Chapter 16
At PubKey, the music changed from classical to math rock.
The door was locked behind Louis and the fake clientele kept an eye on Kade and his people, but the mood was less tense than before.
Amir noted, with mixed feelings, that the cute bartenders were no longer behind the bar.
They had been replaced by a heavily tattooed man in his thirties who was not cute, but on the upside, showed no signs of wanting to point a shotgun at Amir’s head, though the night was still young, as the saying went.
Amir hadn’t known the older female bartender was deaf until she began signing.
He wondered if she was mute as well, because for him the two went together, even as he suspected he was probably wrong.
Had he asked her, she might have gone ahead and pulled the trigger on him, and to hell with the consequences.
Now Amir saw her emerge from an anteroom containing stacked cases of beer and a spare cooler.
She passed Amir without acknowledgment, and the door was briefly unlocked before closing behind her again.
Amir, who tracked her in the mirror all the way, saw Louis waiting for her outside.
Amir was very glad Louis was no longer in the bar.
The longer he spent in Louis’s vicinity, the more aware he was of his own mortality.
He had underestimated Louis because of Louis’s age. It was a fallacy of youth.
Amir put his iPad to sleep. He had not worked for Kade for very long, and feared he wouldn’t be working for him much longer. But he had learned a lot from his short time in the Bitcoin bar, not least the absolute inadvisability of a cross-body draw.
“I’m sorry,” he told Kade, who had accepted another glass of whisky from the new bartender, but had not otherwise spoken since Louis’s departure.
“For what?”
“For being taken so easily.”
Kade swiveled on the stool to regard him.
“Do you think we came here to get killed?” Kade asked. “If you’d drawn your gun, that’s what would have happened.”
“To be honest, I’m no longer sure why we came here.”
“I’ll tell you why: if we hadn’t come, we’d be dead.”
Amir thought about this.
“Because Louis would have assumed you’d picked up the paper in earnest,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“You could have called to tell him otherwise.”
“That’s not how it works. He had to be able to look me in the eye. More than that, he had to know I was willing to put myself at his mercy.”
“What will he do now?”
“He’ll talk to Sturgis, forcefully. After that, the paper will be rendered null and void, unless—”
Kade raised an eyebrow at Amir, inviting him to contribute.
“Unless Sturgis isn’t crazy,” said Amir. “Then whoever used him to front the contract may try again.”
“You don’t believe an angel told him to do it?” Kade asked.
“No,” said Amir. He was about to smile, until he noticed that Kade was doubtful.
“Wait,” said Amir, “do you?”
“You weren’t looking at Louis when I told him,” said Kade. “He thinks it’s true.”
Amir took longer to reply this time. When he did, it was to say: “So, is Louis crazy too, crazy like Sturgis?”
“No,” said Kade, “Louis is not.”
“Then where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us in the middle of something we don’t understand.”
Us.
“Does that mean I’m not being fired?”
Kade sipped his whisky.
“You did almost everything wrong today, but so did I.”
“Almost? What did I get right?”
“You survived.”
Outside the bar, three men sat in a black SUV, but only two gave any indication of enjoying themselves, the exception being Kade’s driver. Louis didn’t even look in their direction. He had eyes only for the deaf woman, whose name was Liat.
The rabbi wants to see you.
She mouthed the words soundlessly, and signed reflexively.
As for the rabbi, his name was Epstein, and Liat served as his assistant and bodyguard.
She was also, as Louis had lately learned, his adopted daughter, which explained the bond between them.
However, Epstein never referred to Liat as his child, no more than she called him “father.” It was better that their relationship remain secret.
Were it to become widely known, it might make Epstein more vulnerable, and he already had enemies enough. They all had that much in common.
“When?” Louis asked.
“Now.”
And Louis, having nothing more to do than deal with a contract on his life, shrugged and said: “Sure.”