“Wasn’t, really. It’s just you’ve been working so hard to find me, I thought I should throw in a little something to keep the meeting from being too anti-climactic. So, what can I do for you?”
There was a gleam of mischievousness in the old boy’s eye that led me to believe he wasn’t as daft as he would like people to believe. Tananda missed it, though, as she fumbled a battered sheet of paper out of her tunic.
“Mr. Hoos,” she said briskly. “I’m here representing a client who claims you owe him money on this old account. I was wondering when he could expect payment, or if you would like to set up a schedule for regular submissions?”
Hoos took the paper from her and studied it casually.
“Well, I’ll be … I could have sworn I wrote him a check on this the next day.”
“He did say something about a check being returned,” Tananda conceded.
“Must of held onto it until I closed out. Dam! I thought I had covered everything.”
“You closed out the account with the bank?”
Hoos winked at her.
“No, I closed out the bank. That was back when I was consolidating my holdings.”
“Oh. Well, as I was saying, if you’d like to set up a payment schedule …”
He waved a hand at her and opened the top of his vending cart. From my height advantage, I could see that the bottom of it was filled with gold coins.
“Why don’t we just settle up now?” he said. “I’ve got a little cold cash with me … get it? Cold cash? Let’s see, you’ll be wanting some interest on that…”
“MR. HOOS!”
We turned to find the bank manager striding rapidly toward us.