Inflated Ego novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Offer

Victor Langhorn climbed four flights of my building's stairs that evening, with his cane tapping every step.

I heard him coming from the second landing.

Tap, tap, tap.

The same slow rhythm I had heard in the dark stairwell of his own atrium.

I stood very still behind my door and breathed.

I told myself it was a coincidence.

The sound made the skin on my arms rise.

He knocked twice.

I opened the door.

He stood in the narrow hallway in a charcoal overcoat, with a leather folder under one arm.

His driver waited at the bottom of the stairs.

He looked at my apartment over my shoulder, the single window, the one chair.

"You live like a monk," he said.

"I live like a model you stopped paying."

"May I come in?"

I stepped aside.

He walked in, and he did not sit.

He laid the folder on my kitchen counter, next to a cracked mug and a stack of unpaid bills.

"I read about last night," he said. "The police. Dale."

"You're sorry for your loss?"

"Dale was my partner for thirty years. I am a great many things, Mr. Donovan, but I am not a liar about grief."

He did look older.

His eyes were rimmed in red, and his hand trembled slightly on the cane.

For one strange second I almost believed him.

Then he opened the folder.

Inside lay a new contract, three pages thick, on Langhorn Talent paper.

Beside it lay a bank cheque for two hundred thousand dollars.

I stared.

"A reinstatement," Victor said. "Your old slot. Three campaigns this spring. The cheque is an advance, and you may deposit it tonight."

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