'Even if it meant landing a client as big as Lock-Horne?'
'Even then.'
'And you're not doing this just to impress me with your discretion?'
Chase smiled, relieved, as though he finally got the joke. 'No,' he said. 'But wouldn't that be having my cake and eating it too?' He tried to laugh it off. Win didn't join him.
'This isn't a test, Chase. I need you to get her here. I guarantee that she won't find out you helped me.'
'Do you think that's all that concerns me here — how it would look?'
Win said nothing.
'If that's the case, you've misread me. The answer is still no, I'm afraid.'
'Thank about it,' Win said.
'Nothing to think about,' Chase said. He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, making sure the crease sat right. 'You didn't really think I'd go along with this, did you, Windsor?'
'I hoped.'
Chase again looked at Myron, then back at Win. 'I'm afraid I can't help you, gentlemen.'
'Oh, you'll help us,' Win said.
'Pardon me?'
'It's just a matter of what we need to do to get your cooperation.'
Chase frowned. 'Are you trying to bribe me?'
'No,' Win said. 'I already did that. By offering you our business.'
'Then I don't understand—'
Myron spoke for the first time. 'I'm going to make you,' he said.
Chase Layton looked at Myron and smiled. Again he said, 'Pardon me?'
Myron rose. He kept his expression flat, remembering what he'd learned from Win about intimidation. 'I don't want to hurt you,' Myron said. 'But you will call Susan Lex and get her to come here. And you'll do it now.'
Chase folded his arms and sat them atop his belly. 'If you wish to discuss this further—'
'I don't,' Myron said.
Myron walked around the table. Chase did not back away. 'I will not call her,' he said firmly. 'Windsor, would you tell your friend to sit down?'
Win feigned a helpless shrug.
Myron stood directly over Chase. He looked back at Win. Win said, 'Let me handle it.'
Myron shook his head. He loomed over Chase and let his gaze fall. 'One last chance.'
Chase Layton's face was calm, almost amused. He probably saw this as a bizarre put-on — or perhaps he was just certain that Myron would back down. That was how it was with men like Chase Layton. Physical violence was not a part of the Layton equation. Oh, sure, those uneducated animals on the street might engage in it. They might knock him on the head for his wallet. Other people — lesser people, really — yes, they solved problems with physical violence. But that was another planet — one filled with a more primitive species. In Chase Layton's world, a world of status and position and lofty manners, you were untouchable. Men threatened. Men sued. Men cursed. Men schemed behind one another's backs. Men never engaged in face-to-face violence.
That was why Myron knew that no bluff would work here. Men like Chase Layton believed that anything remotely physical was a bluff. Myron could probably point a gun at him, and he wouldn't budge. And in that scenario, Chase Layton would be right.
But not this one.
Myron boxed Chase Layton's ears hard with his palms.
Chase's eyes widened in a way they probably never had before. Myron put his hand over the lawyer's mouth, muffling the scream. He cupped the back of the man's skull and pulled him back, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
Chase lay on his back. Myron looked him straight in the eye and saw a tear roll down the man's cheek. Myron felt ill. He thought about Jeremy and that helped keep his face neutral. Myron said, 'Call her.'
He slowly released his hand.
Chase's breathing was labored. Myron glanced at Win. Win shook his head.
'You,' Chase said, spitting out the word, 'are going to jail.'
Myron closed his eyes, made a fist, and punched the lawyer up and under the ribs, toward the liver. The lawyer's face fell into itself. Myron held the man's mouth again, but this time there was no scream to smother.
Win eased back in his chair. 'For the record, I am the sole witness to this event. I'll swear under oath that it was self-defense.'
Chase looked lost.
'Call her,' Myron said. He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice. He looked down at Chase Layton. Chase's shirttail was out of his pants, his tie askew, his comb-over unraveling, and Myron realized that nothing would ever be the same for this man. Chase Layton had been physically assaulted. He would always walk a little more warily now. He would sleep a little less deeply. He would always be a little different inside.
Maybe so too would Myron.
Myron punched him again. Chase made an
Five minutes later, Chase Layton called Susan Lex.
Chapter 32
Would have been better,' Win said, 'if you let me hurt him.'
Myron kept walking. 'It would have been the same,' he said.
Win shrugged. They had an hour to set up. Big Cyndi was now in the conference room with Chase Layton, supposedly going over her new professional-wrestling contract. When she entered the room, all six-six, three hundred pounds of her wearing her Big Chief Mama costume, Chase Layton barely looked up. The pain from the punches, Myron was sure, was ebbing. He had not struck the man in any place that would do lasting damage, except maybe to the obvious.
Esperanza was set up in the lobby. Myron and Win met Zorra two levels down, on the seventh floor. Zorra had staked out the lower floors and decided that this would be the quietest and easiest to contain. The office suites on the northern side were empty, Zorra noted. Anyone entering or leaving had to do so from the west. Zorra was stationed there with one cell phone.
Esperanza had the other one downstairs. Win held the third. They were on a three-way line with one another. Myron and Win were in position. In the last twenty minutes, the elevator had stopped at their floor only twice. Good. Both times the door opened, Myron and Win feigned conversation, just two guys waiting for an elevator heading in the opposite direction. Real undercover commandos.
Myron hoped like hell no one happened upon the scene when it all went down. Zorra would warn them, of course, but once the operation was under way, it couldn't be stopped. They'd have to come up with some excuse, say it was a drill maybe, but Myron was not sure he could stomach hurting any more innocents today. He closed his eyes. Can't back down now. Too far gone.
Win smiled at him. 'Wondering yet again if the ends justify the means?'
'Not wondering,' Myron said.
'Oh?'
'I know they don't.'
'And yet?'
'I'm not in the mood for introspection right now.'
'But you're so good at it,' Win said.
'Thanks.'
'And knowing you as well as I do, you'll save it for later — for when you have more time. You'll gnash your teeth over what you just did. You'll feel ashamed, remorseful, guilty — though you'll also be oddly proud that you
