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“You are even now.”
“I come to you with intelligence and maybe a chance to do a little business,” said the man I was pretending to be.
“I like the word intelligence,” Augustine said. “Even a fool can bring intelligence if he’s been given the right words.”
I could feel my heart beating again. This larger-than-life man scared me. He came out of one of the storybooks of old, designed to frighten children into understanding how the world really worked.
“I’m a private agent who does work for those who need to stay in shadow,” I said. “Somebody representing a man named Stuart Braun hired me to bring him hopefully incriminating information on another man—William James Marmot.”
The masculine chatter stopped then. Antrobus studied me with his slitty eyes and nodded ever so slightly.
“For what purpose?” he asked when my question was almost forgotten.
“He said that Marmot was leaning on him and that he needed leverage.”
“What kind of leverage?”
“That I do not know. I met a man named Porker who told me that he knew another man who said Marmot worked for you.”
“A man who knows a man who knows about me?”
“That’s the way it is in my business.”
After a fair length Antrobus asked, “And so why come here just because a man told a man that the man you’re stalking might have something to do with me?”
“I wanted to see if you were as serious as I heard.”
“And am I?”
I smiled, wondering what my new face looked like with that expression on it.
“I don’t need to do any more stalking if you and I can come to an agreement.”
“You say,” Antrobus parried, “that someone representing Braun hired you.”
I nodded without smiling.
“Who is that?”
“Someone calling themselves Lacey.”
“A lacey beard?” he asked.
I refrained from smiling again. You can often identify a man by his grin.
“What do you want, Mr. Beard?”
“Six thousand dollars in cash and Mr. Marmot falls off my radar.”
“Hardly a fair business practice,” Antrobus observed.
“I’m not applying for a position.”
Antrobus roared with laughter.
“Do we have a deal?” I asked.
24.
