Footsteps descended the stairs. Sean grabbed my waist and pulled me close, his big hand sending pulses of heat through mydress. “You listen to me,” he ordered, and his words were like rough-edged slabs of granite. When he spoke like that, youlistened.
He put his mouth close to my ear and his voice changed. The words were still hard, cold stone but each one seemed to glow cherry red at its center. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. Smarter than me, smarter than Malone, smarter than anyone in this whole fucking game. You remember that.”
I swallowed and nodded.
The guard returned, unclipped the velvet rope, and led us upstairs.
42
LOUISE
Malone was big,like Sean had said. Muscle-big, like he might have played football before the fat had built up. Even now, his shoulders seemed to fill most of the width of the couch, stretching out his suit jacket. And he was black—in the reflected stage spotlights and the flickering candles, his skin looked almost blue-black. But I barely registered either of those things.
The only thing that mattered was the man’s sense of menace.
I’d thought Sean was intimidating, at first—sometimes, he still was. But he was scary in the way a big, strong attack dog with snapping teeth is scary. The violence he promised was somehow natural...honest,if that made any sense at all in a criminal world. It came from his muscles and his determination to do the job he was paid to do.
Malone put out an utterly different aura: you got the sense that he’d kill you because you’d displeased him, and the violence would be ugly and abstract, meted out by his thugs or at the end of a gun. At first, I thought of a boa constrictor, especially when I saw his huge hands, heavy with rings, which looked as if they’d easily crush a neck. But as he sat there motionless as an onyx statue, watching the stage from his private balcony, I realized what he really reminded meof: a huge, venomous spider. This club—this whole side of LA—was his web. He was powerful enough that he could simply sit there on his couch and his prey would come to him.
The guards waved us to the front of the balcony, where there were a couple of low stools. When we sat down on them facing Malone, our asses were almost on the floor and our heads were down below the level of the balcony wall. It was so that we wouldn’t spoil Malone’s view, I guessed. It also meant he loomed over us, even the massive Sean, and I was sure that wasn’t an accident.
It took a full minute before Malone acknowledged us. When the band ended their song and the applause rang out, he finally lowered his eyes to Sean. “Mr. O’Harra,” he intoned, his voice a deep bass boom that felt like it echoed off my ribcage. “What the fuck are you doing?” He said it with a lazy, poisonous malice that let us know how cruelly he’d kill us if the answer was wrong.
To his credit, Sean’s voice didn’t so much as waver. “I got a good deal for you. Weed. A lot of it. Fresh new supply, no problems with the law, just a nice fat crop ready to be sold.”
Malone’s lip curled in displeasure. “I know what you’re offering, you Irish prick. I asked what you were doing. You’re a fucking blunt instrument, like your goddamn hammer. You suddenly think you’re sharp? Running around town making deals?”
I tensed, ready for that anger of Sean’s to explode. No way would he be able to just sit there and take that. Hell, I was mad on his behalf: I’d seen how much more to him there was than smashing things.
But although Sean’s shoulders set and his hands curled into fists, he said, “No, Mr. Malone. Just a one-time thing, then back to normal.” He jerked his head towards me. “She’s the brains.”
Malone kept staring at him and I realized it was a test. He’d wanted Sean to prove his deference to his master. And Sean had sucked up his pride and done it.For me.To ensure the deal came off. I glanced across at him desperately, trying to communicate my thanks. He nodded.
And now Malone turned to me. It was like watching a huge stonestatue come to life: only his head rotated, as if I didn’t warrant moving any more of him. “And who the fuck are you?” he asked. There was a flicker of interest in his eyes: the fact I was a woman in a business run by men bought me maybe five seconds before he got bored. It was all down to me.
And I messed it up.
I swallowed. “I’m Louise Willowby. I grow stuff. And I’ve got—I’m growing this stuff that’s going to be—It’ll be really good—”
Malone held up one massive hand, palm facing me, and I stopped talking. He turned back to Sean. “You do good work,” he grunted. Each word was like the launch of an iceberg, huge and unstoppable. “That’s the only reason I’m letting you out of here without a beating. Jesus, I should have them take that fucking sledgehammer and break your legs with it, wasting my time like this.”
Sean’s eyes flared with fury and I thought he was going to spring at Malone...but then he glanced across at me and lowered his gaze to the floor.He’s scared of me getting hurt!
Malone, meanwhile, had tilted back his head and was unscrewing the cap from a small white bottle. Physostigmine, for glaucoma—my grandma used to take the same stuff. He was taking his goddamn medication, as if he’d already forgotten about us.
As he started to drip the drops into his eyes, the guards came forward to throw us out. I thought of Kayley. All that time I’d spent at the grow house when I could have been at her side, and now it was all for nothing. We had no buyer and I was going to have to stand by and watch her die—
I jumped to my feet. “I’m a grower,” I said, loud and clear. “I’m a grower, goddamn it!”
Malone kept his head tilted back, but he looked down his nose at me. The guards had nearly reached us, now.
“I’m not like the others,” I told him. “I’m using stuff I learned in college, straight out of NASA, stuff that your guys won’t pick up on for years. They use the same fertilizer all the time; I change the ratios of phosphorus and nitrogen, depending on the stage of the plants’ growth. I raise the nitrogen while the plants are young, then switch tohigher phosphorus while they’re flowering, then back to higher nitrogen. That means more THC per leaf—it’ll be a smoother, cleaner, more intense smoke.” Hands grabbed my arms. “I know my shit so, goddamn it,listen to me!”
Malone slowly lowered his head to look at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nearest guard flinch at the way I’d spoken to him. Their hands tightened on my arms, digging in—
Malone lifted his hand and I was released. For several seconds he just stared at me. At last, he said, “You got a big fucking mouth. Is this weed really going to be all that?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. It’s really going to be all that.”
