Free The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss Page B

“And nothing goes with mentoring like a glass of wine.” He picked up Chuck’s glass and gave it a good sniff with his eyes closed. “A Saint-Estèphe?” he asked as he put down the glass.
    “Wow.” Chuck’s eyes went wide. “You can tell that from the smell?”
    “I read it on the bottle.”
    B.B. saw that the retirees in the restaurant were looking over at them. They didn’t like the big, bald black man standing around. The waiters were eyeing them as well, and it would only be a moment until one of them came by to ask if the gentleman wished to join their table. B.B. would be fucked if Rose said he would, so it was time to snip this one in the bud.
    B.B. pushed himself out of the chair and away from the table, rising with Miami Vice poise. He might be half a foot shorter than Rose, but he held his own next to the guy. B.B. knew who he was, knew what he commanded, knew that there were people all over the state who would shit in their pants if they heard B. B. Gunn was pissed off. It was time to make sure Otto knew enough to shit in his pants.
    “Excuse me for a moment,” he said to Chuck. “I’ll be back as soon as I take care of some grown-up business.”
    “Okay,” Chuck said. There was something forlorn in his voice.
    B.B. knew instantly that Chuck might be a mature kid, he might be a spunky kid with a good sense of humor and the will to rise above the misery of his life, but he didn’t want to be left alone. He wanted, maybe above all things, companionship, and that was but one more reason to be pissed off at Otto Rose for showing up like this and fucking up his dinner.
    “Follow me,” B.B. said to Rose. It was time to establish the pecking order in his barnyard. Rose thought he was clever, finding out where B.B. was eating, making sly little insinuations about Chuck. But now it was Rose following while the alpha male led.
    They stepped outside, and the temperature rose by nearly thirty degrees in an instant. It was humid and sticky, and the sounds of cars off I-95 hissed past.
    Desiree was out there, leaning against B.B.’s convertible Mercedes, arms folded over her breasts. She wore moderately, though not obscenely, tight Guess jeans and a lavender bikini top. The pink of the massive scar along her side glistened in the neon light of the restaurant.
    Rose broke out into a gregarious grin. “Desiree, my darling. How are you, lovely?” He leaned over and rested a hand on her scar, as he always did, just to show that it didn’t trouble him, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I didn’t see you on the way in.”
    Desiree allowed herself to be kissed, but her lips were pressed tight into a cynical little smile. “Sure you did, though you made a pretty good show of acting like you didn’t.”
    He pressed a hand to his heart. “You hurt me when you say such things.”
    B.B. couldn’t be bothered to let this play out. “If you saw him coming in, why the hell didn’t you stop him?”
    She shrugged. “What for? You’d have come out, and we’d be right where we are now.”
    What for? Jesus, did he have to spell it out for her? It was mentoring time. She knew perfectly well he didn’t want to be bothered while mentoring. She knew, and she’d let Rose in because she was still angry with him. It had been a month, and she was still angry, and it was starting to make B.B. crazy. She was his assistant, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to think about what life would be like without her, but life with her was starting to be a problem.
    “Okay,” B.B. said. He took an authoritative suck of air. “Let’s make this fast.”
    “Of course. You have that young man in there.”
    “I’m mentoring him,” B.B. said.
    “Oh, I am certain of it. I see he likes breadsticks.”
    Fuck if B.B. was going to take this kind of thing from Otto Rose. “What do you want? How did you know I was here, and what is it that can’t wait until morning?”
    “You’re easier to find than you think,” Rose said,