Grofield shot Parker a look, but Parker was watching Buenadella, his own expression unreadable as usual. Grofield wondered if Parker understood that they’d just won, that Buenadella was going to give them the money.
Yes, he was. He was sitting there now working it all out in his head. Seventy-three thousand dollars to get rid of the troublemakers; a high price, but the alternative was even worse trouble than he’d already had, and in effect he’d be paying the troublemakers with their own money, not his.
And more. Inside that heavy head, Buenadella was working out tax dodges, company dodges. The seventy-three thousand would come from this place and that place, would read one thing and another on the company books and ledgers; and what percent of it would the government wind up paying, in the form of tax deductions for business losses? If Buenadella paid out seventy-three thousand in deductible business expenses, declared it all and lowered his tax bill by one-third of that—say, twenty-four thousand—he would only be paying forty-nine thousand out of his own pocket. And since the seventy-three hadn’t been his to begin with, he could look at it that he was making a twenty-four-thousand-dollar profit on the deal.
Buenadella finally broke the silence. He seemed uncertain whether to talk to Parker or Grofield, and looked at Parker first, but then turned to Grofield instead; probably because Grofield seemed friendlier. “I can’t pay you all at once,” he said.
Grofield grinned; he couldn’t help himself. As an actor, and as a summer-theater producer, he had dealings from time to time with the business mentality, and by God, if this wasn’t it in full flower. A hood would either pay up or start shooting, it was impossible to think of a hood in terms of time payments. Buenadella, regardless of the business he was in, was more merchant than crook, and that was why it was going to be possible to deal with him.
But not this way. “Sorry,” Grofield said. “We couldn’t keep coming back for the payments. It has to be all at once.”
“Seventy-three thousand,” Buenadella pointed out, “that’s a big bite.”
“You can do it.”
“You’re going to strap me at a time when I really need the cash.”
Parker said, “Stop it, Buenadella. There’s only one way to pay us, and you know it.”
Grofield saw Buenadella getting his back up again; the very sound of Parker’s voice irritated the man. Now, with negotiations finally having been opened, and moving along pretty smoothly considering the circumstances, there was no point going back to the old hostilities. So, to soothe Buenadella, Grofield said, “I’m sure we can work something out, Mr. Buenadella. We don’t want to be unreasonable.”
“You call yourselves reasonable?” But it was said truculently, not angrily, so no real damage had been done.
“Well,” Grofield said, “of course, we’re pretty well locked into two conditions here. We have to have a lump-sum payment, and we have to have it in cash. You can see the reasons for that.”
Buenadella, the businessman, could see the reasons, but didn’t want to. “We could have a paper between us,” he grumbled. “We could make a legal thing, that you could take me to court if I missed a payment. If I agree to pay you, I’ll pay you.”
“It just wouldn’t work, Mr. Buenadella,” Grofield said, sounding mournful about it. “To have a legal document, you’d have to have my real name, for instance, and I’d rather you didn’t have it. Not to mention an address.”
“Christ.” Buenadella tapped his fingers on the desk blotter; they made small muffled noises, as for a midget’s funeral. “Where’m I going to get that much cash right away? I might as well tell you go fuck yourselves, do your worst.”
“You haven’t seen our worst, Mr. Buenadella,” Grofield said gently.
Buenadella cocked his head and squinted at Grofield, and it seemed to Grofield that for the first time Buenadella was taking the threat seriously. Underplay, Grofield thought, always underplay, that’s the way to get your effects every time.
Buenadella was still working things out. “It’s possible,” he said. “But it’ll take a couple days.”
“Now,” Parker said.
Grofield said to Parker, “Wait a minute, let’s hear him out. He’s got problems too.”
“Only you people,” Buenadella said. He rubbed the line of his jaw with a knuckle, thinking. “I can’t do anything today, right? It’s Sunday, everything’s closed. Tomorrow first thing I start. But you’re talking cash, that’s going to take a couple days.”
Parker said, “One day.”
Buenadella looked back and forth at the two of them, and decided to talk to Grofield again. “You can’t collect cash that fast,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about, it takes time, liquidating things, converting to cash. I’m in a bad cash flow situation anyway, what with the summer, attendance down, this election—”
“Well,” Grofield said, “I sort of think the election is what my partner had in mind. That’s Tuesday, right?”
“Sure, Tuesday.”
“Day after tomorrow.” Grofield shrugged, shaking his head, as though truly sorry to be the bearer of bad news. “See, that election’s important to us. It’s part of the pressure we have on you.”
“You don’t pay up by Tuesday morning,” Parker said, “your man loses. One way or another, he loses.”
“It can’t be done that fast!”
“You can if you really try,” Grofield said. “I tell you what; I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning, say ten-thirty, see how you’re coming along.”
Bitterly Buenadella said, “I wish I’d never heard of that money.”
“That would have been better,” Grofield agreed. “We can find our own way out.” He glanced at Parker, who nodded.
Grofield went first. He opened the French doors, stepped through to the cluttered rear lawn with its overcrowded plantings of bushes and hedges and small trees, and he saw the man with the gun just as the gun sparked white and red at the end of the barrel.
There wasn’t time to do a thing, not even time to think. He never heard the sound of the shot, but he felt the punch high on the left side of his chest; it felt as though he’d been hit by something as big as a fist, a metal fist.
It spun him around. Everything went out of focus as he turned, like a special effect in a movie. He killed me! Grofield thought despairingly, and slid down the invisible glass wall of life.
Twenty-seven
When Grofield jerked back against the doorjamb, Parker didn’t need to hear the sound to know he’d been shot. From outside, from people hidden in the shrubbery out there, waiting. Signaled by Buenadella, somehow, since Parker and Grofield had come in here, then setting themselves up outside and waiting for their targets to come out.
But they’d started shooting just a second too soon. Parker moved to his right, crouching, getting away from the open doorway as he clawed out his own pistol. Finish off Buenadella first, retreat through the house. No telling how many of them were out there in the yard.
But when his movement brought him around to face Buenadella, the blank terrified bewilderment of the man made it obvious this wasn’t his idea. The people outside were operating on orders from somebody else—Farrell maybe, or Calesian. Buenadella wasn’t that good an actor, to have negotiated the way he had with Grofield or to be faking right now that look of stunned horror.
Another shot was fired out there, on the heels of the first, the bullet chunking into the paneling somewhere on the far side of the room. Grofield wasn’t moving. He was body hit, probably dead. This room would fill up with them in a minute; Parker turned some more, showing Buenadella the gun in his hand, and headed for the interior door.