Elliman was looking bored. Greg suddenly brought his feet down with a crash, grabbed a vase with a UNH logo on the side, and threw it past Sonny Elliman’s nose. It missed him by less than an inch, flew end over end across the room, and shattered against the file cabinets in the corner. For the first time Elliman looked startled. And for just a moment the face of this older, wiser Greg Still-son was the face of the younger man, the dog-bludgeoner.
‘You want to listen when I talk,’ he said softly. ‘Because what we’re discussing here is your career over the next ten years or so. Now if you don’t have any interest in making a career out of stamping LIVE FREE OR DIE on license plates, you want to listen up, Sonny. You want to pretend this is the first day of school again, Sonny. You want to get it all right the first time. Sonny.’
Elliman looked at the smashed fragments of vase, then back at Stillson. His former uneasy calm was being replaced by a feeling of real interest. He hadn’t been really interested in anything for quite a while now. He had made the run for beer because he was bored. He had come by himself because he was bored. And when this big guy had pulled him over, using a flashing blue light on the dashboard of his station wagon, Sonny Elliman had assumed that what he had to deal with was just another small-town Deputy Dawg, protecting his territory and rousting the big bad biker on the modified Harley-Davidson. But this guy was something else. He was
was…
He’s crazy! Sonny realized, with dawning delight at the discovery. He’s got two public service awards on his wall, and pictures of him talking to the Rotarians and the Lions, and he’s vice president of this dipshit town’s Jaycees, and next year he’ll be president, and he’s just as crazy as a fucking bedbug!
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You got my attention.’
‘I have had what you might call a checkered career,’ Greg told him. ‘I’ve been up, but I’ve also been down. I’ve had a few scrapes with the law. What I’m trying to say, Sonny, is that I don’t have any set feelings about you. Not like the other locals. They read in the Union-Leader about what you and your bikie friends are doing over in the Hamptons this summer and they’d like to castrate you with a rusty Gillette razor blade.’
‘That’s not the Devil’s Dozen,’ Sonny said. ‘We came down on a run from upstate New York to get some beach-time, man. We’re on vacation. We’re not into trashing a bunch of honky-tonk bars. There’s a bunch of Hell’s Angels tearing ass, and a chapter of the Black Riders from New Jersey, but you know who it is mostly? A bunch of college kids.’
Sonny’s lip curled. ‘But the papers don’t like to report that, do they? They’d rather lay the rap on us than on Susie and Jim.’
‘You’re so much more colorful,’ Greg said mildly. ‘And William Loeb over at the Union-Leader doesn’t like bike clubs.’
‘That bald-headed creep,’ Sonny muttered.
Greg opened his desk drawer and pulled out a flat pint of Leader’s bourbon. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said. He cracked the seal and drank half the pint at a draught. He blew out a great breath, his eyes watering, and held the pint across the desk. ‘You?’
Sonny polished the pint off. Warm fire bellowed up from his stomach to his throat.
‘Light me up, man,’ he gasped.
Greg threw back his head and laughed. ‘We’ll get along, Sonny. I have a feeling we’ll get along.’
‘What do you want?’ Sonny asked again, holding the empty pint.
‘Nothing … not now. But I have a feeling…’ Greg’s eyes became far away, almost puzzled.
‘I told you I’m a big man in Ridgeway. I’m going to run for mayor next time the office comes up, and I’ll win. But that’s Just the beginning?’ Sonny prompted.
‘It’s a start, anyway.’ That puzzled expression was still there. ‘I get things done. People know it. I’m good at what I do. I feel like … there’s a lot ahead of me. Sky’s the limit. But I’m not … quite ……. what I mean. You know?’