Wall of Glass Read Online Free Page B

busy day.”
    She smiled. “Idle hands are the devil’s tools.”
    â€œAnd a stitch in time saves nine.”
    â€œRomero will offer five percent of appraised value. You can ask for fifteen and a per diem. He won’t go for the per diem, but I’m pretty sure he’ll settle for ten.”
    â€œUh-huh.” I could feel my lips moving into a frown.
    Still smiling, Rita narrowed her eyes. “Is it possible that you’re just a little bit miffed?”
    â€œMiffed? No, not me. Vexed, maybe, but not miffed.”
    â€œWe don’t have to take the case. I told Romero that acceptance was contingent upon the approval of my associate.”
    â€œVery nicely put.”
    â€œYou are miffed.”
    â€œI thought we were going to talk together before we committed ourselves to any particular case.”
    â€œWe are talking together.”
    â€œSeems like you’ve already got the thing wrapped up.”
    â€œI tried calling you, Joshua. I couldn’t reach you.”
    I’d been at the pool all afternoon. “Right,” I said. The word sounded stupid and pouty, even to me, so I turned around and began slicing at the green pepper. It didn’t seem, under the circumstances, an entirely appropriate sort of behavior, but nothing else did either.
    Behind me, the silence started growing.
    At last Rita sighed. She said, “Joshua, it seems to me that we have a number of choices at the moment. You can keep sulking and hacking at those green peppers and probably amputate your thumb. You can take back your snow-peas and your green pepper and go sulk in the privacy of your own home. Or we can talk about this and decide whether we want to work on the case.”
    I took a deep breath, and then a deep swallow of wine, emptying the glass. I turned to her. “You know,” I said, “one day that sweet reason of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble.”
    She smiled at me. “But not today.”
    I smiled back. “You think Romero would spring for a retainer?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t imagine he’ll go for anything but a straight spec contract. But it’s not as though we’re overloaded right now. I thought we’d give it a week, no more. What do you think?”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “A week.”
    She nodded. “Do you want some more wine?”
    â€œYeah. You got another bottle of that stuff?”

THREE

    A TCO I NSURANCE was on Washington Street and occupied the whole of a large remodeled adobe house near the Bank of Santa Fe. It was a convenient location. Lackeys could haul the premium money over to the vaults without working up a sweat.
    Not all the money went into the bank, however. A good percentage of it had been spent fitting out Allan Romero’s office. Thick pile carpeting, padded leather furniture, oil paintings of Southwest scenes on the walls, everything oversized and everything, including the paintings, color coordinated in browns and beiges. Romero’s desk was mahogany, and you could’ve strung a net down its center and played a mean game of volleyball on its top, so long as you didn’t mind skidding around on the polish.
    Romero himself had probably never given a moment’s thought to the idea of desktop volleyball. One of the new breed of Hispanics who spoke English without a trace of accent, emphasis, or humor, he was somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. It was difficult to tell because the thin lines that ran down along the sides of his thin and narrow mouth might have been there when he was born. His face was thin too, and so was his mustache, which was as black as his slicked-back hair and looked as if it had been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil.
    He was wearing a dark gray three-piece suit with subdued pinstriping, a white silk shirt with a gold collar pin, and a striped silk regimental tie. I don’t know what regiment the tie came from, but maybe Romero