“As I said, I accept your resignation, effective immediately,” he said.
Glaring at the two who had just betrayed him, Johnny stood, sniffed contemptuously, and headed for the door. Before he left the boardroom, he turned and fired one last parting shot. “This is not the end. You haven’t heard the last of me.”
Louis laughed in his face. “The goddamn sky will fall down before you’re ever a threat to me again.”
Johnny’s eyes hooded over. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
No More Problems
LOUIS chuckled at the memory. History was written by the victor, no truer words had been spoken; and victory was sweet, as sweet as revenge, no matter what anyone else said, almost sweet enough to douse the burning inside his chest. Surprisingly, he hadn’t seen nor heard of the lizard-kid since he slinked out of the boardroom and was escorted by security onto Broadway. He had just disappeared. Not that it wasn’t hard to meld into the New York shadows, but to completely vanish without a trace was a little surprising. He would have thought he’d have heard something from someone, maybe another CEO who had received his CV, or a client who had been solicited for services, but no, nothing, not even a whisper.
He just wished the mound of problems he was facing would disappear as easily as Johnny Winterbottom. Sighing long again, he heard the muffled ring of the secretary’s telephone through the office door. Simultaneously, the red light on Button-1 began flashing again. Damned idiot thinks we’ve been disconnected, he grumbled.
He picked up the handset and punched the button before Sarah buzzed to tell him who it was. “Do I have to get on a plane and come over and kick your scrawny butt? Just get the signature on the contract. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it.”
To his shock, someone other than Epstein cleared his throat before speaking. “Mr. DeVille, this is Sergeant Washington. NYPD.”
Louis felt his gastritis burn a path from his lower sternum all the way to his Adam’s apple. He leaned forward, resting on the elbow of the hand that held the handset to his ear. The other hand rubbed his chest. He knew what the cop was calling about (and he really should have known it would happen today, shouldn’t he?). Just part of the garbage that had been building up since this morning, since two weeks ago in fact. He cleared his throat, and said, “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“I think you know, sir,” Washington said, and he said sir in a way that twisted in his gut like a poker stoking the flames of his gastritis. Louis was sure the cop had been secretly coached by Lady Di to put him off his guard. “We’ve been waiting for you since half past ten this morning. This is the fourth interview you’ve failed to attend.”
Quashing the urge to slam the phone down, Louis saw the red light of Button-2 begin to flash. An instant later, he heard the muffled ring of the secretary’s phone through the door and then Sarah’s faint voice talking to the caller.
“I’d like to remind you that sexual harassment is a serious issue,” Washington continued. “We need to clear up certain facts before we can proceed with the claim.”
“I can explain,” he said. “My secretary’s new. She’s been letting a few things slip lately…”
Washington’s voice firmed. “You can explain it to the courts. This is a courtesy call to inform you that because of your frequent refusal to attend police questioning a subpoena has been issued…”
“A subpoena? You’re joking.” Louis was now rubbing his chest so hard he feared he’d stick his thumb through the fleshy gap in his ribs.
“I’m not joking, sir.”
Again sir in a manner that snorted down the line: I’ve just about had enough of this. It was Lady Di’s coaching, all right. Maybe she was in cahoots with goody-two-shoes Sergeant Washington and that good-for-noth’n cow that had laid the sexual harassment crap against him. “But the bitch is lying.”
Washington paused on the end of the line, a pause as long as Epstein’s earlier. “I’d also advise you to get a good lawyer before you say anything that may incriminate yourself. Take this as a friendly warning. The subpoena will arrive in the next day or two.”
Louis was left holding a dead line. The red light on Button-1 flicked off, but the light on Button-2 was still glaring. He could still hear Sarah speaking through the door and hoped she wouldn’t put the caller through. It was bound to be more trash to pile on his plate, and he could do without that at the moment because…
…because, jeez Louise, this pain in his chest was really firing up. Hells bells, he could hardly breathe. The Kwel-Amity had done absolutely nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Worse, he had been rubbing his sternum so hard the skin was stinging raw.
Desperately hoping he had overlooked a bottle of antacids, he flung the top drawer open and rummaged around. There was nothing in there but crap. Blunt pencils. Cap-less pens. Last year’s diary. Used paper. A stapler with no staples. And what was this? A drugstore docket for… for goddamned Kwel-Amities!
He cursed and slammed the drawer. To his horror, the thud of oak on oak coincided with the biggest solar flare of the decade right in the middle of his chest. He flung himself back, arching in his chair, and tried to take a breath. The pain was too intense. So he just sat there, holding still, afraid that even the slightest movement would trigger another monstrous flare.
After a few seconds the pain began to ease enough to take a shallow breath. Then another. Except now he felt the whole of his goddamn neck tingling with pins and needles, including his left arm. Which was kind of strange because he could still move his elbow and wrist and wiggle his fingers, but his shoulder right down to his fingernails had suddenly numbed as if he had been asleep on it or something. A hot, restless sleep too, because his brow was clammy and his mouth was dry like he had had a real horror of a nightmare. What’s more, his vision was starting to play up. The room had blurred so much he could barely make out anything in the dim light.
Goddamn it, he thought, he needed a Kwel-Amity. He needed one right now.
He scrunched his eyes to see if that would help, then opened them to some kind of sick joke. The room was spinning like a grownup carousel he didn’t want to be on. The drapes, the door, the bookshelves, the filing cabinets, every goddamn thing in the room was rotating and moving up and down in an unsynchronized, queasy gyration, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker as the tempo of the music increased…
…Music? Goddamn it, he really could hear something. Church bells on a Sunday morning call to service. Yet there was something wrong with them. They sounded, what, out of tune? Almost as if someone was striking a massive gong that had cracked or split, striking it over and over again, faster and faster until the noise was one continuous warble that wormed inside his head and made him want to crush his skull between his hands.
Whatever the hell was going on, he wanted an immediate end to it. He wanted to get off this goddamn ride and throw up. That’s what he really wanted to do. The burning in his chest. The numbness in his neck and arm. The gyrating furniture. The goddamn warbling. He needed to puke, and he needed a goddamn Kwel-Amity.
“Mr. DeVille!” Sarah said. “Are you all right? You look pale.”
He had only just heard her over the warbling. He glanced over and saw her riding the door as if it were a wooden horse, gyrating up and down and spinning with the rest of the room. Amazingly, her breasts weren’t moving. He half expected them to be bouncing all over the place. She also seemed to be holding something in her hand, something yellow and small. “G’off thagodd’m daw!” he said.
“I can’t understand you,” she said. “You’re slurring.”
Louis scrunched his eyes and opened them again. Sarah was still spinning with the room. “Get… off… that… goddamn… door!”