Read Online Lone Wolf #10: Harlem Showdown by Mike Barry - Free Book Online Page B

army’s worth of stuff, you know.” Rage was overtaking him. This was the way it had been now for a long time, drift along, go through the motions, try to do the best you could reasonably, taking it step by step and a sudden stab of revulsion, some aspect in the enemy’s eyes, some quirk in the situation would trigger off an eruption from the layers of grief and rage buried within, his perilous control over himself would lapse, and perhaps that would throw the adversary more than any calculation could; perhaps the adversary, looking at what this did to Wulff would suddenly realize that he had moved past the point of manipulation and could no longer dissemble. Hard to say. Hard to know. Looking at Father Justice, seeing the quickening and confusion in those eyes, Wulff began to see the phenomenon work again, that phenomenon of reversal when the adversary felt the situation beginning to slide away at cross-angles, something in his eyes like the very light of religion himself. Why, the man might indeed be a reverend, that might be the secret of his power, his conviction, guns for the eyes of the Lord. Justice said, “That is a ridiculous sum. And from a white man, to accept this kind of money from a white man is suicidal. Nevertheless I am going to do it.”
    “Good,” Wulff said.
    “I will do it on condition that the materials are returned.”
    “I can’t promise you that. There’s no way that I can make you that promise at all. I don’t know where I’ll be.”
    Justice shook his head with a kind of weary, stubborn insistence. “Then we can’t do business,” he said. “There are limits to this, but you must understand that I am not autonomous, I am no more a free agent than you are.”
    “I’m a free agent.”
    “Well you may be a free agent,” Justice said, “although in the eyes of the Creator, as you must surely know, there is no such thing as a free agent, all of us must merely commit God’s will—”
    “Save that for outside. Outside this room you go into that.”
    “That is neither here nor there,” Justice said with a hint of irony. “You may be a free agent, Mr. Wulff, although only a fool believes that he exists on his own with full options, without connection to outside forces, but I am not. I have interests to whom I answer and for whom I must be accountable. Selling to a white man is difficult enough. Giving you these weapons outright would be irreparably dangerous. You must say that you will return them.”
    “How do I know if I can return them? How do I know where I’ll be—”
    “I didn’t say,” Justice said cunningly, “that you
had
to return them. I said that you must
state
you will return them. Give me your firm, pledged word that you will yield these armaments back to me in the condition in which you are given them and that you will be responsible for them during the time that you have them in your hands. That is all.”
    “For an 80 percent refund.”
    “That is the way the brotherhood of the divine works,” Justice said coldly. “That is the principle upon which our great church was founded. An 80 percent return for merchandise returned in good condition. You may have these ordnances on a two-week lease.”
    “For three thousand dollars down.”
    “For three thousand dollars down,” Justice said, and Wulff went into his pocket, went into his pocket where the money taken from the suit of the man he had killed lay; it was a hell of a price, he thought, a hell of a price to pay for some armaments taken on a risky and speculative basis. But Williams was right: Williams had always been right about things like this, he had street knowledge and he knew how this business worked. Cash on the line, 100 percent deposit for lend-lease. There was no way around it. He had pushed the matter as far as he could.
    “All right,” Wulff said, “I’ll go along with that. You’re not giving me any choice, you know.”
    “Free will is absolute,” said Father Justice as he smiled and