“I’d hate to be paying you by the hour, cousin,” Music said. He shook his head and made a noise in his cheek as if he were clucking to a mule. “Yeah, well, you ain’t,” Regus said, but after he’d given Music a long, hard stare, he turned his head and spat and began to use the drawing knife. He was, Music figured, still bothered by quitting his job, and more than that, he guessed, by the way Kenton Hardcastle had dressed the two of them down. He himself hadn’t been much shaken by Hardcastle, since he’d taken what the old son of a bitch had to say as the ravings of a man who was used to having his own way, all of the time, under all circumstances—a rich man who had glimpsed the shitty possibility that he might lose what he’d spent his life getting and wind up no better off than, say, William Music or Regus Patoff Bone. As before, they’d gone around to the back of the enormous house and been confronted there by the splayfooted, tired-looking black woman. But this time, after she’d consulted with the master of the house, she came back and guided them through the musty rooms to Kenton Hardcastle’s office, where he greeted them heartily and had them sit down.
