Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Face
Nobody moved.
Two thousand people sat in the dark looking at an empty stage.
I heard someone at the next table whisper, "He's real?"
Beside me, Bennet set his brass cartridge down on the tablecloth, standing it up very straight.
Then he pushed back his chair and stood.
He buttoned the jacket of the cheap grey suit.
He touched my shoulder once as he passed behind me.
And he walked up the steps to the stage.
Deena laughed.
It was one short, loud bark in the silent ballroom.
"Oh my God," she said. "Is he serving?"
Nobody laughed with her.
On stage the emcee stepped back from the microphone and stood aside with his hands folded in front of him.
Bennet walked into the light.
For a second there was no sound at all.
Then a chair scraped at the head table.
The vice chairman stood up.
Then the two women beside him.
Then the men at the next table, and the next, a wave of people rising to their feet in the dark, all the way to the back of the ballroom.
Two thousand people stood up for a man in a three-hundred-dollar suit.
At table nine, my foreman stood up so fast he knocked over his water.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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