Free FrostLine by Justin Scott

caught his wrist behind the gun, separated him and it, and tossed him on his back. He bounced like he had landed on a trampoline and tossed me on my back. Which surprised me, but not enough to keep me from getting to the gun first. I snatched it off the grass and threw it as far as I could onto King’s lawn.
    Wiggens came at me, moving easily, all long arms and legs.
    â€œThis is getting silly,” I said. “You’ve got grass stains on a perfectly good suit and I’m going to be sore for a week. It’s clear we’re both capable of hurting each other.”
    That was for sure. The spook wasn’t even breathing hard.
    â€œOkay?”
    His eyes were cold. King shouted something. Wiggens hesitated, then made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “Got any influence with the dog?”
    â€œI’ll deal with Butler. You deal with King.”
    Then I went back to Butler. “You okay?”
    â€œSure I’m okay.” The veins looked like snakes under his skin. I was afraid he would have a stroke.
    â€œWhere’s Dicky?”
    â€œOut with some tramp.”
    â€œCan you get up to the house okay?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou don’t look too good.”
    â€œI’m fine….Should have taken the goddammed money. Stupid.”
    â€œI’ll talk to him when he cools down.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou need money.”
    â€œWho don’t?” He glared across at Henry King who was glaring back, then doggedly picked up his saw again.
    â€œWait! You know your little upper woodlot near the top? Where it’s real steep? Let me try and sell it.”
    â€œI don’t sell land.”
    â€œIt’s steep as hell, there. You don’t cut the wood and you don’t farm it.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œYou could clear eighty thousand.”
    â€œI don’t know, Ben. You get city people and they start complaining about the fertilizer and tractor noise, and first I know I got Henry King problems on the both sides of me.”
    â€œYou’re not farming near there. Except, what do you cut hay twice a year?”
    â€œEighty thousand?”
    â€œClear. After commission.”
    His mouth worked. He didn’t like it. But it was a way out of a lot of problems for very little cost and less effort. He glared across the fence, again, where the Kings were trudging up the lawn toward the house. “But swear you’ll sell to good people. People’ll leave a man alone.”
    ***
    The couple I had in mind to buy Butler’s acres were a pair of Price-Waterhouse lawyers living together in a midtown co-op they’d paid too much for. Which made them a little gun shy about overextending themselves, again. But they really wanted to build a house in the country and when I walked them over the land the next weekend, they were suitably enchanted.
    When I hadn’t heard from them by Wednesday, I got nervous. I made a follow-up call. Turned out they’d been talking to one of our more larcenous builders who had quoted them a hundred and sixty bucks a square foot for quality construction, and they had begun to re-think in terms of two-week villa rentals in Tuscany.
    â€œYou’ll never get rent back,” I said. “Listen, I did a little research. Why not think of the house in two parts? One part is the necessary stuff: extra bedrooms, utility room, mudroom, offices, kitchen and garage. The other part is special: spectacular living room and drop dead fabulous master suite.”
    â€œWhich we can’t afford to build.”
    â€œYou build in top quality the living room and master suite. You attach for the other rooms a log cabin or cedar post and beam kit. Thirty bucks a square foot for the kit—ninety turn-key—will buy you a handsome, solid wood house that opens into a living room of pure glass. And a marble bathroom,” I added hastily, because both had grown accustomed to five-star hotels on the