In the hallway there were footsteps and then the door opened and Lita came in. Kingsley got up from the chair. He took Lita to the far corner of the room. They stood talking in low tones, their backs to Corey. He couldn’t hear what they were saying; he wasn’t trying to hear. His thinking was running far ahead of that. He sat there smiling companionably at Gene and Ernie. They didn’t smile back. Ernie was pacing around, restless. Gene stayed where he was, nine feet away from Corey with the gun still pointed rigidly at Corey’s head. Then Kingsley and Lita faced about and came toward Corey, and he checked the way they were grinning at him. Very friendly, he told himself. Friendly like crocodiles.

Kingsley patted Corey on the shoulder. “You’re in,” Kingsley told him. “You got yourself a contract.”

“What terms?”

“The price you quoted. One third off the top.”

“Regardless of the take?”

“That’s right. The take is what you say it is, you walk away with five hundred grand.”

Ernie let out an anguished yelp. “That’s way outta line.”

“Close your head,” Lita hissed at Ernie.

“But you can’t let him have all that.” Ernie was very agitated. “It don’t make sense.”

“Close it,” Lita hissed.

“Don’t you tell me nothin’,” Ernie yapped back at her. “I wanna holler, I’ll holler. Christ’s sake, I got a right to holler. I have stock in this corporation—”

“Me too,” the colored man cut in quietly, and yet it sounded loud in the room.

Kingsley looked at the colored man. “What’s the matter, Gene?”

“It’s rotten eggs,” the colored man said. “This time I go along with Ernie.” And indicating Corey, “He’s taking us. He gets that one third, he’s cutting our throats.”

“No he ain’t.” Kingsley spoke softly, soothingly. With his eyes he coded a message to Gene, and Gene’s eyes relayed the message to Ernie.

Kingsley said to Corey, “Now here’s what we do—first you spill. You gimme the location, the exact location where the loot is stashed. I go there with Lita and we pick it up and come back here—”

Corey was shaking his head.

“What’s the objection?”

“Them,” pointing to Gene and Ernie. “You leave me here with them, I won’t be sitting in this chair when you come back. I’ll be on the floor with a hole in my skull.”

“Why do you say that?” Kingsley frowned.

“Because that’s what’ll happen if I let it happen. Because all it needs is one bullet. And that leaves me out and they get a bigger slice.”

“Now look, I give you my word—”

“It’s gotta be more than that.”

“Such as what?”