorney completes the plea deal and allows it,” I conclude, “I think that man’s testimony alone could constitute reasonable doubt and result in Dad’s acquittal.”
Mom stares at me in silence for several seconds. “Is your tea still warm?” she asks.
I pick up my cup and hold it out to her. “I’ve hardly touched it.”
When she takes the cup, I see her hand shaking. Serenity gives her an encouraging smile, but in this moment I realize that my mother is barely holding herself together. She takes a long swallow of tea, then focuses in the middle distance.
“Quentin did a fine job with his opening statement, didn’t he? He floored that jury. I—I think we’re going to have to trust that Quentin is still the legal lion he was when the whole world knew his name.”
“He stunned them, all right,” I reply, and leave it there. I’m not about to make Mom face how risky Quentin’s strategy is.
“I think I’m going up,” she says. “It’s been a long day. May I keep your tea?”
“It’s yours now.”
She gives me a guilty smile. “Good night, Serenity.”