Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan Read Free Book Online Page A

of the best salesmen this city has to offer.”
    “Salesman?”
I frowned and looked at The Cardinal.
    “Miss Arne heads my insurance division,” he explained. “She’s going to teach you how to sell insurance.”
    “
Insurance?
What the… Oh.” I grinned. “You mean protection.” His face darkened and I knew immediately I’d made a
faux pas
. I backtracked rapidly. “Not that… I mean to say… if you want to call it insurance, that’s fine. I won’t—”
    “
Mr.
Raimi,” he growled, “if I meant to say
protection
, I would have. I’ve never been afraid to call a spade a spade. Protection accounts for a sizable percentage of my income, yes. But I don’t want you to engage in such affairs at this time. Later, perhaps, but for the moment you’ll concentrate on insurance. Miss Arne will teach you how to sell. She’ll introduce you to our different and varied policies, show you how to push them, then set you loose—in an entirely legal capacity—on the good citizens of this city. Do you follow?”
    I stared at him, confused at first, then angry. “That’s why you brought me here?” I snapped, forgetting my place. “To become a fucking insurance agent?” I heard Sonja gasp but I didn’t care. Let the bastard kill me. I wasn’t about to become a salesman, not for The Cardinal, God or the Devil. “Listen,” I began, but The Cardinal raised a commanding hand and stopped me.
    “Mr. Raimi,” he tutted, “there’s no need to get so excited. I understand your concerns. I realize this isn’t what you were expecting. But you must learn to trust me. I am older than you and vastly more experienced. I know what I’m doing.
    “Miss Arne, will you tell Mr. Raimi how you started in this company?”
    “I was a prostitute,” she said. That shut me up. I gawked at her. This neat, precise, cultured businesswoman—a whore?
    “It’s true,” she replied in response to my unvoiced query. “I came here looking for secretarial work. The Cardinal took me aside and offered me a position in prostitution instead. He outlined the terms of my contract, how much money I could expect to make, working hours, promotion prospects and the like. Although I’d never considered it before, I took him up on the offer.”
    “You had many customers?” he asked.
    “Plenty. I was good. I was popular.”
    “And how did you end up here, in your current position?”
    “I saved,” she said. “When I had enough money to retire, I told you I was through and asked for another job. I’d taken a few courses in my spare time, picked up a lot from my clients, and felt I had something to offer other than my body.”
    “And she had,” The Cardinal said, addressing me again. “Miss Arne has an incredible head for figures and the ability to see through bullshit in seconds. I placed her in one of my insurance firms. Five years later she was running it. The moral? It’s not where you start out—it’s where you end up.”
    He picked one of the puppets up off the desk and toyed with it. He manipulated the strings expertly, fluidly moving its hands, feet and head. He made it do a dance, grinning fondly. When he was through, he tossed it to the floor and carried on as if there’d been no interruption.
    “Insurance is a fascinating field, Mr. Raimi. It can teach you all you’ll ever need to know about people. Successful insurance agents study their customers and find out what makes them tick, what frightens them, what entices them. They learn
why
people act the way they do. It gives them insight, ideas, understanding. Men in the protection business simply go around with guns and collect money. There is no finesse, no style, no learning. They scare people and take their cash. You could spend a lifetime in protection, make a fortune and build your own empire, and you still wouldn’t be as useful to me as a man with a year of insurance under his belt.
    “I want you to
learn
, Mr. Raimi. I want you to experience the world of legality