Inside the Executive's Pocket (A Ghosts of Landover Mystery Book 5) by Etta Faire

Author:Etta Faire [Faire, Etta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The Young Executives Club

I looked around as the group chanted “Alderman.” Jay was just outside. I could see him in the window of the garage’s side door, peeking in. I definitely got the hint he wanted Sylvia to get the crowd really going.

Sylvia wasn’t having it. Our feet ached, and our armpits were sticky hot in the polyester outfit we were wearing despite the cold garage. The chorus of voices echoing off the walls seemed like portentous chants in a horror movie with the bad acoustics in the room.

There were about thirty of them total including Sylvia. Young people with shaggy long hair and huge sideburns. Some were sitting on trashcans and old tires. Others sat on blankets that had been spread out in places along the concrete floor.

The Young Executives Club seemed a little more like a stoner party than I thought it would.

It was cold with almost no insulation, and the smell of pot mixed with garage oil was about all I could sense right now. “It’s freezing,” I said to Sylvia.

“I know,” she replied. “Jay was a firm believer in mind over matter. Think yourself warm. Think yourself rich. You don’t need to go to the bathroom or drink water during a meeting. You just think you do.”

“Did that work?”

“To an extent. But people still froze to death in life.”

I could tell she was starting to warm up, more with anger than anything else. Mind over matter.

“He wanted me to introduce him like I normally did. I didn’t this time.”

After what felt like a full minute of hearing the word “Alderman” ringing off every cell in my eardrum, a thin man with a bushy mustache, side burns and a snake tattoo that circled up his neck and ended at his jawline jumped onto the stage.

Sylvia talked to me in her head. “Michael Sumner. Curtis’s brother.”

He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Everyone stopped chanting. “Another fine poem by Paul Gelling. Give it up for him.” The crowd barely snapped. “Annnnd now, Alderman Jay Hunt…”

The alderman opened the door and sauntered into the garage, smiling and waving. The audience snapped vigorously, raising their fists high in the air.

“He likes to make an entrance,” Sylvia explained as Jay rushed up the steps of a wooden makeshift stage at the front of the garage near the entrance to the house like he was a rockstar. Sylvia reluctantly stomped up behind him, standing off to the side. “The only appropriate response during the meetings were snaps or raised fists,” she said to me. “Not sure why. More disciplined than applause, I guess.”

I was starting to guess the controlling alderman might have been the main target that night.

“Thank you,” Jay said in a hushed tone into the mic. “Thank you for being you. For being in the now. That’s what this club is all about, right? Truth. We have no hangups. We’re just a bunch of beings taking a ride together on the same side of the Earth. If we have a problem with each other, we go to that person and we say, ‘This is my beef.

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