by Tina Whittle
“Which is…”
“A bar in Buckhead, near the Triangle. I used to get call-outs there.”
“Bad place?”
Trey considered. “Problematic is a better description. Most of the calls were for drunk and disorderly, but occasionally we handled more serious violations. Drugs, shootings, stabbings.” He tapped Lucius’ image in the photograph. “That’s the shirt the servers wore.”
So Lucius had been dressed for work, not play. I leaned closer, placed a gentle hand on Trey’s knee. “You do realize I’m going to go roughnecking at Hog Wild tonight?”
His expression was one of stoic resignation. “I suppose I do.”
“Would you like to join me?”
He kept his face averted, but I saw the spark kindle in his eyes. “I suppose I should.”
Chapter Twenty
Hog Wild occupied one of the seamier seams that knit Buckhead together. Several miles removed from the high-end boutiques and see-and-be-seen dinner spots, it ferreted itself behind an industrial grind club near the intersection of West Paces and Peachtree. One look and I understood Trey’s assessment of “problematic.” Nothing like a bunch of hormone-amped youths of privilege mingling with the genuinely dangerous to create a powder keg.
Trey paused outside the door, dirty neon and jukebox guitar washing over him. I could smell the gray haze of cigarettes, hear the ceramic clack of pool balls in a fast break.
I inhaled deeply. “You can get drunk just breathing this air.”
Trey glared at me. “You say that as if it’s a good thing.”
“It’s home-sweet-home to me. The bathrooms are probably an all-access pass to hell, but I bet the beer is cheap. And I bet there’s a dartboard.”
“I’m sure there is. There always is.”
“Are you coming or not?”
He squared his shoulders. “I’m coming. But stay close. And don’t get near the dartboard.”
***
Inside, the sticky floor sucked at the bottom of my boots. I pushed in next to the bar, Trey as close as my shadow. There was only one empty seat, so I took it. Trey put his back to mine and surveyed the room. I didn’t have to look to know we were getting more than our fair share of attention.
“I told you not to wear the jacket,” I said.
“I can’t wear the holster without the jacket, and I wasn’t coming without the holster.”
“You look like a former Red Dog.”
“I am a former Red Dog.”
“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t look like one.”
I leaned backwards slightly and my shoulder blades connected with the muscles of his back—the latissimus dorsi and the rhomboids, warm and solid—and for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant for someone to literally have my back. I remembered what Garrity had told me, about the SWAT team and the hand on the shoulder, and knew that Trey took it literally too.
At the pool table, a bald guy with a beard down to his bellybutton eyed me as he leaned over his shot. Two other men moved to stand beside him, all of them wearing jeans and leather vests, their forearms intricate snaking webs of tattoos. They talked quietly, but kept their eyes in our direction, and I felt every one of Trey’s muscles tense.
“Tai—”
“I know. I see them.”
His voice was calm. “We need to leave. Now.”
“Nope.”
“Tai—”
“Trust me. I’ve been in the middle of enough bar fights to know when one’s about to break out, and it’s not, so hang tight, boyfriend.”
“Bar fights?”
I showed him the pale slashing ripple across my palm. “See this? Bar fight.”
“You said you cut it on a broken bottle.”
“I did. During this bar fight.”
“Tai—”
“Just be quiet, okay? We’re cool.”
Trey made a noise of annoyance. I kept the bikers in my peripheral vision. They were menacing-looking, all right, but there was something…calculated about it. A slinky blonde in a tight black dress moved into their midst and whispered something into the ear of the brawniest, who smiled in our direction.
The bartender came over. He was a late-twenties guy in jeans and a black Hog Wild tee like we’d seen in the photograph, pecan brown hair just beginning to recede, his small suspicious eyes the same hue. “What can I get you?”
“Jack on ice.”
“And your friend?”
“The same.”
Trey shook his head. “I don’t want—”
“Give me your credit card. The black fancy one.”
Trey made the noise again, but he complied. The bartender brought the drinks and stuck them in front of me. I slid the card his way. He stared at it, then at me. “What exactly are you looking for here?”
“Information.”
“Then why did you bring a cop?”
“I didn’t.”
He jabbed his chin at Trey. “He’s a cop.”
“He was, but he got fired for bad behavior.”
Now Trey was double annoyed. “I did not, I—”
I elbowed him, and he stopped talking. He was suspicious and confused, a gasoline-and-matches combination, but he was too concerned about the growing menace at the pool table to make an argument. To a novice, the room continued much as before—the jukebox played Toby Keith, the smoke curled like dragons’ tails above the pool tables. The only tipoff was the conversational noise, dropped low now so that every ear could tune into what I saw saying.
“We’re here unofficial-like, and we don’t want any attention either. We’re looking for information, that’s all.” I showed him the photograph. “You know either of these people?”
The bartender shook his head. “Nope.”
“Even the guy wearing the same shirt you’re wearing now?”
“Before my time.”
“How do you know that if you don’t know him?”
“Because I said so.”
I looked to Trey for some reinforcement, but he wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to the bartender. He had moved shoulder to shoulder with me, his back against the bar, hands loose, ready to launch some Krav Maga in any particular direction.
I kept my voice calm. “If there’s really nothing you can do to help me, then fine. I’ll take my questions to the cops. Maybe they’ll help me. Or maybe they’ll show up here. Who knows?”
I heard the peculiar silence then, like the soft lifting ripple of the hairs before a lightning strike. And then a woman’s voice cut through the gathering tension.
“It’s all right, Eddie. I’ll talk to them.”
She came in from the back. It took me a second to recognize her—the girl from the photograph, a few years older. Gone were the lace explosions of her skirt and corset. In their place were low-slung jeans and a tight black tee, cut short enough to reveal hipbones. The hair was longer and deep purple all over now, but the eyeliner was still thick, foundation too, covering skin rough from her not-too-distant adolescence.
I slid the photograph across the bar. “Did you know Lucius Dufrene?”
“You know I did. You got the damn photograph.”
“Were you two dating?”
“Dating?” She rolled her eyes. “Who are you, my mom?”
I took a steadying breath. “I just need an answer.”
“Then you should start asking better questions.”
She delivered the line with a little sideways jerk of the head. Lord help me, I recognized that too. Had I really been that cocky? Probably. I tried to find some compassion for the girl standing in front of me, the girl I’d been then—angry, spiteful, mad at anyone who presented themselves as a target—and failed utterly.
I made my expression as neutral as possible. “Like what?”
“What do you mean, like what?”
“I mean what kind of questions should I be asking? You tell me.” I put my elbows on the bar. “I’ll just sit here and drink…Oh, I don’t know. Whatever you have. We’ll put it on Mr. Seaver’s credit card.”
I heard what sounded like a growl from Trey. I crossed my fingers that it was only a steadying exhale and smiled. “Well?”
She sidled a look at the bartender. He shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, Cat.”
Cat plucked the credit card from my fingers. “What’ll it be? Ma’am?”
I bit back the response rising behind my teeth. “Whatever you’d like to bring me. Kid.”
***
She brought me a shot of something that tasted like she’d set a dead pine tree on fire, put it out with cough syrup, then stirred the ashes into kerosene. It was the vilest, nastiest stuff I’d ever forced down my throat, and I’d slammed back some rotgut moonshine in my time.
She grinned. “Smooth enough for ya?”
Eddie the bartender chuckled. They hadn’t had this much fun in a long while. Trey, however, looked like he wanted to call 911. Not for the cops. For an ambulance.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.
I took another sip, coughed, and thumped my chest with my fist. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’ll probably go blind tomorrow, but I’m good for now.”
Cat watched. She didn’t offer me any water. She didn’t offer me any answers either.
“How did you and Lucius meet?” I asked.
“At the gun shop where he worked. The owner took that picture of us.”
I tried to keep the surprise out of my face. “Dexter?”
“Yeah. He made the necklace I’m wearing. He was a blacksmith, cool for an old guy. I liked him. He wasn’t crazy like the rest of those Old South redneck nut jobs.”
“Why did you take up with Lucius then? He was into that Old South stuff too.”
She eyed me steadily. “Lucius thought that whole thing was a crock of shit. He was good at pretending, though. He could be anything he needed to be.”
“Like?”
She shook her head and poured. “One question per shot.”
I threw back the remainder of the clear liquid, coughed some more, then leaned across the bar. “Okay, here’s a question. Did Lucius steal a dead soldier’s bones right out of his coffin, or was that you, because I don’t know right now, but considering somebody most likely cracked Lucius’ skull open then stuffed him in that same coffin, I’m leaning toward you, and if you can’t help me figure out why it wasn’t you, then I’m taking this photo to the cops on my way home and letting them have a shot, so can you maybe start being a little more thorough in your answers, yes or no?”
She blinked at me, her face suddenly pale beneath the makeup. Eddie the bartender placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Cat?” he said. “Time to get serious.”
She looked up at him, shaken. “Fine.”
The bartender turned to me. “Cat will take you to my office. You can talk in private there.”
Trey shook his head, his eyes still on the roughnecks with the pool cues. The bartender saw where Trey was looking and dropped his voice.
“Hey, don’t worry about those guys. They’re not real bikers. They’re just extras from the movie. I promised I’d keep that on the down low, so…”
He pressed a finger to his lips. Trey exhaled in a huff. I recognized the sound, equal parts wariness and frustration. If things went dicey, he’d never let me forget it. But I had a feeling. And I needed that back room and some alone time with Cat to sort it out.
I touched my fingertips to the inside of his wrist. “Trey?”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-one
Eddie had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label in his drawer, my father’s special-occasion drink back when drinking was a special occasion, before it became his life and a two-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch wouldn’t have made it through the weekend. Cat left it untouched and pulled down a bottle of Maker’s Mark, however.
“Lucius was big trouble,” she said, tipping a half-finger of the liquor in a highball glass. “He thought he was smarter than everyone else. And he was.”
“How?”
“Not book smart. Clever smart. Smart like a rat that could chew out of any trap. He liked cons. He liked angles. He dropped out of high school, so people thought he was dumb.” She laughed and popped her feet on top of Eddie’s desk. “He liked that too. He could turn on that corn pone when he needed to, play good ol’ boy the whole day long.”
Cat struck me as the same kind of person—willing to play dumb if it suited her purposes, willing to turn on the accent if it charmed a mark. Only she was talking to us now. Were we being charmed? Should we have both hands on our wallets and an eye on the door?
Trey didn’t need reminding. He had his back to the wall next to the exit, eyes on every opening, every curtain flutter, every piece of paper that shifted. He was a wolf, his nose turned up and his ears pricked and his haunches flexed.
I swirled the bourbon in my glass. “Anybody in particular get conned? Somebody who might not have liked the experience?”
“You mean enough to kill him?” She tapped Trey’s yellow pad with a black-polished fingertip and grinned. “Y’all are gonna need a bigger notebook.”
“How about you? Did he con you?”
“He conned everybody one way or another.”
“Including you?”
She shrugged. And looked at Trey.
I slipped a glance in his direction too. He was doing his quiet evaluation of her, filtering her words and facial expressions into the inexplicable machinery of his brain. Cat tried to look nonchalant, but she was sizing him up in return. Trey had that presence—part truant officer, part priest—that made you feel like your skin was suddenly transparent and that he could see every beat of your sinful heart. It was working on her now, I could tell, but the fact that he hadn’t confronted her meant that she was on the up and up. That, or she was a dangerously professional liar of sociopathic skill, and we were in more trouble than I thought.
I tried to sound reassuring. “Trey’s not here to take you in. He’s not a cop anymore.” I swiveled in my chair. “Isn’t that right, Trey? We’re here for information, not to get her in trouble.”
Trey shot me a look that I recognized too. If she confessed, he would absolutely call the authorities on her. He would do it before she could get her feet off the desk. I scraped my chair back, stood, then moved right in front of him.
I dropped my voice. “I need you to wait outside for ten minutes.”
He folded his arms. “No.”
“You can stand right outside the door.”
“I—”
“She’s got something to tell me and she’s not going to do it with you standing there.”
He glared some more. But he unfolded his arms. “Ten minutes. Exactly.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and left. I regretted asking that of him—I’d been counting on his cranial lie detector as my ace in the hole—but it was a good call. Cat’s demeanor relaxed the second the door shut behind him.
She cleared her throat. “Lucius dragged me into some nasty shit.”
“Like what?”
“Drugs. Mostly doing, but a little dealing. I didn’t have anything to do with the hard stuff either way. Weed was it.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“He was a thief. Shoplifting, pickpocketing, taking stuff out of people’s cars. I saw him steal a Mennonite kid’s hat once, at the farmer’s market. But shoplifting was his favorite. Stupid stuff—bottles of laundry detergent, candy bars.”
“Detergent?”
She shrugged. “He stole all kinds of things.
“But detergent? Like you wash clothes with?”
“Lucius called it the ‘five-finger final exam.’ He said only a true professional could sneak a jug of that stuff out of a store. And he could. I couldn’t. I got arrested. Probation, time served. That was when my dad officially ditched me. Tough love, he said. I tough loved him back and moved in with Lucius. I thought maybe my dad would come looking, but he didn’t. I guess he decided good riddance. I haven’t seen him since.”
I felt a jab in my heart, the echo of an old bruise. “He should have come after you. That’s on him, not you.”
Her eyes went hard. “You said you wanted to talk about Lucius.”
“I do. I’m simply trying—”
“So let’s talk about Lucius. He was a thief, and a liar, and a criminal. Every single credit card he stole, every single number he scammed, he traded it for drug cred.”
“Traded?”
“Yeah, online. You know. Through his connection.”
“Online?”
She gave me that look again, the one reserved for hopeless old fogeys. “Everything’s online. Duh.”
I suppressed the old fogey urge to tell her to watch her mouth. “So Lucius had some tech savvy?”
“Hell no. He was smart, but not computer smart, so he found somebody to help him out with that part of it.” She looked uncomfortable. “I never did any of that stuff. But I didn’t exactly…you know. Stop him.”
I swirled the bourbon, my head buzzing from one too many shots, and thought about the story so far. Cat put up a tough front, but she really wasn’t a hard case. Not like Lucius. I was beginning to think I might have wanted to kill him too.
“Was there anybody who wanted Lucius dead?”
“There was Fishbone.”
“Fishbone?”
“Yeah. His real name was Marcus, but everybody called him Fishbone because of the tattoo. Fishbone thought he was a straight-up street dealer—he was always talking about the face-to-face—and his product was legit, true enough, but he didn’t have the balls to kill anybody for real. He made noise about taking down Lucius, but that was just talk.”
I got another zing, like a nibble at the line. “He threatened Lucius specifically? Why?”