The Dark of Summer

fingernails.

“It's difficult to say. He hasn't anything to lose by stringing us along. He knows how badly you want the Niche, to add it to your other land. He probably figures that you'll break down before he will.”

In a tight, hard voice, Barnaby said, “I didn't ask you for a longwinded reply. I asked for a figure, a date. How long will he play around with us?”

“Perhaps two or three more weeks,” Aimes said. “Another month.”

“That's too long.”

“In a month, I'll ram him down to thirty-five thousand. Isn't it worth the wait to save seven thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“You're telling me to take his price?”

“Yes,” Barnaby said.

“That's senseless.”

“I don't care.”

“Will, you're letting your emotions get in the way of good, sound business sense.”

Barnaby frowned. “That's your opinion.”

“No, that's the truth.”

“How so?”

“It's those fishermen, isn't it?” Aimes asked, no longer interested in his nails, watching Barnaby.

“I'll break them,” Barnaby said.

“Eventually,” Aimes admitted. “But why the rush?”

“I don't want to have to wait to break them,” Barnaby said. “I don't want to have to wait.” He had picked up his letter opener again, was slashing at the blotter once more.

Aimes said, “Will, I know that a lot of ugliness has passed between you and these men. I can understand that you want to — well, put them in their place. But—”

“Please, no lectures,” Barnaby said.

“I hate to see a man waste money.”

“It won't be wasted.”

“Revenge is worth seven thousand dollars?” Aimes asked, putting away his penknife.

“To me it is.”

Aimes sighed. To him, revenge wasn't worth anything. He said so.

Barnaby ignored him. He said, “How soon can the deal be concluded if we meet Langley's price?”

“It's against my better judgment to let you do this—”

“Forget that.”

“Okay, then,” Aimes said. “I've already run a title search on the land, and I've got all the other papers ready. At most, a couple of days and the Niche is yours.”

“Fine.”

Aimes started to get up.

“Wait, Edgar.”

He sat down, patient again.

Barnaby said, “These fishermen must have a lease with Langley, for the use of the Niche…”

“I've checked that.”

“And?”

“It's pretty one-sided. There's a dozen different clauses for the landlord's use, if he wants to break the lease.”

“And that contract is transferable with the land?”

“Of course.”

Barnaby smiled. “Then they'll be out on their ears in a week, maybe less.”

“There'll be more trouble,” Aimes warned.

“I don't care.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Aimes said, fidgeting a bit in his chair, wiping at his thinning hair with the palm of a sun-browned hand. “Those fishermen are a rough bunch, Will. They can get nasty when they feel they have to.”

“Not to worry,” Barnaby said grimly, his lips tight, his whole face set in an attitude of commitment. “I can be nastier.”

Aimes was not satisfied. “Will, one of the worst things that you can do, that any businessman can do, is to let your emotions get the best of your reasoned judgment. I've seen men get obsessed with revenge before, and I've seen them be ruined by it. Without exception.”

“I'm not obsessed.”

“Perhaps not.”

“And I will win.”

“You may.”

“In any case, you're just the hired help, Edgar. None of this is really your concern.”

Aimes caught the warning in Barnaby's tone, and he was forced to agree. “Yes. You're absolutely right about that.”

Barnaby rose from his seat, dropped the letter opener again. He said, “I'll expect to hear from you as soon as Bob Langley accepts our offer.”

“You'll get a call,” Aimes said.

“Good luck, then.”

“When you're overpaying by seven thousand, and the seller knows it, you don't need any luck,” Aimes said. “It's already sewed up, right in your back pocket.”

“It had better be.”

“I'll be back to you on this sometime today.”

Alone, then, William Barnaby poured himself a small brandy in a large fishbowl snifter, and he sat down in the easy chair which Aimes had just vacated. He reached up and turned off the lamp” bedside the chair and, in the darkness that the heavy draperies preserved, the bittersweet brandy on his tongue, he thought about the inevitable triumph which was soon to fall into his hands…

A good businessman, he thought, had to be tough, the tougher the better. Though Edgar Aimes thought differently, Barnaby knew that it did not hurt a businessman to harbor a grudge. A grudge sharpened his senses, made him more alert, gave him a deeper motivation than mere profit. If there was a personal triumph attached to a particular business success, then a man worked all the harder to achieve his aim. Edgar was wrong, then, quite wrong. Perhaps that was why he'd not done more with his real estate agency than he had, why he wasn't the millionaire he should have been. Revenge was an excellent tool to spur one on toward the accomplishment of more mundane affairs.

He took another sip of brandy, put the big glass down on the table beside the chair.

And, he thought, hadn't the fishermen asked for this, every last bit of this? Of course they had! By trying to force International Seafood Products down the throats of everyone in Calder, they'd proved that they had no one's interests at heart but their own. When one proved, by his actions, that he had no care for his neighbors, he invited retribution.

He supposed that Edgar's warning about possible trouble from the fishermen was well meant, and valuable. After all, the fishermen were a rough tumble lot, and they might easily be capable of violence. He would have to be careful, and he would have to look out for his own. But in the end, he knew, everything would be resolved in his favor. He truly was, when all was said and done, tougher than any of them.

TEN