stand behind you on it. And I won't be the only one in the department who does."
"I can't put my family through that. Honestly, I don't know if I could put myself through it." She closed her eyes and reminded herself that not all deals were fair, not all deals settled the score. "He did what he did. Everyone who counts knows it." She let out a long breath before looking Dave in the eye again. "He can't be a cop anymore. The rest, it's not important. He's off the job, and that's what's right. That's what's needed. I'm okay with it."
"Then you're a better man than I, kid."
"No. I'm pissed. I'm seriously pissed, but I can live with it. We're going to eat sugar-glazed ham and lemon meringue pie. And Arnie Meeks? He's going to be eating disgrace for a very long time." She nodded. "Yeah. I can live with that."
NEGOTIATION PHASE
Oh, to be torn 'twixt love an' duty.
Chapter 11
Even after a handful of years, Duncan found meetings weird.
The whole business-suited, proposal/pitch/report, Danish-and-coffee and thanks-for-your-time elements of them. Then there were the politics, and the pecking orders.
Maybe that was why he didn't have an actual office. There was no escaping the meeting to his mind if a man had an office. Plus an office meant you had to staff it with people who had to be given particular assignments on a regular basis. If you happened to be the boss, that meant you had to come up with those assignments, and probably read reams of reports on the assignments before, during and afterward. And you'd damn well have to have more meetings regarding the assignments. Vicious cycle.
An office involved desks, and giving people titles. Who actually decided on titles? What made, say, an executive assistant different from an administrative assistant? And should it be the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, or the Vice President of Sales and Marketing? Things like that would keep him up at night.
Phineas nagged him off and on about the office thing, but so far he'd been able to slip and slide around it.
He liked meeting with people in one of the bars, or a restaurant. Or if it was absolutely necessary, in Phin's office, which was, in Duncan's opinion, meeting central. Going somewhere that wasn't essentially or absolutely his own place not only kept things looser, but he'd found those he met with tended to be more up-front and outspoken over a beer in a pub than they might be over glasses of spring water in a boardroom. He'd found, too, that it was often more interesting, certainly more telling, to go to the prospective meeter. Sitting in their homes, their place of business, their studio, whatever, generally made them more comfortable. It gave him a leg up on getting what he wanted or needed or hoped for if the other party was comfortable in their own space. Following that philosophy, he'd buzzed from a breakfast meeting at a cafe downtown to a funky little theater in Southside, then wound his way to a sadly neglected house in the Victorian section.
In each case, he felt he'd gotten more accomplished, and had a better time of it, than if he'd summoned all the parties involved in all the prospective projects into some stuffy office where he'd be stuck behind a desk wanting to pull a Suicide Joe and jump out the window anyway. As he made the turn onto Jones, he hoped the same would hold true for what he'd deemed his last meeting of the day.
He'd considered timing it differently, doing a kind of drop-by when Phoebe would be home. But that seemed just a little underhanded. Which was a valid strategy, true, but he figured she'd cop to it.
He parked, began the pretty stroll under arching trees.
He wanted to see her-and not just for the quick just-dropping-intosee-how-you're-doing visits he'd limited himself to for the last two weeks. Biding time, he mused. And maybe there was a little gameplaying in there, too. She didn't know what to make of him, and he didn't mind that.
He didn't always know what to make of himself, and didn't mind that either.
One thing he did know was that she'd had a major trauma, and she was working her way through it. There wasn't any point in pushing her into a date, or rushing her into bed at a time when she was shaky on her pins.
He had plans. He liked to make plans, nearly as much