Free The Power Broker by Stephen Frey Page B

afterward—so much better about herself. He’d been speechless for a few seconds when she told him, taken completely by surprise—which rarely happened to him. “I have no idea.”
    “Oh, come on,” Quentin complained, “you do, too. You’re just not saying.”
    “I’m being the same way I’d be if anyone asked me something personal about you.”
    “Okay, okay.” Quentin snapped his fingers. “Hey, did you talk to Faith yesterday?”
    He’d been about to call twice, but someone had called him each time he was dialing her number. “No,” Christian admitted. “I will today.” He thought about a call he needed to make and started to reach for his cell phone, then stopped. “Quentin?” he asked quietly.
    “Yeah?”
    “You’ve always told me you think I’m too intense, that I work too hard.”
    “Absolutely. You’ve been killing yourself the last few years. Can’t keep doing that.”
    Christian hesitated. He couldn’t ask this of anyone but Quentin because it would show weakness. But Quentin wouldn’t take it that way. He’d take it just for what it was: a friend asking another friend for advice. “Do you think I’m slowing down at all?”
    Quentin didn’t answer right away. “No,” he finally said. “But you seem tense lately. Mmm, maybe impatient is a better way to describe it. Like when you snapped at that associate last week in the meeting. Never seen you do that before.”
    Christian nodded grimly. He had snapped at the kid, bad.
    “I mean, the guy royally screwed up the numbers he was working on for that deal,” Quentin continued. “And what do we pay him? Two hundred grand a year, I think. For two hundred grand a year a guy shouldn’t screw up, even if he’s only twenty-six. It’s just that I’ve never seen you do that before.”
    “Yeah, I know.” Christian wanted to keep talking, but he saw that they were closing in on the address Agee had given.
    A few moments later the driver swung the limousine slowly past a large metal gate, picking his way carefully around trash that was strewn about the potholed lot, then pulled to the right quickly to avoid a truck bearing down on them.
    “What is this place?” Quentin asked.
    “Looks like a transfer station.”
    “A what?”
    “It’s where garbage trucks that go through neighborhoods bring trash.” Christian pointed to a large building off to the right. “They dump it on the floor in there, then a front-end loader puts it into an eighteen-wheeler that takes it to a landfill. It’s not usually efficient for the route trucks to go all the way to the dump.”
    “How do you know all that?”
    “We owned a waste management company a while back at Everest, before you joined the firm.”
    “Oh yeah, a couple of funds ago.”
    “The company we owned had about fifty of these stations in the system. Made some money when we sold it, but I was just glad to be rid of the headaches. The NIMBYS are constantly on your ass.”
    “Nimbys?”
    “Not-in-my-back-yarders. People who live around transfer stations and landfills and don’t want them there.”
    “Uh-huh.” Quentin gestured toward the building. “Still think it was a good idea to come here? It really would be better if we found out who owns this place before we talk to anybody.”
    Christian knew exactly what Quentin was implying. It wasn’t a stretch to think the Mob might be involved in their being steered here. “Look, I’ve already lost a day in this city, and, like I told you, we’ve spent a billion dollars on the Dice Casino so far. It’s got to be ready to go for the team’s home opener. I’m running out of time. I’ve got no choice.”
    The limo driver pulled to a stop in front of what looked like the office. Before Quentin could get out, a young man wearing jeans and a T-shirt emerged from the building and swaggered up to the limo.
    Quentin put his window down.
    “You Christian Gillette?” the young man asked, smacking gum as he leaned down and peered