“Truth conquers all,” I say softly, looking at the eagle again. “Thanks for this, Aaron.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m glad to give Duncan something to smile about.”
“You’re going to do more than that. The Poker Club’s going to go to war. I’m glad you’ve got that security here.”
“We’ll be all right. Problem is our max size on the jobbing press was eleven by seventeen. It’s a long way from perfect, but the kids are folding it around the main edition and then rubber-banding it. They takin’ a break now, but they work fast. They been foldin’ five hundred copies an hour per person.”
“Wow. Well, we can live with the size difference. Wake me if you need me, or if Ben says get me up.”
Gabriel Terrell laughs and walks up behind his brother. “Ben? That boy passed out an hour ago.”
“Well, he did a good job.”
“Look now,” Aaron says, “ain’t no blankets on them cots.”
“We’ll make do,” Nadine tells him.
She leads me through the antique machines to a couple of Korean War–vintage army cots set up side by side against the wall. Three feet away stands a fifty-five-gallon drum with an Evinrude outboard motor bolted inside it. The prop has probably rusted to powder by now. Beyond the motor stands another cot with Ben Tate sprawled across it, snoring up at the rafters.
“Lie down,” Nadine says, laughing softly. “I’ll take the one on the outside.”
The voices of the choir fade into empty silence. Then a soft tenor voice begins singing “Hey Ya!” by OutKast. Other singers mimic instruments beneath the vocal, filling the barn with sounds not quite like any I’ve ever heard.
“You’re about to fall down,” Nadine says, taking hold of my upper arms and easing me down onto a cot.
“What about tomorrow?” I ask, curling into the barn wall. “The meeting with the Poker Club?”
“We’ll deal with that tomorrow. I’ve got a little treat you can take with you. A silver bullet.”
“What’s that?” I ask, my eyes already closed.
“A recording of Claude Buckman waxing poetic about committing treason with China. It was so damning that I made a recording to keep with me, separate from what’s in the safe-deposit box. Fifteen seconds of it was enough to get you out of jail.”
“Awesome,” I mutter, not even sure what she’s talking about.
A moment later I feel her drop something soft and heavy on top of me, and that sends me over the edge into oblivion.
Chapter 45
At 7:55 a.m. I walk out of the elevator on the second floor of the Bienville Southern Bank. As thankful as I was for that army cot, I’m still shaky from sleep deprivation. I’m also a little nervous. Before going into the conference room, I duck into the men’s room to take a leak. While I’m standing at the sink washing my hands, the door opens behind me. In the mirror I see Tommy Russo walk in, wearing one of his body-hugging suits. He doesn’t go to a urinal or a stall, but stands by the door, looking at me. He’s holding a folded newspaper in his hand.
“This a social call?” I ask, wiping my hands on a paper towel.
He takes two steps forward and slaps my back with the newspaper. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I take the paper and hold it in front of me. It’s this morning’s edition of the Watchman.
“I thought we had a deal,” he says, his eyes bright with anger.
“We did. Then Arthur Pine showed up and shut down my father’s business. So, no, we don’t have a deal anymore.”
Russo takes back the paper and opens it to page two, where several photographs show the principals in the main Poker Club story. One pairs Tommy with a man who looks very much like him and is identified as “New Jersey syndicate figure Anthony Russo.”
“That your brother?” I ask.
“Yeah. Tony. And he ain’t happy today. My old man, either, who’s still alive, the stubborn son of a bitch.”
“Well, you’re lucky, Tommy. Because my old man’s in a coma. He’s not going to be around long. And I wasted last night in the county jail.”
“I feel for you, Marshall.” Russo taps the photo. “But this ain’t good for business. And there’s worse ways to die than in a hospital.”
I let his threat hang in the air.
“I thought we had a private understanding, you and me,” he insists. “After we talked yesterday.”
“We did. I listened to your speech about family and not messing with a man’s living. And then you dropped a truck on my family.”
“Look, that debt-purchase thing, that wasn’t my call. With the paper, I mean. That was Buckman and Holland and that prick Pine. I thought they’d settled things with you. Next thing I hear, everything is off.”
“That sums it up, Tommy. Business is business, right? But physics matters, too. You’re a serious guy, I know that. But you’re about to learn a lesson about leverage.”
“You got some balls on you, McEwan. You know that?”
I look past him to the restroom door. “What are you really doing here, Tommy?”
He steps right to be sure he’s blocking my exit. “You need to understand something. Those guys you’re about to talk to in that conference room, those so-called Southern gentlemen . . . they’re local, okay? My partners ain’t local. They’re from Jersey. So remember this: whatever gets said in that room in the next few minutes, those clowns don’t speak for my partners.”
“You got bigger problems than me, Tommy. That paper mill deal? Selling U.S. Senate votes? The FBI will bury you under a federal prison for that. Ask the governor of Illinois. Correction, the ex-governor. The thing is, you’d never get to prison, because the Chinese would kill you first. The Chinese intelligence services, Tommy. They make the mob look like Girl Scouts. So listen hard in that conference room and make sure I stay healthy. That’s your best survival strategy. Now, let me out. I’ve got a meeting.”
Unlike my first formal encounter with the Poker Club, this time eight of twelve members are present. I feel like I’m facing an all-male Senate committee, not least because it’s being chaired by an irascible octogenarian.
As before, Claude Buckman sits at the head of the long rosewood table, Donnelly to his right, Arthur Pine to his left. On Donnelly’s side sit Senator Avery Sumner, Wyatt Cash, and Dr. Lacey. On Pine’s side sit Beau Holland and Tommy Russo. I’m at the far end, opposite Buckman. Cell phones lie in front of each man, all switched off. This time, I was wanded and searched by a security man before entering the conference room, to be sure I’m carrying no recording devices. When he searched me, I suppressed a sigh of relief that I’d left Nadine’s pistol in the Flex. As I prepared to leave the barn this morning, Nadine insisted that I bring her gun with me. I assented, but on the condition that she would remain behind while Aaron Terrell dropped me outside the sheriff’s department to pick up the Flex.
Not one man has spoken since I entered the conference room. I suspect that’s because of the Chinese man sitting in a plush chair against the wall to my right. Though no one has introduced him, he looks like the fiftyish man who made the speech at the groundbreaking ceremony three days ago. I believe the Watchman story referred to him as Jian Wu, a corporate officer of the Azure Dragon paper company.