“Whoever you are, what makes you think we want lunch with you? Or beer, come to that?”
“Oh, I dunno. Charm, good looks? Or maybe . . .’cause I see you got a problem here. And I,” he slapped his chest, “can make it go away.”
He gestured to the open car door.
“My mother told me never to take lifts from strangers,” I said.
“Your mom ain’t here, Chris. Pastor Cleary is.”
“You know him well?”
“I know how to get him out your hair. You can make that retrieval any time you want, then. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight, even. Depends how fast you want to move.”
“Retrieval,” I said.
“Oh, sure. Come on. I’ll tell you all about it.”
He had a very masculine cologne, a smell of sweat and monkey glands, steroids, bourbon, and the faintest hint of gasoline.
The whole car stank of it.
Chapter 28
An Audience with Eddie-boy
“You like the horses, Chris? Go to the track? The Derby? Watch on TV?”
We were driving nowhere. We were cruising, drifting with the traffic. Highway flotsam. The chauffeur was a hat, behind a tinted screen. The car was like a little floating island, dedicated to the joys of manly luxury: paneled wood, deep red upholstery, a bar that offered nothing so effete or wimpish as a mineral water (Angel’s choice; she settled for a beer).
I told him, “I don’t bet. Don’t like the odds.”
“But, man, the horses . . .”
Angel was playing on her phone, something she hardly ever did in company.
“You gotta love the horses, man. Back when I was young, I’d wake up on my Dad-o’s farm, first thing I’d do, right before breakfast—go see the horses. Say hi, good morning, call ’em each by name. We had a feller there named Star—beautiful, beautiful boy. I loved that horse. Cried like a baby when they sold him on. But that’s life, right? One thing ends, another starts. You gotta move with it, don’t you? You wanna see my Dad-o’s farm, Chris? Come see the horses? Sure you do!”
“What is this?”
“It’s a proposition, Chris, and a good one. The best you’ll ever get.
“You got a god out there. You’re here for it, right? ’Cept you got Cleary and his three-ring circus standing in your way. Now—here’s the thing. I make a couple phone calls, I can end all that. I can make it all go clean away.”
“How?”
“Ah.” He wagged a finger. “You don’t get that just yet. But trust me, I can. And for a fair price, too.”
“Go on.”
“You get your god. And then, by way of thanks and gratitude, and the fact that it was me who made it possible—you tear me off a chunk of it. Not much. But you do it. Sound good?”
I had had such offers other times—offers, or threats. But now, I looked at him, and a notion came into my head, and it would not let go. It was like all the pieces fell together, all at once. How many times had he done this, one place or another? How many little chunks of god had he collected, and sold on?
Personable, Melody had said. I could see that, at a pinch: Southern charm.
And the other thing: dark glasses . . .
“I cut you off a piece of this. And you do what with it?”
“Well, Chris, that’s kind of our business, y’know?”
He was smiling still.
“Sell it? Maybe to some old lady? Dying of cancer? That the plan?”
“I don’t follow you, man.”
“Someone scared? Weak? Vulnerable? That the kind of racket that you’re running here?”
“I don’t think you’re getting me.”
“Is this just business for you? Or is it something more? Looks like you’re doing well out of it, anyway.”
Eddie held his hands up. He looked to Silverman, to Angel. “Help me out, guys!”
I glared at him.
Then Angel handed me her phone.
There was a picture on the screen. It looked like a tourist site: some huge, palatial building, like Blenheim but a hundred times more intricate; the sort of place that Ludwig of Bavaria might have built, if he’d been born in the US. Beyond it there were trees, and fields, and green, rolling hills . . .
Horses . . .
“That,” said Angel, “is his daddy’s farm.”
“What?”
“The Ballington Estate. It’s actually quite famous.”
“Open to the public.” Eddie-boy was watching me. When I looked up, he had the smuggest smirk I’d ever seen.
I said, “They ever call you Mike? Mark? Anything like that?”
“I got the name my mom and Dad-o give me, Chris.”
He held his hands out, palms up.
I said nothing.
He said, “I guess we had a little mistaken identity thing going for a while there, didn’t we?”
I still said nothing. And Eddie must have thought I needed to cool off a while, because, smooth as silk, he turned his focus onto Angel. But if he thought he’d find an ally, then he’d got things very wrong.
“You’re looking at my claw, aren’t you?” he said.
“What?”