“I’m grateful to you for meeting me. I feel out of my depth with all this fast-food-and-flavor stuff, and I think it may be important. I needed to talk to someone who really understands the business.”
“Well, I might qualify.” He led the way to the Nautilus machine. “I like to do the whole circuit in order, starting with the leg presses. Can I show you how it’s done?”
“Thanks, I know how it goes.” Ben lowered himself onto the black leather seat and wrapped his feet behind the weighted bar.
“You work out?”
“Yeah, I have a membership here, too,” Ben said, grunting slightly as he worked his quads. “But don’t tell my staff. It would destroy my image.”
“You come regularly?”
“A couple, three times a week. Though I don’t normally wear this snazzy suit.” Ben smiled. “That was just to impress you. I come as often as I can, when I’m not in court. I usually arrive later in the day, though. After work.”
“Good for you. How long have you been doing it?”
“A couple of years now. A while back I got the bad end of a scuffle and-well, the result was being pushed off some high-rise refinery scaffolding.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I was hurt pretty bad-in a coma for days. After that, I decided I needed to do something to improve my physical condition. Before it was too late.” Ben finished his leg presses, then vacated the seat. “But you know-I’m supposed to be interviewing you here. How did an amiable guy who’s even younger than I am end up the CEO of a huge national fast-food chain?”
“Oh, dumb luck, mostly.”
“Yeah, I believe that. Don’t be modest, Peter, or we’ll never get anywhere.”
“It’s true. But what is luck, really? Let me tell you-it’s when opportunity meets preparation. I’d been preparing for a long time, toiling away in the burger biz. When the opportunity came, I jumped at it.”
“What happened?”
Rothko straddled a bench and began doing arm curls. “Like most of America, I grew up working at McDonald’s. When I turned twenty-one, I managed to get a little seed money so I could buy an independent burger joint on Peoria that was closing. My parents thought it sounded like a dodgy move, but hey, fast food was all I knew.”
“How did it go?”
“Terribly. Disastrously. I lost money by the fistful.”
“So why is it my partner thinks you’re the richest most eligible bachelor in Tulsa?”
Rothko grinned. “That came later. The first two years were a travesty. Competition was slaughtering me. And then-things began to change.”
Ben grabbed an overhead bar and pulled it down behind his head. “What made the difference?”
Rothko released the pull bar with a grunt. “Chemicals.”
For someone who didn’t even like to drink that much, he sure spent a lot of time in bars, Loving mused. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he’d been working as Ben’s investigator for many years now, and it seemed as if he’d spent about half that time hanging out in saloons, taverns, pubs, and watering holes of all shapes and sizes.
Why did he always draw these assignments? he wondered as he climbed out of his pickup. If the investigation involved some high-tech something or other, Jones would handle it. If it involved anything feminine or upscale, Christina would draw the straw. And if involved anything fun, Ben would do it himself. Why was he always the one who got sent to the bars?
To be fair, bars were generally a good place to get people talking. Whether they thought the alcohol affected them or not, it did, and tongues moved more freely after the third or fourth Bud Light. Just observing people in this environment told Loving more than he could learn in half an hour of sober yakking.
So, he supposed, he drew these assignments because he was good at them. That was what he was going to tell himself, anyway.
As he surveyed the exterior, he realized that this trendy Brookside hangout was considerably more upscale than his usual haunt. He wished he had dressed differently-his white T-shirt and blue jeans might look out of place among the Ralph Lauren pullovers and Miss Jackson originals. But what the heck. He’d make do.
He stepped inside, then caught his breath. Wait a minute. This wasn’t a bar. At least not his idea of a bar.
This was a sushi bar.
The fishy aroma wafted down to Loving’s nostrils, and he almost instantly felt sick. He didn’t like fish even when it was cooked; there was no way he was going to be able to keep this squishy slithery stuff down.
Did Ben know where this woman was going when he handed out this assignment? Was this his idea of humor? Send the big burly redneck to the raw fish joint? Laugh when his face starts to turn white? Watch him try to order chicken fried chicken or something?
Well, it wasn’t going to happen. Loving felt a great deal of loyalty and devotion to Ben-but everything had its limits.
To his relief, he spotted the woman he knew to be Sheila Knight sitting up at the front, at the bar. The liquor bar, that is. There were empty seats on either side of her. She appeared to be on at least her second drink, judging by the glasses in front of her. She was wearing a party dress-bright red and rather tight-fitting. No woman would dress like that unless she was going out on a date-or looking for one.
Perfect. This was going to be easier than he thought.
He sidled up to the stool on her left. “Mind if I sit here, ma’am?” He couldn’t be less subtle; almost every other seat at the bar was untaken.
To his relief, she didn’t object. She gave him the split-second once-over and shrugged. “Sure.”
Loving assumed that meant he had passed the sniff test. The bartender asked for his order. “Shot of Bailey’s, shot of Kahlúa. Separate glasses.”
That got her attention. “Little early to break out the hard stuff, isn’t it?”
Loving grinned. “Each to his own poison.” After the drinks arrived, Loving pulled his laminated Oklahoma driver’s license out of his wallet and plopped it on the top of the bar. “Okay, here’s the challenge. Get the Kahlúa into the Bailey’s glass, and vice versa. Using only what’s on the bar right now.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Is this one of those stupid bar tricks?”
“Yup. And since it’s so stupid, you shouldn’t have any problem.”
She gave him a sharp look, then turned her attention to the two drinks. She picked up both shot glasses, as if to pour one into the other. No, that wasn’t going to work. She considered the driver’s license, but that didn’t bring many possibilities to light. She experimented with the salt and pepper, the Tabasco sauce, the menus, the nonfat dairy creamer. But none of it solved the problem.
“All right, wonder boy. I give up. Show me how it’s done.”
“It’s a secret.”
“If you weren’t planning to tell, why’d you start this thing?”
“I’m not saying I won’t tell. I’m just saying you gotta make it worth my while.”