“Who is it, Sean?” Toby asked.
“It’s Mr. Eugene, long-distance from Atlanta.”
Toby felt like every ounce of energy had drained from his body.
He knew it was hopeless, but he asked anyway. “Does he already know I’m here in the office?”
“Well, I told him you were in a budget meeting…like I normally do. Was that wrong? Should I tell him you’re ‘in conference on a matter of grave importance to the constituents,’ like I did last time?”
“No. I’ll take the call.”
“Yes, Mr. Chairman.”
The dreaded buzz came again and the call passed through to Toby’s desk.
He put on his game face, kicking back in his chair and putting his feet up on his desk, trying to get in the mood. “Hi, buddy…how’s business? Hot as hell here, Floyd, you ought to come on down and go out fishing with me on my boat. How is it up north in Atlanta?”
There was flat silence on the other end.
Toby involuntarily sucked in his breath and held it there. He didn’t have to wait long.
“You stupid piece of shit.” Floyd was speaking low. “Don’t even start the glad-mouthing. Save it for the locals you brainwashed into voting for you every two years. I’m not buying. Your boat…my ass. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’d let you steer anything with me in it. I rue the day I picked a complete imbecile for an operation this big. You wanna tell me how you managed to totally screw this thing up?”
This morning’s “Huevos Ranchos” egg special he’d ordered at the Huddle House was making loud churning sounds in Toby’s stomach. “Floyd, I understand why you’re upset and…”
“‘Upset’ isn’t the word for it, moron.” Eugene never raised his voice, but his unique hissing quality was worse than a rattlesnake’s. “I’ve got eight million in equity tied up in Palmetto so far. And that’s pre-construction. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Toby couldn’t answer-a whiny stutter came out instead of words.
“Because of you, McKissick, there’ve been delays. Timing is everything.”
“But, Floyd, I can’t control a group of kids tearing the place up. We tried to…”
“And because of your delays, I’m out an extra two hundred thousand. The place is guaranteed to open its doors for occupancy in two months. Two months. Another delay and we could lose committed buyers. You know how much that’ll cost me, you moron?”
“We hired extra weekend security…the best.” Sweat rolled down the side of Toby’s temple.
“Bullshit! You got one sad sack from the Brunswick mall and the other from Wal-Mart. I already checked them out, idiot. Just for once…just once in your miserable pea-brain life, try not to bullshit. I can smell it on your breath, two hundred miles away over the damned phone line.”
The Sansabelt waistline in Toby’s madras-print pants was soaked from the sweat coming down his back, and his mind was a blank.
“We’re starting up again in twenty-four hours. If anything goes wrong, McKissick, you’ve got more than a couple of thousand riding on it. You’re about to put some skin in the game. Now buzz your secretary so I can hear you send her to lunch. And keep it on speaker.”
“Why? She can’t hear what you’re saying. She has no idea what’s going on anyway.”
“Just do it, McKissick. Now.”
Toby left the line open and buzzed Sean. “Honey?” He struggled to keep his voice level. “Why don’t you go on to lunch early and take your time…do a little shopping?”
She buzzed back immediately. “What? Shopping for what? And I’m not hungry. I just ate a Slim-Fast bar and they’re great… Want one?”
“No, lemon-pie. You go ahead. I need to have a private conference.”
“Okay…but it’s not gonna be private. Two gentlemen are out here in the front office waiting to see you, from Atlanta they say. They said you’re expecting them.”
She buzzed off before Toby could say anything, and frankly, he didn’t know what to tell her even if he’d had the chance.
He heard the front door to the office slam shut behind her as she headed out to her Geo, sitting in the office parking spot.
For a moment, there was only the even, grinding sound of the air conditioner, cranked up on high even this early in the day.
Then two men appeared, standing silently at his office door.
They didn’t speak, just strode uninvited straight through his door, into his office, and toward him. The taller one silently massaged the knuckles of his right hand and took in his office like it was a two-bit flophouse. Toby knew instinctively that all the Kiwanis awards, civic trophies, and local celebrity snapshots covering his office walls-each one carefully evocative of his own importance-didn’t impress these two in the least.
The shorter man trained his eyes on Toby like a Doberman, watching him as if he were some sort of a doggie meat-treat. He spoke in a low, guttural tone toward the speaker on Toby’s desk. “We’re here, boss.”
“Good. Keep the speakerphone on for me, boys. I like to know when a job’s finished.”
They were on him immediately.
The first punch was sharp and to the stomach. The Doberman’s fist disappeared deep into Toby’s gut, the pain doubling him over and smashing him facefirst to the floor. His head hit the metal trash can and it toppled over, papers flying across the floor, now at his own eye level.
His favorite Mexican egg dish came up in a blur of brownish salsa and egg. It spurted across the carpet and dribbled down the sides of his mouth.
They pulled him up and, despite the intense pain, Toby struggled with one hand to keep his toupee atop his head.
As the intruders looked down as if Toby were a giant garden snail they were about to salt, he managed to adjust the hairpiece to a perfect center.
“I knew it was a piece,” the shorter one paused to snicker.
“Shitty piece, dumb-ass. We spotted it a mile away. Not only are you a dumb-ass, you got no style. I hate a guy with no style. Don’t you hate a guy with no style?”
“No style whatsoever. It’s disgusting.” Even thugs have standards. This one looked down at Toby like he was something foul smeared on the bottom of one of his snakeskin boots.
He reached down, ripped the piece off Toby’s head, and threw it like a Frisbee across the room, where it landed on a shelf covered with local softball trophies.
Toby had never, not even once, been seen publicly without his toupee, and it was quite the topic among the locals. Moreover, he never even went to bed in the dark of the bedroom he shared with his wife without his hairpiece carefully adjusted on his head, much less allowed the shiny red skin covering his skull to ever be seen by strangers. Of his many vanities, it was the greatest.
With vomit dribbling down his chin, his hairpiece stripped away, and his gut aching, he was terrified of what was about to come.
He’d known from the start that Eugene was dangerous, but how did things go so wrong? And the money…it had seemed like a dream come true, a deal he couldn’t turn down…
The second punch made the room go dark.
Toby fell back to the floor, faceup and prone against the wall behind his desk.
The smell of the eggs managed to reach through the hazy pain to his nostrils. He retched again onto the floor under his desk and all over the side of his prized briefcase-alligator, pre-governmental ban.
“Okay…talk. The boss wants to know who did it.”
Toby could barely hear, much less talk.
A punting kick from a sharp-toed cowboy boot landed at the small of his back.