25. Joey
JOEY
The tribunal room was gilt going dull and green felt going bald, and there were the flowers again — white ones, freshly cut, in a cut-glass vase on the sideboard, because a man who intends to photograph consent buys flowers for the room he intends to photograph it in.
The man behind the table poured espresso into gold-rimmed china like we had all the time in the world, because he believed we did.
Enzo Castellano was bull-shouldered and barbered, heavy rings, a suit that had cost real money in a year when his money was real, and his courtesy was old-world and immaculate and worn like a coat over something with a handle.
"Miss Ward." He set the little cup before me himself.
"Forgive the transportation. My invitations kept going unanswered — a young woman so difficult to reach, and living, if you'll permit me, among such controlling people. "
The papers were already on the felt. Squared. A pen lay across them, capped, gold, aimed at me like the whole night distilled.
"Sign," he said, gently, sitting, spreading his hands, "and by breakfast you are the wealthiest schoolteacher in the history of the profession, and all of this unpleasantness becomes a story you tell. I am told you are a sensible girl. Sense, at this table, has one spelling."
I looked at the pen. Then at him. And I gave him my parent-conference face, the one that has out-waited professionals, twenty-two of them a year, every year, and I put my only card on his felt.
"You need me signing, smiling, and alive, Mr. Castellano — signing voluntarily, smiling for whatever notary you have folded in a back room, alive through Monday at ten.
A signature with duress on it is birdcage paper; your own lawyers built Clause Fourteen-C, so we both know you know that.
" I picked up the espresso, and my hands were quiet, and I drank some, unhurried, because Danny taught me you never let them see you count. "So. Let's negotiate."
Something moved across his face — the first honest thing on it. Surprise, retiring quickly, and behind it, arriving slowly, its replacement: appetite. A man who performs across tables, being handed a performance.
"Negotiate." He smiled, rings flashing, and settled back into his chair like a man at his own private game. "The woman with the laminated seating chart wishes terms."
"The ten percent of the House of Vane wishes terms," I said.
"Polite gets you the version of me that uses an inside voice.
And before we begin — your last number was sixty-five million, but that was a week ago, and since then someone has photographed me, burgled me, and thrown me in a van, which I'd call a material change in the seller's circumstances.
Wouldn't you?" I set the cup down without a click and drew the papers toward me across the felt, out of the pen's reach, mine now, and met his eyes, and did not blink.
I'd stared down rooms he couldn't imagine; my rooms are five years old and outnumber his men four to one.
"We'll go clause by clause. I do the reading — it's a family rule.
And I should warn you, Mr. Castellano, before we start. "
"Warn me." He was amused again. Amused was where I wanted him. Amused runs long.
Somewhere north of us, I knew — the way you know weather, the way I have always known him — the animal was already moving, and every clause was a mile, and my whole job on this earth was to be alive and talking when the doors sealed shut.
I turned to the first page, and read aloud, in the voice that rearranges rooms.
"Definitions." I looked up at the man who killed the king. "We'll start there."