Free The Devil's Graveyard by Anonymous

Thousands of hard-working employees had lost their jobs with little or no severance pay, but Clementine had survived the scandal with his fortune, if not his reputation, enhanced. After years of awarding himself and his fellow senior partners bonuses in excess of twenty million dollars a year, he had then contrived to walk away with a thirty-million-dollar payoff shortly before the bank went publicly, and very messily, bust. He was exactly the sort of customer that the hotel staff would most hate. He would treat them as inferior beings almost beneath his notice, and they would no doubt have to smile and give him preferential treatment. Which appeared to be what Valerie was doing.
    Clementine also had a reputation as an international playboy. A blonde model in her early twenties clung to his arm. She had an improbably large pair of (mainly silicone) breasts tucked into a tight white T-shirt, which she pressed tightly against her companion’s upper arm. Her long legs, tanned a perfect golden brown, were on display almost all the way up to her waist, just south of which disappeared into an abbreviated pair of gold hot pants. She was, in short, the perfect foil for Jonah Clementine in his three-thousand-dollar hand-tailored grey Savile Row suit. Since the scandal about his profiteering had broken on virtually every news service, he had obviously had time to employ the services of a personal-fitness trainer. Despite being in his early forties, he had a physique that was no longer that of an office drone. He had a muscular upper body, which, coupled with a sharp orange tan that was surely fake, made him look quite the handsome hunk. He wore a cream silk shirt under his suit jacket, with a red-and-black-checked neckerchief tied loosely around his neck. Unlike the sort of customers the Bourbon Kid was used to sharing bars with, he was clean-shaven and smelled of expensive cologne, while the short, spiky styling of his black hair looked as though it had taken an hour in front of a mirror to perfect.
    ‘Sir, how many glasses would you like?’ Valerie asked him in response to his request for a bottle of champagne.
    ‘Just two please, Valerie. Get yourself a drink too, though, won’t you? I’m on a lucky winning streak today.’
    ‘Aren’t you always?’ the barmaid joked politely as she headed to a fridge at the back of the bar to fetch the champagne.
    While she was picking out a bottle of Diamant Bleu (a rich man’s drink if ever there was one), the millionaire was eyeing up the Bourbon Kid. The Kid had picked up his unlit cigarette and slipped it into the corner of his mouth, where it hung idly for a moment before it suddenly lit itself. It was a trick that had impressed many people over the years. It would not impress Jonah Clementine, however. He was the type of guy who was only impressed by things he could control. A flake like the Bourbon Kid was only ever going to get under his skin. And that was exactly what the Kid intended to do.
    ‘Excuse me, you’re not permitted to smoke at the bar.’ The words were reasonable enough, but were clearly intended as an order.
    The Kid ignored him.
    ‘Hey, you! I’m talking to you.’
    The Kid took the cigarette from the corner of his mouth with his left hand and looked over at Jonah Clementine. Then he blew a lungful of smoke in the playboy’s direction.
    ‘What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ snapped Clementine. ‘There are other people here besides you . Not everyone wants to breathe in your second-hand smoke.’
    ‘What’s your point?’ A more cautious man than Clementine, one less used to getting his own way, would have noted the gravelly tone to the words. Noted, and maybe reflected on what it might mean. But he blustered on, astonished that anyone should defy him.
    ‘My point is, put your goddam cigarette out, or I’ll have you thrown out.’
    ‘Nope.’
    Clementine raised both eyebrows. ‘Nope? That’s it? Nope? ’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Okay. You’re giving me