It was a good exit line. She whipped her train around her and stalked to the sweeping staircase. She had learned her Scarlett O’Hara well.
Byrnes sighed and shook his head. “Well, you may as well come in. Natalie’s already going to have my head anyway. Winnie, would you bring us coffee in the study?”
“Of course.”
I followed him into the study. His bare feet slapped on the parquet floor. He was swearing under his breath the whole time.
When we were inside, he walked over to one of the mullioned windows and opened it from the bottom. He pointed to a leather wing chair. I sat and watched him dig something out of his desk. I wasn’t sure what it was until he was standing next to the open window. He tamped a cigarette from a pack of Winstons. “My secret vice. I only smoke one when I’m really stressed. And this morning sure as shit qualifies. It’s going to be hell around here.” He stood by the window, exhaling into the fresh air. I half expected him to stick his head outside and smoke.
He took seven or eight drags, inhaling each of them. Then he licked his thumb and forefinger and squeezed the flame out between them. “My father taught me that trick. Picked it up when he was a cowboy — a real one, not a pretend one like me.” He sounded bitter. He closed the window, locked it, and walked back to his desk.
But he wasn’t done with the smoking ceremony yet. From a different drawer he pulled one of those small battery-powered fans. He turned it on. It sounded like the biggest horsefly that had ever lived. He went back to the window and began covering the entire area with swipes of the fan. Then he shut it off, brought it back to the desk, closed the drawer, and sat down.
“She hasn’t caught me yet.” His smile was sour. He was a prisoner of her wealth and power like everybody else. The stranglehold.
“I assume something bad has happened, Dev, or you wouldn’t be here so early.”
“Craig Donovan paid me a visit last night.”
“What did that bastard want?”
“You mean aside from working on my head with brass knuckles?”
“I want to kill that son of a bitch. He swaggers in here and makes his demands. You can see how much he’s enjoying himself. No matter how low Susan sank when she was running around, I don’t know how she ever hooked up with him. He’s a psychopath. I resented giving him a damned dime. But then it’s not my money. Natalie thought she could buy him off the one time and he wouldn’t come back for more.”
“He’s already come back for more.”
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
“He wants double the amount. Another full payment.”
“He’s crazy.”
“He probably is. But right now that doesn’t matter. We have to figure out how to handle this.”
I was surprised he didn’t go for another cigarette. His face tried to form an expression that contained both anger and misery. He just looked helpless. “Natalie’s going to hit the roof.”
“The threat is he goes public. The trouble is that if you pay him twice he may ask for even more.”
“Goddammit,” he said. “I always think of myself as a man of the world. I’ve been around the block more than a few times, Dev. I’ve even heard of people being shaken down like this. But they agreed to pay and they were left alone for a while. Donovan’s a wild man. Who the hell knows what he’s going to do?”
“There’s always the chance he’s bluffing.”
“You believe that’s the case?”
“I don’t have any idea. He’s too unpredictable.”
There wasn’t any doubt who was pounding on the door. There had been our quiet conversation and now there was a threatening thunder of assaults on the wood that was keeping her out.
He shook his head. “It’s not locked, Natalie.”
“I want to know exactly what you’re talking about. This is my house and my money being spent, and whether this bastard likes it or not I have the final say on this campaign.”
So nice to see you, Natalie. Won’t you have a cup of coffee and sit down and chat for a while? You just have a way of brightening up a room.
She charged up to Byrnes’s desk. “What the hell have you two been talking about?”
“Darling, it would help if you’d calm down.”
“This bastard forces his way in here at breakfast time and I don’t know what’s going on — in my own house? Now I want to hear everything you’ve said.”
And with that she gathered her black train and went to sit in a leather wing chair identical to mine. I took pleasure in watching her try to get comfortable with her ridiculous train piled beneath her. She was angry with her train. If she got mad enough at it, she’d probably set it on fire.
Byrnes sighed and said, “You won’t be happy to hear this, Natalie.”
“And why should that make any difference? I haven’t been happy to hear anything since this man and his flunkies started bungling Susan’s campaign.”
“This isn’t something they did, Natalie. This is—”
I could almost see him drawing himself up to give her the bad news. “Craig Donovan physically attacked Dev last night and told him that he wanted a second payment in the same amount — and he wants it delivered by tonight.”
Both Byrnes and I were ready to crouch into defensive positions because the blast would likely smash windows and toss furniture around. But it didn’t happen. We glanced at each other. It was a cartoon moment, when two characters stare at a stick of dynamite that burns down but doesn’t explode.
She laughed. “Well, isn’t that just fucking ducky? So now Mr. Conrad here has managed to screw up the situation with Donovan, too.” The voice started to rise at the end. “And just why the hell did he come to you?”
I lied. “I’m not sure.”
“That doesn’t matter now. What matters is what we do next. Do we pay him again?”
She put her head down, folded her hands in her lap, and began shaking her head back and forth. Without looking up she said, “If we weren’t so close to the election, I’d fire your ass and rip you up in public, which I plan to do whether we win or lose.” This was the old Natalie. She didn’t want to disappoint her fans. When her head came up she glared at Byrnes. “If you were any kind of a man, you’d punch him right in the face.”
“Oh God, Nat,” Byrnes said. “C’mon. That kind of talk isn’t going to help anything.”
“Oh? And just what kind of talk will help anything?”
He started to push back from his desk. I had the same impulse he did. To get up and walk around, anything to break the tension.
“Why don’t I fix you a brandy, Nat?” Byrnes said.
“It’s eight o’clock in the goddamned morning, Wyatt. What are we, lushes?” But her words lacked their usual fire. She sounded more miserable than angry. When she finally met my eyes, she said, “I want you out of here.”
“All right.”
“I’m going to fix it so you’ll have a hard time getting any kind of clients, Conrad — even city council ones. I’ll ruin you.” Then to Byrnes: “I thought you were going to get me a brandy? You don’t do anything else around here. Can’t you at least do that?”
There was no point in saying good-bye. I was at the moment in crime movies of the forties when the detective always picks up his fedora and walks out. Except I didn’t have a fedora. I closed the door quietly.
About halfway down the hall, just at the point where I could see the sunlight blaze through the vestibule window, Winnie appeared and slid her arm through mine. “I take it Natalie’s not happy.”
“I don’t know how you stand it.”