Princess watched, uninterested, as on either side of the road, the boring ride got even more boring. The land flattened and the greens and browns gave way to gray. The few trees were black and bare.
Two lane roads stretched ahead under a big sky with a far-off horizon. Concrete and glass thinned and faded away. Left and right was mostly green and brown. Fields on one side, trees on the other, and very little traffic. Hills in the distance were covered in thick forest.
They drifted by clusters of white clapboard houses, Dutch barns and long, rickety fences. Wires strung high on poles dipped and rose alongside of the road. Rough walls. Occasionally some silos or factories would drift by. More than a few of them had the look of abandonment.
Calhoun pointed ahead at a sagging structure on an unshaded patch of dry dirt. The spindly skeletons of dead shrubs were all the decoration around it. Callaghan said, “Jeez, is that it?”
Agostini squinted. “It ain’t the Four Seasons.”
They approached the shabby building, drooped in the sun, and Calhoun parked up in front of the tattered awning. The windows were grimy, and inside, it looked dark and unnaturally still.
As he opened the door, Callaghan said, “Will I stay with Princess in the car, boss?”
“Nope.” Pierce sprang out of the car onto the gray dust with a briefcase and adjusted his shades. “We’re all going in together.”
From the way Callaghan’s lips tightened, Princess could see he wasn’t happy about it, but he held open the door for her to step out.
Judging by the dust on the porch, it could have been months since anyone came to the place, though from the look of it, Princess couldn’t see why anyone would. What painted signage there was had all faded into the old, gray wood. It would be almost impossible to read from the road.
The door to Marley’s Roadhouse and Grill squeaked a laughing chatter as Agostini pushed it open. Whatever Princess had been expecting, it couldn’t have resembled what they found in the gloom.
Inside, a fat bluebottle bobbed lazily on the hot, thick air. Wide shafts of hazy, greenish light exposed idle motes of dust and the dull wood and linoleum. The tables were marked and stained, and the chairs looked ancient.
Callaghan and Calhoun followed her and Agostini inside and stood by the door, one on either side. Princess watched Agostini prowl around the bar in the gloom like he had in Hotsteppa’s the previous day. She couldn’t get a hold of the fact that it was only yesterday. The whole world looked different.
A huge mirror behind the bar was matted and cracked right through the old-time “Jim Beam” lettering. In front of the mirror, an irregular row of smeared bottles stood like dull, gappy teeth. Princess hoped their stay here was going to be short.
Deep in a corner behind the counter, Marley himself was in so much shade Princess didn’t see him until he moved. He was as gnarled as his bar and no more appealing.
Something about the man, something Princess couldn’t pin down about the look in his slow, hooded eyes, made her shrink inside her flesh.
Agostini strode around the bar room, looked at fittings and assessed what he saw, and Marley watched him. From the shadows at the far end of the room, he said, “You like it out here, Marley?” The old man just continued to watch him.
Agostini came toward the bar as he said, “You’re not from this part of Pennsylvania yourself, are you?”
“Moved out here when Reagan shut the mines.” Marley’s voice was scratchy like a nail on rusted metal.
The look in Agostini’s eye said, “Sure, but why the hell here?” and she caught herself thinking, I bet he was just as creepy back then as he is now. Then Princess shuddered as Marley’s eyes drifted onto her. Instinctively, she looked at Agostini.
Marley said, “Seems this place really hit the Manhattan map all of a sudden. Was another New Yorker in here.” He seemed to be working something in the back of his teeth. “Not too long ago.” He leaned on his elbows across the bar at Pierce. “Why would you suppose that to be?”
Agostini said, “Must be your hospitality, Marley,” as he reached the bar.
Pierce’s eyes held Marley like an animal fixing its prey. There was a tenderness in the look. The tenderness that a hunter might have for a deer. A deer that he knows he’s going to quarter and cook.
Marley was a tough old bird, and wily. “Well, Mister, they weren’t quite like yourself. Not sure there was too much more to them than a couple of shiny suits.” He poured a thick whiskey for Pierce and another for himself.
“Didn’t bring no pretty little fillies with them, neither.” The spark in his eyes made her want to jab them with a cocktail stick.
He didn’t offer anything to Callaghan or Calhoun. Nor to Princess, and she was glad about that.
“Can you bargain over a drink, Mister?” he asked Agostini. “I’m guessing you’re here to bargain.” Pierce remained standing as he lifted the glass to inspect the cloudy, amber liquor.
“I can, Marley.” Pierce showed his teeth as he smiled. “And thanks for the shot. Nothing but your finest rotgut, I’m sure.”
Marley said, “Mud in your eye,” like he meant it. The two men’s gazes stayed locked as they tipped the shot glasses straight into their open mouths.
As he set the glass down, Pierce raised an eyebrow. “You make that yourself?”
“Might be a better drink if I did.”
“I hope you’d use cleaner water.”
Marley poured again. “We can jab each other’s eyes all day if it’s what you want, Mister. I’m in no hurry to get down to it.” Princess’s stomach crawled as he looked at her again. “She part of your bargain, Mister?”
The side of Agostini’s fist banged on the bar. “You keep your eyes and your mind fixed on me.”
They both raised the shot glasses and drank again. Marley poured again. Princess was uncomfortable standing by the bar, but she didn’t want to sit on top of the sticky looking wood stools.
Pierce held his tumbler and said, “I’m interested in what you said back there.” Marley’s eye hardened.
“You said when Reagan closed the mines was the time that you came here.” Marley shifted his weight. “But the way you said it, you made it sound like it’s the reason you came.” Marley’s hand tightened.
“What of it?”
“You left for a different reason, didn’t you, Marley?”
“You a cop?”
Pierce smiled as he ran his thumb behind the lapel of his sleek suit coat. “You see a cop in a suit like this, that’s a man you want to do business with.”
“Do I want to do business with you?”
“I’d say you should consider it.” Pierce lifted the glass. Watched Marley as he sniffed the whiskey. “You should think about it very seriously. That would be my advice to you.”
Princess shifted uncomfortably. Pierce’s sinuous ease as he wrangled with the old man made her anxious and claustrophobic. It made her want to move about. To stretch. Hit something, maybe.
It seemed like a long time before Pierce said, “You mentioned somebody else came. I’m guessing they made you an offer.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’m also assuming that it’s an offer you haven’t accepted. I don’t know if that’s because you’re hoping for a bigger pot or better terms.”
“Could be I simply don’t want to sell.”
“If I knew the offer they’d made you, Marley, I would probably know that they didn’t aim to take anything away from you.”
Marley squinted. “Rights of excavation, is it? That was what the other guy told me. Maybe they didn’t know that I come from a mining town, but you do. Ain’t nothing to excavate under this blasted land.”
His lips pursed and he stared hard at Pierce. “Maybe there ain’t much on top of it, neither, but I’m no fool, and I know there’s nothing to be had from mining here.”
Pierce let his eyelids droop a little. Princess was learning him. She sensed his patience wearing thin.
He said, “You don’t want to worry about what the excavation might be for. As far as you’re concerned, it will bring you some trade while the work goes on.” Pierce paused as he looked around the bar.
“Get this place fixed up and offer some healthy food,” he continued, “you could have a few months of actual business from the men doing the work. All you need to know is that you’d have what you have now, Marley, only with a sack full of money to go alongside it.”
“So. You about to offer a bigger sack of money than the other guy?”
“Nope.” Agostini straightened. The hint of a smile pulled at his lips and eyes shone steady and firm.
“We could play that game. Go back and forth. We could do that for a long time. You might know the right number, the point in time to bring the hammer down, you might not.”
Agostini lifted his glass. Marley’s eyes narrowed as he reached for his own shot and listened. Agostini said, “Thing is, I’d have no way to know if you were going to sign with me at the end or not. That’s no good.”
Agostini put his glass back on the bar top.
Marley said, “Seems like you’ve got a problem.”
Agostini’s eyes shone. “No, Marley. You have the problem.” He lifted the glass again, rolling the last of the liquor to watch the shine. “You need to tell me right now what number you’ll accept, and you need to close it with me today.”
Marley drew back, straightened up. “Else what?” But then his eyes flicked up to Calhoun and Callaghan, who stood silent, barring the door with their hands clasped in front of them.
“Supposing I’m not minded to make a deal at all? Not with any of you. Then what?”
The silence was long and heavy. Agostini took a slow breath before he spoke. His voice was flat. “You don’t want to be answering with open-ended questions. Questions like ‘what if?’ Put all that from your mind, Marley. Focus on the answer.”
Pierce rolled the whiskey around in the glass. “You can be in the way of a big opportunity here, Marley. You tell me exactly what you want, we make a deal, and then you’d end the day a whole lot richer.” Their eyes locked.
Agostini’s lips pressed together. Princess watched Marley’s finger tremble as Agostini told him, “One chance, one number. Just tell me your number, straight out.”
Marley’s lips thinned. He watched Pierce for a while before he lifted his head and said, “Okay. That other suit offered me two point five million—” Before Marley finished his sentence, Agostini let his shot glass drop quietly onto the bar top.
Agostini pressed his lips together and blinked slowly as he drew a long breath through his nose. He shook his head sadly. “You disappoint me, Marley.”
Calhoun and Callaghan shifted on their feet. Like they were reminding Marley they were still there.
Too quickly, Marley said, “One point five. Give me one point five million, and I’ll sign your deal.”
Agostini lifted the briefcase onto the bar top. His voice was soft and a little sad. “Now that is the exact figure I had in mind, Marley.” He snapped the catches on the case. A smile pulled at Marley’s cheeks. Agostini said, “Shame we couldn’t have gotten there another way.”
From the case, Agostini took out a four-page contract and a fountain pen. He had Marley sign in four places. Then Pierce told Princess to sign and date as a witness.
Beneath where she signed, it said, In the presence of an attorney. Pierce held the pen out and Callaghan stepped over to add his signature and the date. Princess looked up into his dark glasses as he handed the fountain pen back to Pierce and returned to his position by the door.
Marley said, “I get to keep the bar. To carry on running it, right? In perpetuity, right?”
“Right up until your demise, Marley. It’s yours till death.”
“Then the rights go to my appointed heir. Right?”
“No, Marley. At that sad time, the rights, the bar, and all of its fixtures and fittings revert immediately to the Cayman Boundless Frontier Hurricane Trust.”
“That’s not what the other guy said.”
“Should always read what you’re signing, Marley. Though, for what difference it makes, I’m pretty sure you’re lying. Here’s the money.” Pierce opened the briefcase and turned it toward Marley. His eyes widened at the neat piles of green bills. He reached for the case.
“Ah!” Pierce snapped. “The case is mine. You take the money and put it in your safe.”
Marley’s voice was low and shaky. “What makes you think I got a safe here?”
“What makes you think there’s anything I don’t know about a man I’m going to make a deal with, Marley? A deal that size.” Marley’s eyes gleamed as he stared into the case.
“When you came all this way from Pallton, it wasn’t the prime location for your salubrious roadhouse that made you come running, was it? That wasn’t what propelled you all this way.”
Marley gathered the money out of the case. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. We about done here now?”
“Back in Pallton, there were some questions you didn’t get around to answering.”
Marley hesitated a while and Princess thought he didn’t want to turn his back. He shuffled quickly into the back office. Agostini lifted a finger and Calhoun went in after the old man.
“Make sure he gets it stashed away safely.” Agostini called after him. “Wouldn’t want any unfortunate accidents.”
When Calhoun returned, Agostini asked him, “How’s the safe?”
“It’s a Liberty Fireproof.” Then he nodded. “It’ll hold.”
“Cool.” Pierce sipped his whiskey and his face twisted. “Damn. That shit is awful.”
Marley loomed back into the doorway of the office. His rheumy eyes burned with resentment and defiance.
Pierce closed the case. “Tell us a little more about Pallton, Marley. What was it put you in such a hurry to leave, what made you come in such a rush that this—what did you call it, this ‘blasted land’?—was better than whatever was behind you?”
Marley said, “I’m closing the bar now. You’re all going to have to leave.”
“Remember little Jamie Orins? He was from Pallton, wasn’t he?” Marley rushed toward the bar and reached underneath it. He was in too much of a hurry, though, and he fumbled.
Pierce said, “And Carol Anne Sweet. Remember her?” Marley’s lips pulled back over his gritted teeth. From under the bar he pulled out a short, fat, black double-barreled gun. Princess shrieked and jumped back.
Like there was all the time in the world, Agostini moved in front of her, between her and the old man. Slowly, as if he were picking a flower, Agostini raised a pistol.
Marley racked the gun. Agostini’s hand lifted as he squeezed. A tongue of pale fire spat and lit the drab room for an instant as the bang slapped her ears.
A mark like a poppy appeared in the center of Marley’s forehead. The red petals spread out from the ugly black blot in the middle.
His eyes froze in a questioning look and they dulled as he fell, straight forward, like a plank of wood. As he went down, his head cracked on the side of the bar.
In the car, all four were silent. A thick pall of black smoke rose behind them, straight up to the heavens. Marley’s Roadhouse and Grill crackled and sputtered as it burned.
After a couple of miles and some fresher air, still trembling, Princess said, “Are you really an attorney, Callaghan?” Her voice shook and she shivered like she was in an arctic wind.
“Wouldn’t be legal if I weren’t, Miss.” She saw Agostini looking at her. Could the look in his eye have been one of real concern? There was no way she could know for sure.
She said, “I thought if you shot a man, especially from a close range, he’d be knocked backwards.” She wished she could have fetched up another topic but she wanted to talk a little and it didn’t matter about what.
“Like in the movies?” Agostini said softly. “Looks good on screen, all that kind of thing. Very dramatic.” He was looking at her and it seemed like there was kindness in his eyes.
“In real life,” he told her, “if you fired a gunshot and it did that, it would knock you back with about the same force.”