Holding the glass up, Faran said doubtfully, “It’s made with rum.”
“All right. No, vodka. No, wait, I’ll try the rum.”
The houseman left, and Faran grinned at Simms, saying, “You seem nervous, Nate. Trouble at home?”
“I’m fine,” Simms said. “What’s this meeting all about, anyway?”
Faran shrugged. “Beats me. Probably something with that Parker and Green.”
“I wish to Christ those two had never showed up.”
“Amen,” Faran said, and Jack Walters waddled in, looking absurd in a short-sleeved white shirt open at the collar and a pair of trousers left over from some suit. A balled-up handkerchief was in his right hand, and when he lifted it to pat his damp forehead, he made it look as though he’d never attempted that particular movement before in his life and was finding it very unnatural to his body. “Good afternoon,” he said.
“You look hot,” Faran told him. “When Harold gets back, get yourself a drink.”
“No, thank you. Where’s Al?”
“Out somewhere. We’re supposed to wait.”
Simms said to Walters, “Jack, do you know what this is all about?”
“No idea.”
The houseman brought the drink and Simms took it, while Faran made cheerful small talk with Walters. They were all standing, like an underattended cocktail party. Simms tried the rum and tonic and found it sweeter than he would have guessed, but not cloying. He lowered the glass, and discovered with astonishment that he’d downed half the drink.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and put the glass on an end table. But as he was about to leave the room Ernie Dulare walked in, and he changed his mind again.
Dulare ran the important gambling concessions in town, everything except Simms’ own stepchild, policy. A tall, smooth, self-contained man in his fifties, he usually dressed in casual jackets and no tie, and his frequent trips to Las Vegas and the Caribbean had given him a deeper and glossier tan than was possible for people limited to the summer sun of Tyler. He had what Simms thought of as a radio-announcer’s voice, smooth but with a kind of mellifluous gravel in it. His presence always made Simms very nervous, for no rational reason.
There were hellos back and forth, through which Simms waited impatiently, until he could say, as though casually, “Ernie, what’s this meeting all about, do you know?”
“No idea,” Dulare said. His ignorance didn’t seem to bother him. “I got a call, and I came. I haven’t seen Al for quite some time. Where is he?”
“Due back pretty soon,” Faran said.
“Excuse me,” Simms said, and went out to use the phone in the front hall, but Dulare’s bodyguards were there, two burly men in pastel jackets, talking pro football with one another.
The bodyguards were, so far as Simms knew, Ernie Dulare’s only affectation. Nobody traveled like that any more, nobody had to. Even Al Lozini didn’t cart bodyguards around with him wherever he went. But Dulare, who did a lot of traveling and hosted a lot of parties and spent a lot of time in public, never made a move without his two sluggers. There was no need for them, but Dulare apparently liked the idea of them; like a professional gunslinger in the Old West having pearl-handled revolvers even though a normal grip was safer and less likely to draw the wrong kind of attention.
Well. With the bodyguards in the hall, Simms went in search of another phone. He heard faint movement sounds from upstairs; probably Mrs. Lozini, and her resident married daughter, whose husband was in prison on check-kiting charges. It had been a first offense and he would have gotten off with probation if he hadn’t been an in-law of Al Lozini; the judge had gone out of his way to demonstrate that he hadn’t been bought.
There was a phone in the library, a room full of magazines and religious books. Simms called Donna, and when she answered, her voice clear and happy, he found himself smiling at the phone. “Hi, honey,” he said. “It’s me.”
“Well, hi.” He could visualize her in her yellow and red kitchen, leaning against the wall by the phone, one ankle crossed over the other. “Long time no see, stranger.”
“You know how things are sometimes,” he said. “Listen, I’m in a meeting now, but why don’t I come over as soon as it breaks?”
“Sure, honey. How long?”
”I don’t know. We’re waiting for Mr. Lozini now. It shouldn’t be too long, and I’ll call you the second it’s over.”
“Just come on when you can,” she said. “I’ll be here.”
She laughed. She really did like him. “Don’t be too long,” she said.
“I won’t.”
He hung up and went back through the hall to the living room. On the way by, the bodyguards gave him flat incurious glances. In the living room, Dulare and Walters and Faran were standing in a group near the window, talking. Dulare was just finishing Simms’ drink.
Thirty-three
When Parker got back to Lozini’s house, two burly men in the front hall stopped their conversation to look at him. One said, “You looking for somebody, friend?”
