“No trouble!” Buenadella seemed honestly astounded, surprised right out of his tough-guy role. “Do you realize what you—” He sputtered slightly, moving his hands, finding it impossible to put together the words to express what had been done to him.
“Believe me,” Grofield said. “We’ve been here five days, all we’ve ever wanted is our money, and all we get is the runaround. There’s an election going on, there’s a mob war shaping up, there’s all this nonsense. We don’t care about any of this, all we care about is our seventy-three thousand dol—”
“And you’re fucking up everything in sight!” Buenadella shouted. He acted like a man with a true grievance, self-righteous and enraged. “You’re doing robberies, you’re killing people, you’re pulling a gun on the mayoral candidate, you’re screwing up a personal business arrangement that I worked
“If we’d been given our money on Thursday,” Grofield said, “even on Friday, there wouldn’t have been any trouble at all.”
“I’m sick of this town,” Parker said. “I want my money and I want to get out of here.”
“Seventy-three thousand,” Grofield said. “That’s really not a lot of money. A business expense, that’s all.”
Buenadella had been about to make another angry statement, but he abruptly closed his mouth on it and gave a speculative frown instead. The term “business expense” had taken root in his head; Grofield could see it growing in there, becoming a lovely green tree.
“Just a minute,” Buenadella said. The desk chair was just to his left; he pulled it back from the desk, sat down, rested his forearms on the green blotter, and gazed off toward the French doors.
Grofield shot Parker a look, but Parker was watching Buenadella, his own expression unreadable as usual. Grofield wondered if Parker understood that they’d just won, that Buenadella was going to give them the money.
Yes, he was. He was sitting there now working it all out in his head. Seventy-three thousand dollars to get rid of the troublemakers; a high price, but the alternative was even worse trouble than he’d already had, and in effect he’d be paying the troublemakers with their own money, not his.
And more. Inside that heavy head, Buenadella was working out tax dodges, company dodges. The seventy- three thousand would come from this place and that place, would read one thing and another on the company books and ledgers; and what percent of it would the government wind up paying, in the form of tax deductions for business losses? If Buenadella paid out seventy-three thousand in deductible business expenses, declared it all and lowered his tax bill by one-third of that—say, twenty-four thousand—he would only be paying forty-nine thousand out of his own pocket. And since the seventy-three hadn’t been his to begin with, he could look at it that he was making a twenty-four-thousand-dollar profit on the deal.
Buenadella finally broke the silence. He seemed uncertain whether to talk to Parker or Grofield, and looked at Parker first, but then turned to Grofield instead; probably because Grofield seemed friendlier. “I can’t pay you all at once,” he said.
Grofield grinned; he couldn’t help himself. As an actor, and as a summer-theater producer, he had dealings from time to time with the business mentality, and by God, if this wasn’t it in full flower. A hood would either pay up or start shooting, it was impossible to think of a hood in terms of time payments. Buenadella, regardless of the business he was in, was more merchant than crook, and that was why it was going to be possible to deal with him.
But not this way. “Sorry,” Grofield said. “We couldn’t keep coming back for the payments. It has to be all at once.”
“Seventy-three thousand,” Buenadella pointed out, “that’s a big bite.”
“You can do it.”
“You’re going to strap me at a time when I really need the cash.”
Parker said, “Stop it, Buenadella. There’s only one way to pay us, and you know it.”
Grofield saw Buenadella getting his back up again; the very sound of Parker’s voice irritated the man. Now, with negotiations finally having been opened, and moving along pretty smoothly considering the circumstances, there was no point going back to the old hostilities. So, to soothe Buenadella, Grofield said, “I’m sure we can work something out, Mr. Buenadella. We don’t want to be unreasonable.”
“You call yourselves reasonable?” But it was said truculently, not angrily, so no real damage had been done.
“Well,” Grofield said, “of course, we’re pretty well locked into two conditions here. We have to have a lump- sum payment, and we have to have it in cash. You can see the reasons for that.”
Buenadella, the businessman, could see the reasons, but didn’t want to. “We could have a paper between us,” he grumbled. “We could make a legal thing, that you could take me to court if I missed a payment. If I agree to pay you, I’ll pay you.”
“It just wouldn’t work, Mr. Buenadella,” Grofield said, sounding mournful about it. “To have a legal document, you’d have to have my real name, for instance, and I’d rather you didn’t have it. Not to mention an address.”
“Christ.” Buenadella tapped his fingers on the desk blotter; they made small muffled noises, as for a midget’s funeral. “Where’m I going to get that much cash right away? I might as well tell you go fuck yourselves, do your worst.”
“You haven’t seen our worst, Mr. Buenadella,” Grofield said gently.
Buenadella cocked his head and squinted at Grofield, and it seemed to Grofield that for the first time Buenadella was taking the threat seriously. Underplay, Grofield thought, always underplay, that’s the way to get your effects every time.
Buenadella was still working things out. “It’s possible,” he said. “But it’ll take a couple days.”
“Now,” Parker said.
Grofield said to Parker, “Wait a minute, let’s hear him out. He’s got problems too.”
“Only you people,” Buenadella said. He rubbed the line of his jaw with a knuckle, thinking. “I can’t do anything
