Read Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! for Free Online

privileged as well, Mr. Meeks?”
    “It is.”
    “And the reason that this item is being offered for sale in the first place?”
    “Privileged, Mr. Holiday.”
    “Why would anyone sell something as marvelous as this fantasy kingdom, Mr. Meeks? I keep asking myself thatquestion. I keep asking myself if I’m not somehow buying a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge. How do I know that your seller even has the authority to sell Landover?”
    Meeks smiled, an attempt at reassurance. “That was all checked carefully prior to listing. I supervised the inquiry myself.”
    Ben nodded. “So it all comes down to your word, doesn’t it?”
    Meeks sat back again. “No, Mr. Holiday. It comes down to the worldwide reputation of Rosen’s as a department store that always delivers what it offers exactly as promised in its catalogues and advertisements. It comes down to the terms of the contract the store offers to the buyer on specialty items such as this one—a contract that permits recovery of the entire purchase price less a small handling fee should the item fail to prove satisfactory. It comes down to the way we do business.”
    “Could I see a copy of this contract?”
    Meeks bridged the fingers of his gloved hand against his chin and stroked the ridges and lines of his face. “Mr. Holiday, I wonder if we might first back this conversation up a bit to permit me to fulfill the terms of my consignment of this specialty item. You are here to decide whether or not you wish to purchase Landover. But you are also here so that I might decide whether or not you qualify as a purchaser. Would a few questions to that end be an imposition?”
    Ben shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. But I’ll tell you if they are.”
    Meeks smiled like the Cheshire Cat and nodded his understanding.
    For the next thirty minutes or so, he asked his questions. He asked them very much the way a skilled attorney would ask them of a witness at an oral deposition in pre-trial discovery—with tact, with brevity, and with purpose. Meeks knew what he was looking for, and he probed for it with the experienced touch of a surgeon. Ben Holiday had seen a good many trial lawyers in his years of practice, some ofthem more accomplished than he. But he had never seen anyone as good as Meeks.
    In the end, a lot of ground was covered. Ben had graduated fifteen years earlier from Chicago University’s School of Law, Order of the Coif,
summa cum laude
. He had gone into practice immediately with one of the larger firms, then left after five years to form his own firm with Miles, specializing in litigation. He had won a number of nationally reported corporate law cases as a plaintiffs attorney and settled dozens more. He was respected by his fellow attorneys as one of the best in his field. He had served as president of the Chicago Bar Association and as chairman of a number of committees on the Illinois State Bar. There was talk of running him for president of the American Trial Lawyers Association.
    He came from a very wealthy family. His mother had been born into money; his father had made his in futures. Both were dead. He had no brothers or sisters. With Annie’s death, he had been left essentially alone. There were some distaff cousins on the West Coast and an uncle in Virginia, but he hadn’t see any of them for better than five years. He had few close friends—in truth, he had only Miles. His colleagues respected him, but he kept them at a distance. His life in the past few years revolved almost exclusively around his work.
    “Have you any administrative experience, Mr. Holiday?” Meeks asked him at one point, a rather veiled look to the hard, old eyes that suggested the question asked something more.
    “No.”
    “Any hobbies?”
    “None,” he answered, thinking as he did that it was true, that he in fact had no hobbies nor personal pastimes save for the time he spent in training at Northside. He almost amended his answer, then decided it did not