Pruitt blinked. "Sir?" "The authorities. Call them. Have his bike impounded."
"Have him arrested for trespassing." Ethan's eyes were bright now, drunk on it. "Let's show this old fossil what happens when you don't know your place." Vanessa gasped with delight.
"Yes! Oh my God, do it." A murmur ran through the crowd, some of them eating it up, a few of them, just a few, starting to look uncomfortable. One young security guard standing near the wall, a kid maybe 24 named Marcus, shifted on his feet and looked like he wanted to say something and didn't dare. Gerald Pruitt, the manager, looked at the screaming millionaire and the silent biker, and he reached for his radio.
"I'll call security to escort him out," Pruitt said, "and we'll contact—" "You'll want to wait on that." Travis said it so quietly that Pruitt almost didn't hear him. "Excuse me?" Travis reached into the inside pocket of his vest.
Not fast. Slow and deliberate, the way you move when you don't want a nervous security guard to get the wrong idea. What he pulled out was not a weapon, and it was not a wallet. It was a phone.
An old one, scratched, the kind a man buys and keeps for 10 years because it works fine and he doesn't see the point. He dialed a number from memory, pressed it to his ear, and while 60 people watched, Ethan smirking, Vanessa filming on her phone, Pruitt sweating, Marcus, the young guard, holding his breath, Travis Reed said exactly six words into that phone. "Bring the documents downstairs, all of them." Then he hung up.
That was it. No threats, no raised voice, no explanation. He just slid the phone back into his vest, took a pull on his cigar, and leaned against his motorcycle to wait. Ethan laughed, but it came out a little thinner than before.
"Documents? What documents? What is this, a magic trick?" He looked around at his friends. "Guy's going to pull out a coupon for the early bird special."
A couple people laughed, not as many as before, because something had changed. Nobody could have told you exactly what, but the biker's calm had stopped looking like the calm of a man who'd given up and started looking like the calm of a man who knew something the rest of them didn't. There is nothing on this earth that rattles a confident man faster than another man who isn't afraid of him for reasons he can't see. "Mr. Pruitt," Travis said, "how long have you managed this club?"
Pruitt didn't want to answer, but the question had a weight to it. "Six years," he said. "Six years. Good run." Travis nodded slowly.
"You ever meet the ownership?" "The ownership group is private. They operate through a holding company, Reed Capital. We deal with their representatives." "Reed Capital," Travis said.
"Hm. Funny name." Pruitt's face did something complicated. A flicker like Ethan's earlier, but slower.
A thought trying to be born and getting strangled at the crib. "Reed. Reed Capital. The man's name is... What's your name?" Pruitt asked.
His voice had changed, just a little. "You're asking me now," Travis said, and for the first time the faintest ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "After you decided I was trash. After you decided to call cops on me."
"Now you want to know my name." "Don't engage with him," Ethan snapped at the manager. "He's a vagrant, Gerald. Do your job."