Page 75 of The 6:20 Man

CHAPTER

34

“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE you doing here?” Chilton snapped. He instinctively took a step away from Devine, his fists made and held at the ready. But the fear in the man’s eyes told Devine that Chilton would haul ass before fighting him again.

Devine studied him. The bandages were gone, but the bruises and cuts were still there.

“Just visiting a friend.”

“What? In there? Bullshit!”

“You never know where you might find one.”

“Rick needs major dental work. And Doug has a fractured jaw.”

“I know you were lights out and didn’t see, but I let Rick walk with only a sore gut. Then Rick decided to try and crack my skull while my back was turned. He’s lucky it’s not worse.”

Chilton looked over Devine’s injured face. “At least my buddies got their whacks in. And you sucker-punched me, you asshole.”

“While I was standing right in front of you and you were coming at me with fists raised?”

“You know what I mean. I was trying—”

“You were running your mouth. It wasn’t a duel where you count to three. You wanted to fight, so I fought. It was three against one. What the hell did you expect, Marquess of Queensberry Rules? And I gave you lots of chances to walk away, but you wouldn’t take them. But if it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t raise my arms over my shoulders for a whole day, and my back still aches like a son of a bitch.” He touched his face. “And I’m not getting any better-looking with brick face.”

The two men glared at each other for a few seconds.

Chilton finally said, “Yeah, I guess fighting over that woman was pretty stupid.”

“Fights over girls usually are,” said Devine, who was still suspicious of why Chilton had even been at the bar that night. “So, you frequent that place?”

“Sometimes. Did you really know her?”

“We work in the same office. A friend of ours died there.”

“Shit, I read about that. Suicide, right?”

“That’s what they initially thought. Now it looks like someone killed her.”

Chilton went all wide-eyed on this, which made Devine even more suspicious. “Damn. Do they know who did it?”

“Not yet. One more thing.”

“What?” asked Chilton.

“You were at that bar in Greenwich Village hitting on a girl who works at Cowl and Comely. Now you’re here.”

“So what?”

“Did you follow the woman to the bar and pretend to hit on her? Otherwise, I’m feeling a bit of a coincidence here.”

“In case you didn’t know, the New York financial world is pretty small and that bar is popular with our crowd. So piss off.”

As Chilton started to turn away, Devine said, “Hummingbird?”

Chilton turned back. “What?”

“Word on the street is your firm is interested in funding Hummingbird’s next investment round.”