hooked on the brass rail of the bar, and a large diamond ring flashed from his little finger as he turned a thick highball glass in his hands.
'Do you always dress in blue and white?' I asked. 'Or do you have the office redone to match your clothes every day?'
Broz sipped a little of his drink, put it down on the bar, and swung fully around toward me, both elbows resting on the bar.
'I have been told,' he said in a deep voice that had the phony quality you hear in an announcer's voice when he's not on the air, 'that you are a wise-ass punk. Apparently my information was correct. So let's get some ground rules. You are here because I sent for you. You will leave when I tell you to. You are of no consequence. You have no class. If you annoy me, I will have someone sprinkle roach powder on you. Do you understand that?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I think so, but you better give me a drink. I feel faint.'
Phil, who had drifted to a couch in the far corner and sprawled awkwardly on it, let out a soft sound that sounded almost like a sigh.
Broz moved to his desk, sat, and nodded at one of the leather chairs. 'Sit down. I got things to say. Phil, make him a drink.'
'Bourbon,' I said, 'with water, and some bitters.'
Phil made the drink. He moved stiffly, and his hands seemed like distorted work gloves. But they performed the task with a bare economy of motion that was incongruous. I'd have to be sure not to make any mistakes about Phil.
I leaned back in the black chair and took a sip of the bourbon. It was a little more expensive than the private label stuff I bought. There was too much bitters, but I decided not to call Phil on it. We'd probably have other issues. There was a knock on the door. Phil glanced at the monitor set in the wall by the door, opened the door, and let Sonny in. He had his trench coat folded over his arm, and his tie was neatly up. His neck spilled over slightly around his collar. He walked quietly over to a chair near the couch and sat down, holding the trench coat in his lap. Broz paid no attention to him. He stared at me with his yellowish eyes.
'You're working on a case.' It wasn't really a question. I wasn't sure Broz ever asked questions.
I nodded.
'I want to hear about it,' Broz said.
I shook my head.
Broz got a big curved-stem meerschaum pipe out of a rack on his desk and carefully began to pack it from a thick silver humidor.
'Spenser, this can be easy or hard. I'd just as soon it was easy, but the choice is yours.'
'Look,' I said, 'one reason people employ me is because they want their business private. If I spill what I know every time anybody asks me, I am not likely to flourish.'
'Your chances of flourishing are not very big right now, Spenser.' Broz had the pipe packed to his satisfaction and spoke through a blue cloud of aromatic smoke. 'I know you are looking for the Godwulf Manuscript. I know that you are working for Roland Orchard. What I want to know is what you've got. There's no breach of confidence in that.'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Let's say I'm an interested party.'
'Let's say more than that. Why be one way? You tell me what your interest is; I'll think about telling you what I know.'
'Spenser, I'm hanging on to my patience. But it's slipping. I don't have to make swaps with you. I get what I ask for.'
I didn't say anything.
From his place Sonny said, 'Let me have him, Mr. Broz.'
'What are you going to do, Sonny,' I said, 'sweat all over me till I beg for mercy?'
Phil made his little sighing sounds again. Sonny put his trench coat carefully on the arm of the couch and started toward me. I saw Phil look at Broz and saw Broz nod.
'You been crying for this, you sonova bitch,' Sonny said.
I stood up. Sonny was probably thirty pounds heavier than I was, and a lot of it was muscle. But some of it was fat, and quickness didn't look to be Sonny's strong suit. He swung a big right hand at me. I rolled away from it and hit him in the middle of the face twice with left hooks, getting my shoulder nicely behind both of them, feeling the shock all the way up into my back. Sonny was tough. It rocked him, but he didn't go down. He grabbed at my shirtfront with his left hand and clubbed at me with his right. The punch glanced off my shoulder and caught me under the left eye. I broke his grip by bringing my clenched fists up under his forearm, and then drove my right forearm against the side of his jaw. He stumbled back two steps and sat down. But he got up. He was wary now. His hands up, he began to circle me. I turned as he did. He put his head down and lunged at me. I moved aside and tripped him and he sprawled against Broz's desk, knocking over the pipe rack. Broz never blinked. Sonny pushed himself up from the desk like a man doing his last pushup. He turned and came at me again. His nose was bleeding freely and his shirtfront was bloody. I feinted with my left hand at his stomach and then brought it up over his hands and jabbed him three times on that bloody nose, then crossed over with a right hand that caught him in the neck below the ear. He went down face first. This time he stayed. He got as far as his hands and knees and stayed, his head hanging, swaying slightly, with the blood dripping on the azure rug.
Broz spoke to Phil. 'Get him out of here, he's messing on the rug.' Phil got up, walked over, pulled Sonny to his feet by the back of his collar, and walked him, weaving and swaying, out through a side door.
Broz said, 'Sonny seems to have exaggerated his ability.'
'Maybe he just underestimated mine,' I said.
'Either way,' Broz said.
Phil came back in, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. 'Ask him again, Joe,' he rasped, 'now that Sonny's got him softened.' His face twisted in what was, I think, a momentary smile.
Broz looked disgusted. 'I want you out of this business, Spenser.'
'Which business?'
'The Godwulf Manuscript. I don't want you muddying up the water.'
'What's in it for me if I pull out?'
'Health.'
'You gonna unleash Sonny on me again?'
'I can put ten Sonnys on your back whenever I want to. Or Phil. Phil's not Sonny.'
'I never thought he was,' I said. 'But I hired on to find the manuscript.'
'Maybe the manuscript will turn up.' Broz leaned back in the big leather executive swivel with the high back, and blew a lungful of pipe smoke at the ceiling. His eyes were squeezed down as he squinted through the smoke.
'If it does, I won't have to look for it anymore.'
'Don't look for it anymore.' Dramatically, Broz came forward in the swivel chair, his hands flat on the desk. 'Stay out of it, or you'll end up looking at the trunk of your car from the inside. You've been warned. Now get the hell out of here.' He swiveled the chair around to face the window, putting the high leather back between me and him. What a trouper, I thought.
Phil stood up. I followed him out through the door we'd entered. Broz never moved or said a word. In the anteroom a thin-faced Italian man with a goatee was cleaning his fingernails with the blade of a large pocket knife, his feet up on the desk, a Borsalino hat tipped forward over the bridge of his nose. He paid us no mind as we went through.
Chapter 11
I took a cab back from Broz's office to mine. When I got there, I sat in my chair in the dark and looked out the window. The snow was steady now and starting to screw up the traffic. Plows were out, and their noise added to
