Rick Halloran had been in the car business in Chicago for thirty-four years. He had been to the regional dealer association dinner every year for twenty of them. And seven years ago, at the regional dealer association dinner, at the Palmer House, in the grand ballroom, he had watched an old Black man in a beret walk up to the podium to accept a lifetime achievement award for fifty years of service to the Chicago transportation community, and give a nine-minute speech without notes that had the whole room of six hundred car dealers on their feet at the end. Rick had stood up too. He had clapped until his hands hurt.
"Mr. Booker," he said.
His voice was very faint.
Calvin looked up at him and smiled pleasantly. "Good morning," he said. "Mr. Halloran, isn't it? I believe we met. The dealer association dinner. You were at table eleven."
"Yes," said Rick Halloran. "Yes, sir. I was." He looked at Derek. He looked at Eli. He looked at the keys in Derek's hand. He looked back at Calvin Booker, and Derek watched the general manager's face go through, in about four seconds, a series of expressions so rapid and so vivid that it was almost like watching a film on fast forward. Confusion. Recognition. Calculation. Hope. And then, as he took in the scene in front of him, Derek still standing white-faced and silent at the corner of the desk, Eli Brooks standing beside the old man's chair with his hand still clasped in the old man's hand, the three junior salesmen frozen, Tanner's paperwork scattered on the floor, something that looked very much like dread.
"Mr. Booker," Rick said carefully. "Is there. Is everything all right, sir? Has somebody been taking care of you?"
Calvin let go of Eli's hand. He folded his own hands on his knees again. He looked at Rick Halloran for a long moment, and then, briefly, at Derek, and then back at Rick.
"Eli has been taking very good care of me," he said. "I'd like to buy twenty Escalade Platinums. Black. This year's model. Fully loaded, every option, same specification as the one on your floor. I'd like them delivered to my garage on Western Avenue within thirty days. I'll be paying in full, by wire transfer, today. My granddaughter's at the bank now arranging it. She'll be here about noon." He nodded at Eli. "And I'd like Mr. Brooks to handle the sale. Start to finish. His name on every line. I understand that might be unusual, and I understand there may be other people in your dealership with more experience. But that's my one condition. If it's a problem, I understand. Bauer's on Cicero has been calling my granddaughter every day for a week."
Rick Halloran looked at him. Then he looked at Derek.
Derek could not meet his eyes. He looked at the floor. At his own black shoes, polished to a mirror shine, standing on the polished gray tile, and his own reflection in the tile beneath them, upside down, looking back up at him.
"It's not a problem, Mr. Booker," Rick Halloran said slowly. "It's not a problem at all."
He did not ask what had happened. He did not need to. He had heard the shouting.
* * *
What happened after that was, Eli Brooks would say later, the strangest and best four hours of his life.
Rick Halloran took charge of the logistics, the way general managers do. He called the regional fleet office. He called three other Cadillac dealerships in the Chicago area to find out how many black Escalade Platinums they had on their lots. He called the factory. He called the bank. He walked up and down the back of the showroom with his phone pressed to his ear, saying things like twenty units and same-day wire and yes, I know, I know, I've never seen one like this either, and every so often he stopped and looked across the showroom at the old man in the leather chair and shook his head slowly, as if he still could not quite believe it.
But it was Eli who sat at the desk.
Not Derek's desk. Calvin did not want to sit at Derek's desk any longer. He stood up, slowly, one hand on the arm of the leather chair, and picked up his coffee mug and its napkin, and walked across the showroom to the last desk in the row, at the far end, near the black sports car, which was Eli's desk, because Eli was the newest and the newest got the desk furthest from the door. It had a dead plant on it. It had a stack of brochures that had never been opened and a cut-glass dish of mints that had never been touched. Calvin sat down in the leather armchair beside it and set his mug on the napkin on the corner of the desk and folded his hands and looked at Eli, who was standing beside the desk looking at the chair behind it as if it might bite him.