Page 85 of Long Way Down

She turned her back on the rain-streaked stone and hurried toward the car.

Eighteen

Pongo had been teased by his club brothers – some with good-natured intent, some with a not-so-nice sneer hiding behind the rims of their beer bottles – that the reason he was the one perma-stationed in the city was because he was too lazy to deal with the day-to-day operations of the Albany clubhouse. Like every chapter, its illicit dealings were camouflaged by legitimate businesses – a moving company, used car lot, and salvage yard in New York’s case. All the brothers were employed in one of the three, and if they were short on prospects – like they were now – everyone chipped in with the cleaning and bookkeeping and maintenance. Repairs to the clubhouse post-explosion had been extensive and expensive; the club was also looking after their previous president’s widow and children, so the purse strings were a little tighter than they used to be.

One of the guys, Pit, had suggested on more than one occasion that Pongo was a “pretty boy afraid to get his hands callused.” “Always running off to the city to fuck around, huh? Ain’t got time for the real shit, do ya?”

Pongo had tossed him his brightest grin and said, “I have a face made for Broadway. Don’t be mad just ‘cause yours was made for the business end of a septic truck.” Pit had cussed, and fussed, and waved him away in a huff. Pongo had gone with a laugh, seemingly carefree, and not told him how much product-pushing he’d had to oversee since the mysterious and wealthy Mr. Shaman stepped into the benefactor role a few years back. Albany might have offered dirty work in the physical sense – but there was nothing clean about the street gigs Pongo oversaw on a daily basis.

Business was booming on the post-Waverly scene. The low-level dealers, pushers, and thugs who’d levered Abacus like a crowbar on the street had been rattled by the top dogs’ takedown, and had receded into the shadows. Which left an opening for the Dogs – one hurried and less-than-organized so far. Their dealers had whistled and beckoned and lured in customers no longer buying from Waverly’s rats, and the profits were jumping.

But word had come from Knoxville, from Ghost himself, and disseminated through the president of every global chapter: it was time to tighten up the operation. Time to ramp up production, incentivize dealers, and eliminate the competition on the ground.

For Pongo, that had meant a lot of sitting at bars, and bumping into people on the subway, shaking hands on street corners. His affability and charm were his best weapons. But his charm was of an entirely different sort than that of today’s contact.

He stepped off a marble-walled elevator onto a floor that gleamed with the same, black with white veining. Through a pair of cushioned glass doors, he found a desk, the wall behind it clad in marble, too, a sleek sign in soft, brushed gold that readSoleil Talent. The woman at the desk wore a poured-on cream dress with a high neckline, her hair pulled back in an artfully loose coif that inspired an instant, visceral urge to wind the dark locks around your fingers. Just like the smile she lifted to greet him, Pongo suspected it had been styled with the express purpose of engendering just such a response.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she greeted, low and smoke-voiced. Her gaze landed on his face, dark and lovely, and didn’t once venture down his battered Dogs hoodie; her lip didn’t curl at sight of his wallet chain or boots. “Are you here for an appointment?”

“Yeah. Supposed to be at two. Pongo to see Mr. Shaman.”

“Of course.” She didn’t ask about his name like everyone always seemed to, merely gathered a clipboard and stepped around the desk to reveal red pumps with spike heels. “Right this way, sir.”

Working class though his roots may have been, he’d been in enough nice places to know that this office, with its handsome Park view and gold-black-cream color scheme, wasnice. Soft music was piped through unseen speakers, covering the usual, domestic sounds of office work. Large windows looked in on wide, sharply-appointed offices where chicly dressed people typed on computers or spoke into phones. The furnishings toed the line between opulent and understated, none of it over-the-top, but all of it lavish. The sort of place that, walking behind the perfectly-pleated form of the receptionist, let a person know that the head honcho they were being led to meet would match this place to a T; might even surpass it in elegance.

Since Pongo had met this head honcho previously, he could say with confidence that heoozedelegance.

They reached a black iron, latticework door that looked like it belonged in a vineyard – and would be damned impossible to shoot or hack your way through, he knew – and passed through it into an antechamber set up as a small seating area with low lights and a fan of glossy magazines on the table. Pongo didn’t have an eye to appreciate the art on the walls or the fanciful twist of the table legs, the fine grain of the leather on the sofas, but he noticed the camera lenses, black eyes up in the corners. Spotted the way the sprinkler heads looked a little off, and wondered what sort of gas Shaman could send spilling down into the room at the press of a button. Wondered what other sorts of booby traps or firewalls might be hiding in the wall paneling. He assumed there was a back exit, a hidden hallway or stairwell, in the office that lay beyond.

An equally impressive door – the girl in the red heels knocked and waited a beat before opening it – led into an office with a breathtaking view of the Park, its trees in the flush of autumn color down below. Inside, a wide, marble-topped desk stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the light flooding in through the glass turned the chair, and the figure seated in it, to a stark silhouette, features impossible to read, anything he might be holding – a gun, say – concealed in the pool of shadows rendered by the wash of watery gray sunlight all around him. Smart, Pongo thought. It put anyone entering at an immediate disadvantage.

“Mr. Pongo” – ha! – “is here for his two o’clock, sir,” the girl said, motioning Pongo toward one of the two chairs opposite the desk.

“Thank you, Monica. Have we heard back from Eames, yet?” Pongo had forgotten how crisp and cultured Shaman’s voice was. As precise and expensive as the furnishings around them.

“Not last I checked. I’ll go ask Carolyn to call again.”

“Thank you.”

Monica pulled the door shut with a soft click on her way out, and another click sounded at the desk, followed by the immediate frosting of the windows, so the light through them became diffuse and manageable. Pongo blinked, pupils expanding to take in the scene, and there sat Shaman, remote for the windows in one long-fingered hand.

Today, he wore a chocolate-colored turtleneck beneath a tan jacket, both of which emphasized his slender build. His long, auburn hair was bound at the nape of his neck, and left to spill in a gleaming tail over one shoulder. His gaze flicked down Pongo’s body and back up again in quick assessment.

Pongo wasn’t into dudes, but getting checked out was flattering regardless. If he puffed up a little bit, and flexed his biceps inside his sleeves, sue him.

Shaman snorted, and his face shifted, and he was Ian Byron, then, and no longer the lord of this office. “Relax, darling. I don’t go for the doe-eyed types.”

“Okay, first off.” Pongo lifted a finger. “I’ve met your husband, remember, so I know that’s not true.”

The smile he earned was sharp-edged and congratulatory. He didn’t know the man well, but in their brief acquaintance he’d gleaned the fact that Ian favored cleverness.

“And secondly, IknowI’m cute, so insulting me won’t work.”

The grin widened. “Cute, yes. Refined, no.”

“Ouch. That cuts deep, man.”

Ian chuckled and laid down the remote in favor of opening one of the desk drawers. “Maverick says you’re hunting a rapist.”