Page 40 of The Maverick
"Not here. Let's talk inside."
I followed him through the front door.
The entryway was a room, not a hallway. Marble underfoot in a pattern that was probably a coat of arms if I'd cared toread it. Ceiling double-high. A staircase curling away to the right, flanked by paintings that made the walls look thinner than they were. The whole thing had the careful air of a place where decisions got made by people who didn't shout.
To the left of the staircase, set into a recess in the wall, was a glass tank as long as a small car.
I stopped.
A black snake the length of my leg coiled against the back glass. Diamond head. Body like polished anthracite. Tongue slipping out of its mouth in slow, deliberate intervals, tasting the air.
"That a viper?"
"Yeah."
"You keep a viper in the foyer?"
"He's family."
"He's what?"
"Family," Lucas said again. He didn't elaborate.
It wasn't the deflection of a man who didn't want to answer. It was the answer of a man who'd already decided I'd find out what he meant when I was meant to find out, and not before. I'd worked with men who answered questions that way. I tended to like them.
"All right," I said. "Hi, family."
The viper's tongue flicked. I let it have the moment.
We turned right at the staircase and went down a corridor lined with portraits that all looked vaguely related. Lucas opened a door at the end of it and stood aside.
The room was a parlor. The kind men ran the country out of, in eras when men ran the country out of parlors. Leather chairs the color of a horse I'd ridden as a boy. A fireplace with the fire already laid, not lit. Bookshelves floor to ceiling on two walls, and a rolling bar cart in the corner that had more crystal on it than the apartment of any sensible bachelor.
Lucas went straight for the cart.
"Drink?"
"I never turn down a drink before the hangman's noose goes over my head. It's bad luck."
A small smile. "Bourbon?"
"Bourbon."
He poured two heavy fingers into each of two crystal tumblers. Took his time. Walked back, handed me one.
"What are we drinking to?" he said.
"You're the host. I figured you'd take that one."
He looked at his glass. Looked at me.
"To family."
I clinked my glass against his.
"To family."
We sat. The leather sighed under me the way good leather did, the way the leather on the plane had sighed last night. I was building a small mental file on the texture of Dominion Hall's furniture, and the file was telling me a story I wasn't ready to read yet.
