All Through the Night by Davis Bunn

Julio’s a known quantity. The dealers will pressure him to hustle their wares to the other kids. He’s got nothing. How long is he going to say no?”
    “I’ll talk to him again if you want, Eilene.”
    Her silent thanks almost made him blush. As if he had finally managed to get the deal right in her eyes.
    As Wayne climbed his front stairs, the mystery woman gave him a beautiful version of the stink eye, clearly expecting him to decline her offer. Instead, he leaned against the wall next to Jerry’s chair and said, “I’ll need to talk with your guy directly.”
    She looked first at Eilene, then said, “I can make that happen.”
    “Not just once. I need regular access.”
    “I will tell him.”
    “And his books. Corporate and personal. And somebody who’ll walk me through the auditing process.”
    “He employs a battery of accountants.”
    “Just one. Somebody you trust. Better still, somebody who’ll answer only to you. Someone you are certain won’t blab to a soul about what we’re doing.”
    “What I meant was, people keep a very close eye on his finances.”
    “Yeah, but how many are looking for an in-house scam?”
    She nodded. “I will make this happen. Do you want to talk about your pay?”
    “You strike me as somebody who came with a number you were going to argue over until you got it.”
    She gave a very European gesture, a slight forward thrust to her chin, a minimalist shrug.
    “I’ll take it. There. I saved us both a lot of trouble.”
    Jerry said, “You forgot to ask her name.”
    Wayne kept his gaze locked on target. “I didn’t forget a thing.”
    “Tatyana,” she replied. “Tatyana Kuchik.”
    Eilene said, “Tatyana is an attorney. She has just one client.”
    But Wayne could see Tatyana drawing back now, uncertain whether to speak this semi-famous guy’s name in front of people she didn’t know. So he said, “Where do you want this meeting to take place?”
    “He lives near Vero Beach. First I’ll need to go back to our Orlando offices and report in.”
    The idea struck him then. One that might draw a bit of sanity from a day that otherwise was totally off the wall. “When you come back, would you mind giving a kid a ride?”

THIRTEEN
    J erry wore his stone cop expression the next morning. Wayne came back from his run to find Foster sitting on his wide porch with the newspaper and Jerry in his kitchen making coffee. Wayne watched through the open window as Jerry lined things up on Wayne’s new kitchen counter. The kitchen was to his right and the living room, with the door to the porch, was on his left. Wayne wiped his face with his T-shirt and then watched Jerry set the coffee utensils out, as neat as little soldiers. Wayne liked how the wood looked in the sunlight, liked the smell. He had found a pile of old boards behind the maintenance shed, probably roofing timbers and at least a half century old, thick as his calf. He had planed them and sawed them and laid out a new countertop to replace the peeling linoleum.
    Jerry said through the window, “The thing kept me awake all night.”
    Wayne didn’t need to ask what thing. He had not slept much either.
    “We’ve got a crook working inside the guy’s company.”
    Foster went through his folding routine with the paper, lining up the edges with a machinist’s precision, getting it down to magazine size. “If he worked inside the company, the boss would’ve known him.”
    Wayne said, “We’re not talking about the angel.”
    “Point one, it wasn’t no angel.”
    Foster snorted. “Oh, and you’re so well connected to the man upstairs you’d know one? I don’t think so.”
    “Hey. My mama didn’t raise no fool.”
    “And you think this guy got to be boss of some big company being a fool?”
    “That’s been bugging me too,” Wayne agreed.
    Jerry poured a mug, handed it through the window to Foster. “Let’s say there’s two of them for the moment. A crook in the company who wants to take charge. But