Jake didn’t respond. Instead, he called out to Charlie. “I thought you said you were going to take my advice, Charlie.”
Charlie’s eyes appeared in the rearview, a bit of mischief dancing off the light blue centers. “You didn’t think I was gonna let you take all the credit for doing the right thing, did you?”
The techno music was louder than it had been earlier in the night, vying for dominance with the din of the Vortex’s crowd, which had grown considerably, shoulder to shoulder. The air was warm with humanity and tinged with the earthy tang of alcohol.
Jake, Charlie, and Glover stood beside Moretti’s private booth. Moretti was seated, once again flanked by suited muscle, a behemoth at each opening of the half-circle.
Moretti cracked open the briefcase, looked inside, closed it, blindly handed it over his shoulder to one of the hulks, keeping his eyes on Glover.
“A little longer than I would have hoped, Mr. Glover, but I’m impressed you could turn it around again in one night.”
He waved Jake’s trio away.
As the three of them shouldered their way through the crowd toward the gleaming brass elevator doors in the back, Jake looked down upon Glover with as smug of a smile as he could muster without pressing his luck too much.
“See?” he said. “I told you Moretti would still be impressed. All’s well that ends well.”
Glover scowled at him, flicked his eyes away. And suddenly his scowl morphed into a wicked grin. He’d spotted something across the room.
He turned back to Jake, the smile not leaving his lips.
“Well, look who it is.”
Jake looked to where Glover had glanced.
One of the two elevators was open, and a small group bustled out. Three chatting women in minidresses and thick makeup. A smiling, possibly tipsy couple feeling each other up. Two twenty-something guys, upwardly mobile types, flashy shirts unbuttoned way too far down their chests.
And in the center, strolling out as the others parted around him, moving with a much slower energy, an assured presence, was a man in a black suit, white shirt, dark hair parted and combed back.
Jake said the man’s name.
“Burton…”
Chapter Seventeen
As the elevator doors closed behind him, Burton took a few steps into the lounge and spotted Jake, Glover, and Charlie. He gave them a nod.
Glover bolted away from Jake and Charlie, pushing his way through the crowd, toward Burton.
Jake and Charlie stayed put.
Glover and Burton struck up a conversation, swallowed by distance and thumping base, synthesized notes, drunken laughter, clinking glasses. Glover did all the talking, lips rapidly contorting, hands swinging in accordance, eyebrows knitted.
“Oh, this is not good,” Charlie said.
Glover was still talking rapid-fire to Burton, whose eyes suddenly opened wide. They turned in Jake’s direction.
“This is not good at all…” Charlie said.
Jake thought of what Glover had just told him in the car, about Jake’s actions here in New Orleans earning him a less than happy ending the next time he saw Burton.
And here Burton was. Inexplicably. Materialized in the Big Easy.
Jake’s stomach grew heavy. A cold sweat raced over his forehead. But to Charlie he said, “Don’t panic.”
Glover finished talking. Burton clamped a hand on his shoulder, said a few words, and then his eyes returned to Jake, a smile on his face, as he and Glover mobilized, twisting through the crowd in the direction of Jake and Charlie. Burton’s eyes never averted, his grin never dropped.
“Gentlemen,” Burton said as he and Glover stopped within feet of Jake and Charlie. “Interesting day today, I hear.”
Charlie opened his lips. Nothing came out.
“Very interesting indeed,” Jake said.
Burton grinned wider. Smile bright. Eyes twinkling with some undetermined desire, eyes that never left Jake. He motioned toward the bar. “Buy you a drink, Hudson?”
Jake nodded.
A drink. A moment alone. Would Burton make a move here?
Through the crowd. Shouts and laughter. Sweaty shoulders. Beer breath. A woman grabbed at Jake’s arm, said something flirtatious. To the bar. Burton and Jake stood at adjacent stools, right next to each other, inches apart. Jake could smell his cologne. The neon lights over the bar played off the shine in his dark hair.
Burton flagged the bartender, a thirty-something in rolled shirtsleeves, black tie.
“Gin, rocks, twist.” Burton gave his head a small jerk in Jake’s direction. “And something for my friend.”
The bartender turned to him.
“Heineken,” Jake said.
Jake eyed Burton’s jacket, looked for the bulge of a shoulder holster, the ridge of a sheathed knife.
The people around them. So many. How many would be struck if bullets started flying?
As the bartender stepped away, Burton leaned an elbow on the bar, pivoting his weight off his hip, ultra casual, ultra relaxed, ultra cool and with a smile that would seem genuine to most, the smile of a buddy, a bro. But Jake was good at reading people. There was rage behind that smile, boiling, begging to explode.
“Glover tells me you got the Bowman payment to Moretti. Congrats.” His friendly tone matched the spurious smile.
“Thanks.”
“He also tells me that you gave a third of my nest egg back to the Bowmans.”
“I did.”
Burton gave a vigorous nod, the flashing white teeth of his smile streaking. “A man of morals. I can respect that. But I have to say, I think you’ve chosen the wrong business.”
“This line of work can have a modicum of scruples,” Jake said. “That’s why Joey Farone was sent down here from New York way back when. He couldn’t run with the big boys when it came time to break arms and cut off fingers.”
The bartender returned with the drinks. Both Jake and Burton gave their thanks.
Jake wrapped his hand around the base of his Heineken bottle, absorbing the cold, anything that could help him fight off the physical symptoms, the nagging sense that something could go horribly wrong, right here in the lounge. He couldn’t give
