"House isn't worth eighty."
"Well, I guess that's for the courts to decide, don't you think?" Bagatti shook his head. "I mean, that's how the guy's lawyer puts it. He put a detective on her. Got pictures of you going into her house. Coming out of her house. Kissing in the car. Figures it'll prove collusion."
"You seen the pictures, Bagatti?" asked Don.
"Why would I have seen them?" said the realtor.
Don picked him up by the shoulders and jammed him against the wall. His head made a kind of bounce against the plaster, and he lost his silly smirk. "I guess I didn't ask sincere enough," said Don. "You take those pictures, Bagatti?"
"Like I said, a private detective. This is assault, you know."
"Got pictures?" said Don.
"All the guy did was call me."
"So why you telling me and not Cindy?"
"He's gonna name both of you in the suit. But he said, like, maybe it could all go away."
"He said? Or you say?"
"What do you think? What are you talking about?"
"Blackmail," said Don. "Extortion."
"Not me," said Bagatti. "But maybe him."
"Maybe?"
"He said twenty thousand. You still get the house for ten thousand less than he asked for. It's a bargain, right?"
"But I bet he doesn't want to go back and adjust the price on the records, right?"
"Why screw up everybody's taxes?" asked Bagatti. "You'll still get a profit on the house."
"And you came to me?"
"Cindy's got no money," said Bagatti.
"How do you know that? She wouldn't tell you where to point your dick when you pee."
"Like I said, the guy has a private investigator. Man, you're hurting my shoulders."
Don let him slide down the wall to stand on his feet. But when Bagatti made as if to go for the door, Don bounced him back against the wall again. And, again, his head did that little rebound from the plaster. "Careful," said Don. "This is a bearing wall, I don't want to have to replace it just because you put a dent in it with your head."
"Look, Mr. Lark, I'm just a messenger."
"Tell me the lawyer's name."
"He didn't say. He said he'd contact you."
"I don't want any lawyer dust in this house. I'll go to his office and we'll work this out, or he can go ahead and take us to court, because nothing illegal happened."
"I'll tell him."
"No, I'll tell him. Give me his number."
"He said he'd call me back. Didn't give me a—"
This time his head didn't bounce as much. "Don't hold your neck stiff when I do that," said Don. "It'll just make it hurt worse later. Stay loose."
"You're hurting me, man."
"His number."
"Let go of me and I'll write it down."
Don stepped between Bagatti and the door and watched while he pulled out a business card and with trembling hands struggled to write the phone number.
"Memorized it, huh?" said Don. "From calling it so much?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you're the office sneak. You're the one tipped him off that maybe Cindy and I liked each other. And he must have got you to hire the detective. Fast work, getting those pictures only a couple of hours later."
"So what? The ice queen starts getting lovey with a client, I get suspicious, and it turned out I was right, wasn't I? Getting a thirty-thousand-dollar discount on the house. So don't get all righteous with me, calling me a sneak when you're a thief."
Right then. That was when Don could have crossed the line. All these years of self-control. All those months when he wanted to go kidnap his daughter and hide her in Bulgaria or Mongolia and he didn't do it. All those months, all those years afterward when he wanted to find his ex-wife's lawyer and smash the sanctimonious snake's head into splinters against a lightpost, and didn't do it. All the violence that had gone unexpressed, he wanted so badly to let go... and didn't.
Bagatti must have guessed at the decision he was making, because he cowered, watching Don's eyes. And when Don finally stepped back against the outside wall, letting Bagatti pass, the realtor bolted like a squirrel, out the door, down the porch steps.
Don held the card with the lawyer's number. Another lawyer. Another attempt to destroy him. When you kill, Don, kill the right guy. Life in prison for killing a realtor? Come on. One dead lawyer is worth ten dead realtors any day.
He locked the door, got in the truck, and drove. At first he thought of driving to Cindy's. But what would that accomplish? Either she knew about the threat from the previous owner, or she didn't. Either she would be embarrassed about their near-tryst or she wouldn't. No possible meeting would work out happily for either of them.
So he drove. Up to some of the new housing developments around some of the lakes north and west of the city. Houses for doctors and lawyers, executives and car dealers. Big houses, on huge wooded lots, designed to have great views and to give them, too. From the road over there where the common people drive, this house would look like a slavery-era plantation house, and that one like a Federal mansion, and this other one like a Hollywood extravaganza, and that last one like an escapee from the ugliest part of the 1950s. Taste didn't come with money. Nor restraint. Nor even common decency. I used to build their houses, thought Don. I used to try so hard to please them. Excellence that they didn't understand and didn't want to pay for. I built their house as meticulously as I would hope they did surgery, or handled legal cases, or whatever. Was I the only one who cared that much? The only one who wanted to do good work even where it wasn't on display?
He came out onto Lake Brandt Road, and then took the left fork onto Lawndale. He stopped at Sam's and got out and used the payphone to call the lawyer's number. He recognized the name of the firm when the receptionist said it. They didn't have the best reputation in town, but extortion was a new specialty for them.
"He's with a client," said the receptionist.
"Get out of your chair," said Don, "and go tell him that either he talks to me on the phone or he talks to me in person ten minutes from now."
"We do not respond to threats, sir."
"It says a lot about your law firm that you have a policy about that," said Don. "Don't waste my time, I'm calling from a payphone."
It only took a moment for the lawyer to get on the phone. "Most people make appointments," said the lawyer.
"What you and your client are doing is extortion," said Don.
"No it's not," said the lawyer. "It's fair warning."
"But if I give you twenty thousand, the whole problem goes away."
"It saves everybody a lot of unnecessary legal fees and court costs," said the lawyer. "It's called settling out of court."
"Then in exchange I get a quit-claim that specifies the amount I paid you."
"No you don't."
"Then go to court, and I'll testify that only your unwillingness to have a legal document with the amount of money on it stood between us and settlement."
"That's a privileged matter."
"There's no privilege because you're not my lawyer," said Don. "I'll be at your office at eight-thirty in the morning. The check will be made out to your client."
"It will be cash."
"No it won't. Again, I'm happy to testify in court that your client wanted to leave no paper trail."
"Cash or no deal."
"I'll be there at eight-thirty with the cashier's check. You be there with the quit-claim specifying the amount of money and making no assertions about any kind of relationship between me and Ms. Claybourne. Or you can sue your brains out."