Josh Kim, who of the three of them had recovered first, put his hand flat between Eli's shoulder blades and gave him a small firm push. And Eli stumbled forward, and caught himself, and began to walk across the gleaming gray floor, slowly, like a man walking onto a frozen lake, past Derek, who did not look at him, to the side of the leather armchair, where he stopped and stood with his hands clasped in front of him again and his glasses halfway down his nose.
"Sir?" he said. His voice was barely above a whisper.
The old man looked up at him and smiled. Not the small wicked smile he had given Derek. A different one. Warm and plain and kind.
"Push your glasses up, son," he said. "You'll want to see this."
Eli pushed his glasses up.
"Now. I've been sitting here for fifty minutes. In that time, nobody in this room said good morning to me except you. Nobody offered me a cup of coffee except you. And when you thought I wasn't being helped, you came back and asked if you could help me, even though you knew it might get you in trouble with your colleague here. And when I told you not to, you listened." He nodded slowly. "I've hired a lot of people in my life, Eli. Close to a thousand. I've learned to know a good one when I see him. And when I spend two and a half million dollars, I like to spend it with somebody I'd hire." He reached up and patted Eli's arm, twice. "So you're going to write this deal. You and nobody else. Do you think you can do that?"
Eli stared at him. Then he looked at Derek, who was standing two feet away with the keys to the Black Raven still clutched in his hand, white-faced, motionless. Then he looked back at the old man.
"Sir," he said. "I've only sold one car. To my aunt. I don't. I don't even know how to write a fleet deal. I don't think anybody here does."
"Then we'll find out together," said the old man. "I've bought a hundred and thirty-nine cars. I know how they're supposed to go. And my granddaughter's on her way with the paperwork. She knows everything else." He held out his hand. "Calvin Booker. Booker Executive Transportation. Pleased to meet you, Eli."
Eli looked at the hand for a moment. Then he took it. The old man's grip was dry and firm and much stronger than it looked.
"Eli Brooks," Eli said faintly. "Sales consultant." And then, after a second, as if he could not help himself: "Booker Executive? The car service? Sir, my uncle drove for you. Uncle Reggie. Reginald Brooks. In the nineties. He used to talk about you all the time."
Calvin Booker's face changed. Something lit up in it.
"Reggie Brooks," he said. "Reggie Brooks with the gap in his teeth who sang Al Green on the way to O'Hare and made the clients laugh so hard they tipped double? He was one of the best drivers I ever had. I sent flowers when he passed. I'm so sorry, son." He shook his head slowly, still holding Eli's hand. "Well, I'll be. Reggie Brooks's nephew." He looked up at Eli with new eyes. "That explains the coffee."
At the corner of the walnut desk, Derek Lawson stood with the keys in his hand and listened to all of this and felt the floor of the showroom tilt very slowly beneath his feet.
He knew the name now. Of course he knew the name. Everybody in the car business in Chicago knew the name. Booker Executive Transportation. The black cars with the small discreet gold B on the rear doors that you saw lined up outside every major hotel downtown, at every big funeral and every big wedding, outside the stadiums on game days and the hospitals and the courthouses and the airport. Derek had seen them his whole life. He had never once wondered who owned them. He had certainly never imagined that the man who owned them would walk into his showroom on a slow Tuesday morning in a beret and suede loafers without socks and sit down in his chair.
He had told Calvin Booker that he could not afford anything in here.
He had pointed his finger in Calvin Booker's face and told him to stop wasting his time.
He thought he might be sick.
The frosted glass door of the general manager's office banged open.
Rick Halloran came out fast, faster than Derek had ever seen him move, his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and his phone in his hand and his big soft face creased with alarm. He had heard the shouting. Anybody would have heard the shouting. He came striding across the back of the showroom toward the first desk, already talking.
"What's going on out here? Derek? I heard yelling. Is everything—" And then he saw the old man in the leather armchair, and he stopped dead in the middle of the floor, and the phone in his hand slowly sank to his side.