Page 28 of Angel’s Doll

She weighs it like a real question, because it is one. “After. All of it. Don’t sand the edges.”

“Never do.”

Her eyes hold on me another second and her hand comes up over the ring while I finish with my boots.

At the door she says, “Angel. Whatever the answer is, come tell me yourself.”

“Deal.”

Bishop’s gavel is down before the chairs stop moving. Smoke holds the wall, arms crossed. Compass tips his chair onto two legs. Cash opens the laptop and Glitch is already inside it, wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Day’s up,” Bishop says. “Spend it.”

“Spent it well.” Glitch leans into his camera. “The Quinlans run out of Chicago. The elder brother holds the chair, has for fifteen years, since a stroke took the old man out of it. Everything I can pull on him reads disciplined. He settles beefs in back rooms, not in headlines. Cops out there hate him because he’s never once been made to look stupid in public. No bodies he didn’t need. No mess he didn’t clean.”

“A pro,” Smoke says.

“A careful one. Which is the point, because now look at Ian.” Glitch flicks a photo onto Cash’s screen, Durey younger, Chicago behind him. “Ian burned his hometown before he ever saw Seattle. Debts worked ugly. A personal beef with the elder brother nobody will name for me. The family shipped him west with one last chance in his pocket.”

“Why does a careful man hand his worst relative a last chance?” Bishop asks.

“Because Ian’s mother is the old man’s little sister, and the old man insisted,” Cash says.

“Nobody back east believed he’d make it,” Glitch goes on, “and the paper agrees with them. Every vehicle Ian built out here is dressed for inspection. The pitch he sold his cousins was clean. Passive money, Pacific Northwest development, returns that survive daylight. That’s what the brothers bought. Now hold Brightmoor next to it. Forced guardianships ...”

Compass spends his sentence. “Sold them a bank, ran a dogfight in the vault.”

Smoke starts pacing. “Or they knew. Cousins talk. Money that size doesn’t move without the chair hearing the legs scrape. Until I hold proof they didn’t know, I’ll consider they knew. That’s the only version that doesn’t get brothers killed. Harden the gate, assume the worst, get ready.”

“The gate’s already hard,” Bishop says. “Both of you can be right at once. The family blessed a clean investment. Ian dug his own sewer under it. The question is what the chair does the day he smells it.” He turns to me. “You’re quiet, VP.”

The room runs on honesty, so I give it mine. “If it were up to me they would both be dead, Ian who priced her and Victor who set the terms.”

Smoke studies me the length of a breath. Whatever he’s checking for, he finds. He sits.

“Now the conduit,” Glitch says. “There’s a man in Chicago, Feeney, runs the family’s boring money, the legal side. Twenty years, never sloppy, never burned. He owes me a favor he’d pay double to stop owing. He can put an envelope on the elder brother’s desk without his cousin catching wind.”

“We know what we put in the envelope,” Bishop says.

Cash ticks them off his pad. “What we listed yesterday plus a one-paragraph note on the collateral demand, no names in it, hers or ours.”

“The words?”

Cash reads it flat. “Your man in Seattle used your name in an operation that will not survive daylight. Proof enclosed. We are not looking for a war. If Brightmoor is yours, say so and we will proceed accordingly. If it is his, meet us before he burns all of us.”

Nobody improves it.

“Send it.” Bishop lifts the gavel. “Proof before bullets. Bullets stay loaded. If the answer’s wrong, the fence is what stands between it and everybody sleeping in here.” The gavel comes down. “Church out.”

Chairs scrape. I’m the last one out of my chair, same as Tuesday. If the elder brother blessed Brightmoor, we’ve told the enemy our address. If he didn’t, the family cleans its own kennel and Ian learns what a last chance was for. Either road, Ian Durey and Victor Hale are running out of map.

Ifind her on the back steps with her mother’s cookbook open on her knees, and this time I’m the one carrying the mugs. Hers, cream, no sugar. She takes it, checks the color, slides over, cookbook and all. An invitation. I sit.

“It went out an hour ago. Through a Chicago channel Ian can’t read. Proof his cousins’ money got dirty in his hands, nothing with your name on it. Now we wait.” I turn the mug once.

She reads me over the rim, then closes the cookbook on her thumb.

“One detail I remembered. Whenever Victor wondered out loud if a cousin needed to sign off, Ian would shrink a foot, then spend ten minutes proving he answered to nobody.”