Armando opened the huge front doors with one hand, the other pointing his gun at the ceiling. Zoey stood behind him, kind of hoping the visitors would try to make a move. Carlton was lurking nearby, presumably to see if he’d be needed to clean up a bunch of blood or something.
Budd Billingsley took off his cowboy hat, looked past Armando to make eye contact with Zoey and asked, “Do you mind if we come in, miss?”
If he was mocking her, Zoey couldn’t detect it. “Sure, why not.”
Andre followed Budd through the door, looking very hung over and eating a giant chili dog.
Budd said, “Took some work to roust this vagrant but I reckoned he needed to be here, too.”
As he passed Zoey, Andre said, “Yeah, I’m eatin’ a chili dog at ten in the morning. Only God can judge me.”
“Carlton made me an Elvis.”
Andre squinted at Carlton and said, “You gave her a bunch of Quaaludes and made her eat them on the toilet? That’s a new low, Carlton.” He looked at Armando and said, “Who’s this?”
Zoey said, “Oh, this is—”
“Armando Ruiz,” finished Budd.
Armando said, “You have seen my ads.”
“I knew of you when you worked for Pinkerton. Also met your daddy a time or three. Is he still the chief in Reno?”
Armando smiled. “I think my father will still be in that uniform when I retire. He’ll probably wear it to my funeral.”
To Zoey, Andre said, “Budd knows everybody.”
Zoey was already heading back toward the kitchen, as she still had a quarter of a sandwich left and would rather die than leave it uneaten. They all followed her, and the moment Budd entered the kitchen music faded in from out of nowhere, a man singing of a woman named Black Betty Blamalam.
Andre saw Zoey’s expression and said, “The house is programmed to play your personal theme music at random times, when you walk into a room, like you’re making an entrance. Arthur’s idea, obviously.”
“Can we turn it off?”
Budd said, “Trust me, ma’am, if we knew how to turn it off, we’d have done it years ago.”
Zoey took her seat at the bar and resumed her sandwich. “All right, you’ve got five minutes to say your piece, then Armando starts shooting.”
Armando looked alarmed and said, “That’s … really not one of the services I provide.”
Budd said, “No, we completely understand. I just want to tell you a story, if you’ll indulge me. Now this city, it can be real confusing for an outsider. I don’t care where you’re from, Tabula Rasa can make you feel like you’ve taken a train to Bizarro world. I remember my very first night here—and this is goin’ on fifteen years ago—I was takin’ a walk downtown, tryin’ to get a feel for the place. And I’m walkin’ through a construction site—and it was all construction sites back then, you understand—and I come across this hole in the ground, ’bout ten feet in diameter. I look down and I can’t see a bottom, so I pull a quarter out of my pocket and toss it down, and listen for a clink or a splash. Nothin’. Coin just tumbles into the darkness and disappears. So now I’m real curious, and I look around for somethin’ else to throw down there. And teeterin’ right on the edge of the hole is an old refrigerator. So, I circle around and I give it a good kick and it tumbles down into the hole. I hear it bang off the side a few times but once again, there’s no crash, no splash, like it just kept fallin’ forever. It was the strangest thing. So I figure this is the first of this city’s many unknowable mysteries and I start to go on about my way. But then I see the second strange thing—this goat, it goes flying past me, in midair. Like it was fired from a cannon. And now I think I’m losin’ my mind, like maybe it’s not just tobacco in my cigar, if you know what I’m sayin’. So I walk along and I come across a guy sittin’ on the curb and I say, ‘Holy cow, partner, did you see that goat?’ And the fella says, ‘Well, that’s my goat.’ And I say, ‘Well, I hate to tell ya, but I think it’s gone. It took off flyin’.’ And the fella says, ‘That’s impossible. I had him chained to a refrigerator.’”
Zoey stared for a moment, then snorted a laugh that almost caused her to choke on her sandwich.
“Ha! Wait, was that a threat? Am I the goat in that story?”
“No, ma’am. I know it ain’t fully sunk in yet, but to someone with assets like you now possess, a threat from a man like me wouldn’t amount to more than a hiss from an angry kitten. No, ma’am, we’re here, hat in hand, to ask if we still have jobs.”
Andre swallowed a wad of chili dog and said, “Is that why we’re here? Jesus, Budd, I would have sobered up first.”
Zoey said, “I don’t even know what your jobs were. And you know what, I don’t want to know. This whole thing happened because I got up last night, because my cat got hungry and I had to go find a fork, and I stumbled into that conference room and saw Will and Ling and their cop friend messing with a severed hand.”
Budd said, “A severed what?” and Andre said, “Your cat eats with a fork?”
“It was a severed hand. Don’t ask me if I mistook something else for a severed hand because no, I didn’t. It was a hand. They had it on the table, prodding it.”
Budd said, “I’ll ask Will about this hand situation, but I can assure you that I have no personal knowledge of any recent dismemberments by any members of the staff.”
Stench Machine was finishing his fish and rice. Andre heard him clinking the bowl around, glanced down at him and muttered, “Well, that’s disappointing.”
Budd said, “The point is, Livingston Enterprises, it’s a big ol’ machine, with thousands of moving parts. And those parts are people, and investments, and transactions bein’ made, day and night. And that machine is hummin’ along even as we’re sitting here havin’ breakfast. But at the moment, there ain’t nobody at the controls. See, because that’s what the four of us did, managed various aspects of the day-to-day. Your daddy, he wasn’t one to micromanage. And Will Blackwater, well, he was your daddy’s right-hand man.”
“I can see why, he’s delightful.”
“I’m happy to admit Will has the personality of a robot programmed by an asshole. But that don’t change the fact that your daddy was like a fath—Well, the two were very close, is what I’m sayin’. Arthur was a mentor to Will and I’m here to tell you that whether you keep him or fire him, Will will never allow any harm to come to you or the business. Because it’s not what Arthur would have wanted. Carlton and Andre both can confirm that. Armando, too, I bet. Everybody knew of your father, and everyone who knew your father, knew Will.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“So, that brings us to the main reason for our visit. Will wants a meeting. In a neutral location. He was hopin’ that—well, that if you’d had a night to sleep on it, you’d see things different. Now what I’m about to say, it’s not a threat, so please don’t take it that way. That’s why I’m delivering this message instead of Will, on account of he’s got that peculiar speech impediment that makes everything he says sound like a threat. The message is, monsters like what came after you last night? Both times? They’re not gonna stop. We can help you, Zoey. But you got to trust us.”
Zoey turned to Armando, looking for a reaction. He asked Budd, “Where does he want to meet?”
“The crater. The, uh, blast site, where the warehouse used to be. Where Arthur died. Will says there’s somethin’ there he needs to show you. Both of you.”
Andre said, “Well now I don’t wanna go. That makes it sound like he’s gonna get us out there and whip out his flop-hog.”
Zoey sighed. “All right. Let me finish my sandwich.”