Nice Place for a Murder by Bruce Jay Bloom

the time once I got on the train.
    I knew he’d be at his desk. He was always conspicuously in place by eight AM, so he could cast a superior look at each staff member who arrived to begin the day’s work. If you walked through the door before nine, it still didn’t earn you any points from Teague.  In his mind, the only thing that really mattered was:  he was there before you were. He used to give me that look when I came in, too. And I was the boss back then.
    Everyone called him Teague. I’d been as close to him as anyone, and I never called him Roger. He wasn’t a first name guy. That would have implied some kind of cordiality, and it simply wasn’t there. From the first, he was cold, vulgar, egotistical and unfailingly severe. But he was smart as hell. Nobody could outwit him. And he was one of those rare people clients trust precisely because they’re so blunt. Five minutes with him, and you knew he wouldn’t take crap from anyone, and your company was safe with him. That’s why I’d hired him, then made him a partner four years later.
    Nevertheless, these days I thought he was a prick. The day we signed my buyout deal he started treating me not as a former colleague, but an indentured servant:  Do what I tell you, or you don’t get your money. Hardly what an aging retiree with sluggish arteries likes to hear.
    I got on the train at the Ronkonkoma station and stood in the vestibule of my car to get what little privacy can be found on the Long Island Railroad. When we were well under way I took out my cell phone and called Teague.
    “Why didn’t you wait a few days longer to get back to me? After all, it’s only our biggest fucking client you’re playing around with,” he told me on the phone.
    “Is that what I’m doing, playing around? You’re right, Teague. It’s a kind of game with me. I really enjoy going on errands for you, getting the run-around from Ingo Julian, chasing after some evil son-of-a-bitch who keeps trying to shoot me. It’s comforting to know I can still be useful, even though I’m retired. Fills up my day for me. I get involved like this, I wonder where the time goes, sometimes.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m on a train just passing Jericho. On my way in to Julian Communications for a command performance. I’ve been summoned by Arthur Brody.”
    “Brody? Why?”
    “I won’t know till I get there,” I said.
    “I’ll meet you. Go in with you.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    I turned toward the window in the door and watched the Long Island countryside speeding past. “Because,” I said, in my most sincere, most measured tone, “everyone at Julian has made it very clear that right now they want only me. Maybe it’s because they share my view that you are a loathsome prick. I’m terribly sorry for you, Teague. It must be hard to accept that kind of rejection at your high level. But you did get me into this, so you’ll just have to let me handle it. I’ll call you if I need you.” There, I thought, that should push his buttons for him. And it did.
    “Don’t you fuck this up, you hear.” He was shouting now. “I want to know everything that’s happened, everything that’s going on. You come over here as soon as you’ve finished with Brody.”
    “Can’t do that,” I said. “I don’t work there, and don’t start thinking I do. You want to see me, you’ll have to come uptown. You know what? You could buy me a nice lunch. And we could talk. Say one o’clock?”
    “I don’t eat lunch. You know that.”
    “But I do.”
    I could hear him mumbling to himself. Then, “Meet me in front of the big library, by the lion on the right. I’ll buy you a hot dog.”
    “And a soda?” I said. But he was gone.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER IX
     
    When you come to New York City every day, it doesn’t seem to change. It’s like looking into the mirror each morning, and thinking you look exactly as you did the day before. But if somehow you looked in