High Noon

grand prize out of the bastard.” She looked over as the door slammed open and Carly raced out.
    “Mama! Uncle Dave’s here!”
    The minute he stepped out, the instant Phoebe saw his face, she knew. She kept her own blank as she pushed to her feet. “Carter, I want to talk to Dave just a minute. Can you take Carly in, keep her occupied?”
    “Sure. Hey, Dave.”
    They didn’t shake as many men did, or do the one-armed, backslapping man hug as others did. They hugged, Phoebe thought; as always it made her smile. It was a good, strong embrace; it was father to son. “You’ll have to excuse me and Carly. I have to reestablish my dominance and whoop her at WWE SmackDown.”
    “As if!” Hooting with challenge, Carly raced back inside the house.
    “You look better,” Dave began.
    “So I’m told. Over and over. What happened?”
    “They made a deal. I wanted to tell you in person. Phoebe, there was a lot of pressure from the brass on this, from the DA’s office—”
    “It doesn’t matter.” She sat again, needed to sit again. “What did they give him?”
    “He’s off the job, immediately. No benefits. He pleads guilty to simple assault—”
    “Simple assault,” she repeated. She’d prepared herself, and still she was stunned.
    “It carries one-to-three, suspended. He’ll get probation. He’ll be required to take anger management and serve twenty hours’ community service.”
    “Does he have to write on the blackboard a hundred times: ‘I promise to be a good boy’?”
    “I’m sorry, Phoebe.” He crouched in front of her, laid a hand on her knee. “It’s a bad deal. They want to put it away. You don’t have to put it away. If you decide to file civil charges against him, I’ll stand behind you on it. And I won’t be the only one in the department who does.”
    “I can’t put my family through that. Honestly, I don’t know if I could put myself through it.” She closed her eyes and reminded herself that not all deals were fair, not all deals settled the score. “He did what he did. Everyone who counts knows it.” She let out a long breath before looking Dave in the eye again. “He can’t be a cop anymore. The rest, it’s not important. He’s off the job, and that’s what’s right. That’s what’s needed. I’m okay with it.”
    “Then you’re a better man than I, kid.”
    “No. I’m pissed. I’m seriously pissed, but I can live with it. We’re going to eat sugar-glazed ham and lemon meringue pie. And Arnie Meeks? He’s going to be eating disgrace for a very long time.”
    She nodded. “Yeah. I can live with that.”

NEGOTIATION PHASE
    Oh, to be torn ’twixt love an’ duty.
    —“ HIGH NOON ”

11
    Even after a handful of years, Duncan found meetings weird. The whole business-suited, proposal/pitch/report, Danish-and-coffee and thanks-for-your-time elements of them. Then there were the politics, and the pecking orders.
    Maybe that was why he didn’t have an actual office. There was no escaping the meeting to his mind if a man had an office. Plus an office meant you had to staff it with people who had to be given particular assignments on a regular basis. If you happened to be the boss, that meant you had to come up with those assignments, and probably read reams of reports on the assignments before, during and afterward. And you’d damn well have to have more meetings regarding the assignments.
    Vicious cycle.
    An office involved desks, and giving people titles. Who actually decided on titles? What made, say, an executive assistant different from an administrative assistant? And should it be the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, or the Vice President of Sales and Marketing?
    Things like that would keep him up at night.
    Phineas nagged him off and on about the office thing, but so far he’d been able to slip and slide around it.
    He liked meeting with people in one of the bars, or a restaurant. Or if it was absolutely necessary, in Phin’s office, which was, in Duncan’s opinion, meeting central. Going somewhere that wasn’t essentially or absolutely his own place not only kept things looser, but he’d found those he met with tended to be more up-front and outspoken over a beer in a pub than they might be over glasses of spring water in a boardroom.
    He’d found, too, that it was often more interesting, certainly more telling, to go to the prospective meeter. Sitting in their homes, their place of business, their studio, whatever, generally made