The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Alek, you sonofabitch!

His chain of thought was interrupted by the arrival of the butler—not a bellman; penthouses A and B shared the full-time services of an around-the-clock butler—bearing simple syrup, absinthe, a bowl of ice, a bowl of lemon twists, and a tray of old-fashioned glasses.

“The first thing we will do—actually, Lester will do,” Leverette announced, “is fill the glasses with ice. This will chill them while I go through the rest of the process. Now, how many are we going to need?”

Everyone expressed the desire to have a Sazerac.

Leverette arranged all the old-fashioned glasses in two rows.

“You understand, Sweaty,” he said, “that one of my Sazeracs has been known to turn a nun into a nymphomaniac?”

“I’ll take my chances. Stop talking and make the damned drink.”

“First, we muddle the syrup and the Peychaud bitters together,” Leverette announced. “When I’ve done that, we will carefully measure three ounces of rye per drink and a carefully measured amount of ice into the mixing vessel.”

He picked up a champagne cooler, and quickly rinsed it in the sink of the wet bar.

“This will serve nicely as a mixing vessel,” he said, and then demonstrated that his notion of a carefully measured three ounces of rye and ice per drink was to upend the bottle of Wild Turkey over the champagne cooler and empty it. He shook it to get the last drop, then repeated the process with the bottle of Van Winkle Family Reserve. He then added four handfuls of ice cubes.

He stirred the mixture around with one of the empty bottles.

“You’ll notice that I did not shake, but rather stirred. I learned that from Double-Oh-Seven,” he said, then looked at Bradley. “Lester, dump the ice.”

Lester emptied into the sink the melting ice from all the glasses.

“I will now pour the absinthe, and Lester will swirl. I know he will do a good job of swirling because I taught him myself.”

Leverette then picked up the bottle of absinthe, and ran it very quickly over the lines of glasses in one motion. This put perhaps a teaspoon of the absinthe in each glass.

Lester then picked up each glass, swirled the absinthe around, and then dumped the absinthe into the sink.

Leverette picked up the champagne cooler. Lester picked up a silver strainer and held it to the lip of the champagne cooler to hold back the ice cubes as Leverette poured the chilled liquid content of the cooler into the glasses.

“There is a slight excess,” Leverette announced as he looked into the cooler. “Stick this in the fridge, Lester. ‘Waste not, want not,’ as my saintly mother was always saying.”

Leverette then picked up handfuls of the lemon twists and squeezed them in his massive hands, which added not more than two drops of the essence into each glass.

“Finished!” he announced triumphantly.

He handed one to Castillo and another to Pevsner. He handed a third to Sweaty, and took a fourth with him as he walked to the couch.

He raised his glass to Pevsner, took an appreciative sip, and then asked, “And what do you think, Mr. Pevsner?”

Pevsner sipped his cocktail.

“Unusual,” Pevsner said. “But very good.”

“I will pretend that I don’t know the only reason you said that is because you knew I would tear off both of your arms and one leg if you hadn’t, and will accept that as a compliment.”

“You’re insane,” Pevsner said with a smile.

“Genius is often mistakenly identified as insanity,” Leverette said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Now, shall we deal with our problem?”

He came to attention, gestured at Castillo, and gave the Nazi salute.

“Mein Führer, you have the floor.”

Pevsner’s eyes rolled in disbelief.