But I kept coming back to his eyes. Aside from being big and brown, there was just something about them that made you want to scurry under a rock and hide. Or if you couldn’t hide, stand at attention and say “sir” a lot.
That pissed me off. I don’t bow down to anybody, and the more they expect me to, the more I don’t. So I kept my eyes on him, daring him to show me something that would impress me and betting he couldn’t.
“Mr. Wolfe,” he said at last. His voice was measured, commanding, and he had no accent I could hear—but it was the kind of no-accent that comes from practice, from getting rid of an old accent. It told me nothing. Neither did the tiny little smile. But then he said, “I am Patrick Boniface.”
Okay, I was wrong. He impressed me. I knew that name, and I knew what it meant.
I was fucked.
5
In this mean and dirty world there are many dangerous people. Drug lords get the most publicity. I think it’s because of the so-called War on Drugs. The badder we make the cartels and kingpins, the worse we all think drugs are. And as a side benefit, if we think they are all really and truly terrifying evil boogeymen, it’s a lot easier to understand why we can’t put them out of business and win the so-called war once and for all.
Which means nobody has to think about the real reason we can’t put drug dealers out of business. Sure, they’re bad. Bad to the bone, mean, ruthless, violent, all of that. But the fact is, they don’t really need to be to stay in business. They just have to keep providing dope. Because people want drugs. And as long as people want to get high, get mellow, get a fix, and don’t even mind getting addicted—and that means forever—there’s going to be drugs, and drug dealers. It’s pure supply and demand. People will always want it, so other people will always supply it.
There’s one other thing people will always want. Weapons. And not just pissant toys like pistols and rifles. I mean big-time stuff that can take out a city block, wipe out a few hundred people at a pop, turn a band of guerrilla fighters into an army of resistance.
Drug dealers really are plenty bad. But a big-time arms dealer makes them look like kids playing Power Rangers. It just stands to reason. Drug dealers sell to people who want to make money or people who want to get high. But arms dealers sell to violent people who want to be even more violent, and efficient about it. These customers would not hesitate to keep the money and kill the dealer, just take the weapons, and the only reason they don’t is that they can’t. Because the arms dealer scares the crap out of them, too.
And of course the scary arms dealers would just as soon be the biggest weapons seller on the block. They wouldn’t hesitate to knock off all their competitors and corner the market and make ten times as much money. Which they try to do every now and then, because when you are a violent, amoral person who is all about making money, it just makes sense to kill a few dozen people so you can make more. So if you are one of the big, badass weapons sellers, you are always looking over your shoulder. You sleep with one eye open, and you surround yourself with people who don’t mind killing anybody you tell them to. Because sooner or later, one of your peers is coming for you, and he has a bunch of hired killers just as good as yours. He wants what you have, all of it, and to get it, he’s very happy to kill you and a few hundred of your closest friends. The thought of all that extra cash makes you an irresistible target. Sooner or later, one of your competitors will take a shot.
Unless, of course, you are an arms dealer who scares the crap out of the other arms dealers, who scare the crap out of everybody else. There are two or three of those top-dog dealers I know about, guys who nobody would dream of fucking with. And there was one guy so far above all of them that even those kingpins would be scared to fuck with him. One guy who was so big, bad, rich, ruthless, and powerful that he was totally untouchable. One guy who had clawed his way to the top of the heap with ruthlessness and violence so extreme that it absolutely terrified everybody else. A guy who showed time after time that he didn’t negotiate, didn’t back down, didn’t mind killing anybody or everybody, and he was happy to wipe out twenty people just to get the one he was after.
His name was Patrick Boniface.
Yeah. The guy looking me in the eye and sitting in the Louis XVI chair. Which I now figured, by the way, was probably real. Boniface had a reputation as a guy who demanded truly fine things. He was just as ruthless latching on to artworks, too.
I did not actually say, “Oh shit I’m dead and fucked.” But I must have thought it so loud that he heard me anyway. He gave me two millimeters of smile and one small shake of the head. “You are in no danger, Mr. Wolfe,” he said. “For the time being.”
I tried to swallow. It didn’t work. “I’m happy to hear it,” I said. “So grabbing me like that, and the chains and the guards, four goddamn days chained to a rock—that was just for practice?”
“Three days, actually,” he said. He glanced behind him at Scarface. “Bernadette thought it would soften you up.” He cocked his head slightly to the left. “I don’t think it has, though.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t soften.”
“Forgive me if I disagree,” Boniface said. “I can assure you that a few days with Bernadette would work wonders. I’m quite sure she could persuade you of almost anything. And she would love to have a chance.”
Bernadette put her hands on the back of the chair and leaned forward with a smile that could short-circuit a pacemaker. Ridges of hard muscle popped out on her arms.
“Thanks,” I said. “I already got her warm-up.” I held up my left hand, which by now was purple and about the size of a basketball. Bernadette smiled, just a girl remembering one special dance at the prom.
“We’ll have that looked at,” Boniface said. He raised one eyebrow. “Unless you’d like to get better acquainted with Bernadette?”
“I think I know her too well already,” I said. “And I don’t think she’s my type.”
“Nor anyone else’s type, I think,” he said. He reached back and patted her hand, and she straightened back up.
“Well, a date to go dancing is out,” I said. “So why all the spy-movie bullshit?”
His smile went way the hell up to three millimeters. “I find that negotiations go much easier if I strengthen my position.” He raised an eyebrow. “I think I have done so?”
He looked so fucking cool and smug that for just a second I was mad enough to forget who he was. “I don’t call it negotiating if I’m chained to a fucking wall with automatic weapons pointed at me, with Bernadette waiting for a chance to pull out my intestines,” I said.
“Oh, but it is,” Boniface said. “I am a businessman, Mr. Wolfe. A good businessman should always try to gain every possible advantage before negotiating. Don’t you think?”
I thought about that. Just for a few seconds, because that’s all it took. He definitely had all the cards. Oh, sure, I could’ve thought up a couple of cutesy things he’d skipped if I felt like a smart-ass. Or maybe gone with some tired, barf-inducing pablum like, “Where there’s life, there’s hope” or some kind of New Age bullshit about Positating My Image Reality into a New Nexus of Tangible Affirmation. But I never did go for that crap, and the truth was, I was chained to a stone wall in the basement of a huge rock that was in the middle of some unknown body of water, surrounded by heavily armed mercenaries, every possible kind of lethal security, and a sadistic bitch who loved to “persuade” people held in reserve. And one hand was temporarily out of commission. Yeah, he had the high ground. Boniface was in charge, and that was all there was to it. So I did what anybody with a three-digit IQ would’ve done.
I smiled. “How can I help you?” I said.