“That’s a blood sport. I don’t have the stomach.”
“She can wear on you. She can be charming if she wants to.”
“Now you’ve just about explained every woman on the planet. Oh—I forgot. You’re still in the ‘honeymoon’ phase,” he said, emphasizing it with his fingers making quote marks. “Blinded by love.”
“I am hopelessly in love. And I have my own ideas what I’d like to do with Shannon, which means anyone who gets in the way is a problem for me. You wouldn’t have it in you to play a little cat and mouse?”
“You must be fuckin’ nuts, Marco. She’s like this wild two-hundred-pound mountain lion, and I’m one of those little pink feeder mice with his eyes still shut. That would be no contest. One gulp and Jared would be no more. Can’t you find one of your former SEAL buddies who might be just a little bent in the bedroom, if you know what I mean? I understand she has tastes that are difficult to satisfy.”
Marco stared him down.
Jared stood, holding his hands out in front of him. “Just a rumor, Marco. I have no first-hand experience.”
“I’m looking for a favor here, Jared.”
“No, to be quite frank, you’re wanting to send me on a suicide mission.”
“Then find a way to get some information on her. I want to know why she won’t leave me alone. She’s beginning to worry me.”
“Now you’re worried? After all you’ve been through?”
“I need to know what she’s planning.”
“Marco, she’s not going to tell me.”
Jared did look like a skinny mouse, Marco thought. Shannon had told him how many times he’d asked her out, even after it was discovered she was with Marco. It was a “feel sorry for me date” he had been trying to set up, on the chance that an opportunity might present itself.
But then Marco had an idea.
“What if she thought she could get inside information from you about me, through your working relationship with Shannon? If she thought you were useful, she’d let you live for a bit.”
“You instill such confidence, Marco. I’m not interested in living for a bit. I’d like to live to an old age and die comfortably in my bed. No. The answer is no. This would be too rich for me. I’m not smart enough, I don’t have the cunning or the stealth you have, and I’ll get nervous and blow it. I’m the last person in the world you’d want to use.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
Jared fell back into his chair again, staring off to the right, not making eye contact. “This is the part where you threaten to kill my mother and my sisters. Then you’ll firebomb the station, and I’d be spectacularly out of a job. The whole thing caught on camera and presented to the Tampa market by someone else’s TV station.”
“We could help you make some improvements. Get you in on the ground floor of the Trident Towers, interviewing happy vets being given what they deserve. You’d have exclusive interviews, and then imagine the talent who would come calling? Bone Frog Development could become one of your best advertisers. Your owner would love that.”
Jared suddenly looked very small, tucked into his enormous chocolate brown high-backed office swivel chair. “Might even get you a real secretary to have this place looking like Fox in no time at all. If we were going to interview Tom Brady, you’d have to do a substantial remodel, and of course, you’d need season tickets for ten in your box seats.”
“None of this would be remotely important to me if I was roadkill, Marco. You know I’m no match for her. You could give me the sun and the moon. I don’t even know what the hell I’d do with them. You do see, the answer is still no.”
Marco continued nodding as he stood, leaned over, and shook Jared’s hand again. “Well, it was nice having a little fantasy with you. But you think it over. If you come across something you just can’t live without, you let me know. Ever been on a safari? We’re taking some people over there in the Spring.”
“Just my kind of place. I’ve always wanted to vacation in West Africa with all those exciting macho Jeep jockeys running around cutting the heads off people who look like me. That’s you’re style, not mine.”
Marco chuckled. “You’re funny, Jared. I think you could have done standup comedy.”
“Let’s add that to the list then, shall we? Just another missed opportunity.”
The standoff was beginning to annoy Marco. He wasn’t used to being told, “No.” But he knew that if he and Shannon spent enough time on it, they’d discover Jared’s weakness.
And then they’d be home free.
But they had to come up with something he’d risk his life for to get.
On his way over to the office, he got a call from Harry, the Sultan of Bonin’s youngest son, from Brooklyn Heights. Harry had become the trusted social secretary to the sultan, his father. He lived with his mother, the beautiful Salima, the sultan’s favorite companion. Since she was from a servant family and not nobility, he could not make her his wife. She was sent away along with her illegitimate son, for their own safety. The sultan gave her a stipend and purchased a brownstone for her as long as she lived. The rest of the harem wives and children pretended not to know this or openly admit that Harry was their relative.
“Marco, are you ready for the princes?” Harry barked over the phone.
“Are they here?”
“They land in New York in about an hour. Then there’s the plane to Charlotte and finally Tampa. They will arrive this evening around ten if everything goes well. But we might have some issues. Do you want me to arrange a car?”
“That would be nice, Harry. Thanks. What issues? Plus, I’ve got to make sure the condo is ready for them. I thought they’d be here tomorrow. Isn’t that what you said?”
“It was, but you’re going to love this story. Absalom gets to Delhi a few days early. He’s looking for a beautiful girl to bring with him now that he is away from his mother and her sister wives. Those boys should not be traveling without a guard or secretary, Marco. They just don’t know anything about the world. So he finds this beautiful girl, a dancer. She performs in one of the supper clubs in the Chennai District for wealthy men who keep her safe and pay her enough to send home to her parents.”
With Harry, Marco learned long ago to just let him talk. Besides, he was driving and had the phone on speaker.
“Okay.”
“Absalom convinces her that he will bring her to the United States, where she can learn to surf. Imagine that? Absalom wants to learn how to surf, Marco!”
“It doesn’t surprise me.”
“He’s kept her longer than he was supposed to, and she misses her shift at the supper club, and it causes an uproar. My father himself got angry messages from the Provincial Director, who is a very close confident of the Prime Minister. He calls me in a panic. They’re threatening to put Absalom in jail if he doesn’t return the girl. So they hire a driver to take them to the airport a day early. They want to tell the airline company they’ve changed their minds and want to leave now, not wait for the next day. I had to explain to them that wasn’t the case, that you don’t just tell the pilot to take off because of the other passengers. They’ve only flown private charter, you see.”