“You must be Pie,” Estabrook said.
“Please close the door,” the guitar player said. Estabrook did so. “And sit down. Theresa? Something for the gentleman. You must be cold.”
The china cup of brandy set before him was like nectar. He downed it in two throatfuls, and Theresa instantly replenished it. He drank again with the same speed, only to ; have his cup furnished with a further draft. By the time Pie had played both the children to sleep and rose to come and join his guest at the table, the liquor had brought a pleasant buzz to Estabrook’s head.
In his life Estabrook had known only two other black men by name. One was the manager of a tiling manufacturer in Swindon, the other a colleague of his brother’s: neither of them men he’d wished to know better. He was of an age and class that still swilled the dregs of colonialism at two in the morning, and the fact this man had black blood in him (and, he guessed, much else besides) counted as another mark against Chant’s judgment. And yet—perhaps it was the brandy—he found the fellow opposite him intriguing. Pie didn’t have the face of an assassin. It wasn’t dispassionate, but distressingly vulnerable; even (though Estabrook would never have breathed this aloud) beautiful. Cheeks high, lips full, eyes heavily lidded. His hair, mingled black and blond, fell in Italianate profusion, knot- \ ted ringlets to his shoulders. He looked older than Estabrook would have expected, given the age of his children. Perhaps only thirty, but wearied by some excess or other, the burnished sepia of his skin barely concealing a sickly iridescence, as though there were a mercurial taint in his cells. It made him difficult to fix, especially for eyes awash with brandy, the merest motion of his head breaking subtle ; waves against his bones, their spume draining back into his skin trailing colors Estabrook had never seen in flesh before.
Theresa left them to their business and retired to sit beside the cot. In part out of deference to the sleepers and in part from his own unease at saying aloud what was on his mind, Estabrook spoke in whispers.
“Did Chant tell you why I’m here?”
“Of course,” said Pie. “You want somebody murdered.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his denim shirt and offered one to Estabrook, who declined with a shake of his head. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Estabrook replied. “Only—”
“You’re looking at me and thinking I’m not the one to do it,” Pie prompted. He put a cigarette to his lips. “Be honest.”
“You’re not exactly as I imagined,” Estabrook replied.
“So, this is good,” Pie said, applying a light to the cigarette. “If I had been what you’d imagined, I’d look like an assassin, and you’d say I was too obvious.”
“Maybe.”
“If you don’t want to hire me, that’s fine. I’m sure Chant can find you somebody else. If you do want to hire me, then you’d better tell me what you need.”
Estabrook watched the smoke drift up over the assassin’s gray eyes, and before he could prevent himself he was telling his story, the rules he’d drawn for this exchange forgotten. Instead of questioning the man closely, concealing his own biography so that the other would have as little hold on him as possible, he spilled the tragedy in every unflattering detail. Several times he almost stopped himself, but it felt so good to be unburdened that he let his tongue defy his better judgment. Not once did the other man interrupt the litany, and it was only when a rapping on the door, announcing Chant’s return, interrupted the flow that Estabrook remembered there was anyone else alive in the world tonight besides himself and his confessor. And by that time the tale was told.
Pie opened the door but didn’t let Chant in. “We’ll wander over to the car when we’ve finished,” he told the driver. “We won’t be long.” Then he closed the door again and returned to the table. “Something more to drink?” he asked.
Estabrook declined, but accepted a cigarette as they talked on, Pie requesting details of Judith’s whereabouts and movements, Estabrook supplying the answers in a monotone. Finally, the issue of payment. Ten thousand pounds, to be paid in two halves, the first upon agreement of the contract, the second after its completion.