by Hazel Parker
“I’ll bet you didn’t do this much in the NYPD.”
Goddamnit, Fitz, I hate you. You know not to bring that up.
“Nope,” he said.
I would have thought that twice being ignored and given a curt answer to would have given Fitz the hint. But for someone who had once worked in finance and been smart enough to have earned a lot of money, he sure seemed unaware of how little I cared to make small talk.
“So do you see anyone you want to go for?” he said.
I didn’t say anything for the longest time, hoping that he would get the hint that I wanted to ignore him. But I quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen and decided to humor him. If nothing else, maybe if I gave him a coy answer, he’d go and talk to the girl himself and find out more, even if he had just gotten himself a nice girl. I wasn’t trying to get him to cheat. I just wanted him to leave me the hell alone. Fitz started to look away, and I relaxed.
And then I couldn’t believe my own eyes.
“There.”
The word escaped my mouth, and my hand pointed to where I was looking at, but it was all a sort of automatic response that I didn’t have much control over. The girl there…it couldn’t have been her, right? She couldn’t possibly…
No, there was no way. She would have had to have moved all the way from Georgia to get up here, and the odds of that were just way too small. She wasn’t someone who had yearned for a bigger city and brighter lights like me. She was a Southern gal through and through; she was the furthest thing from a city lady. There was just no way.
But…it was her.
It was most definitely Carrie Griffith.
But how?
She looked the same as I had remembered her from way back when—olive-colored skin, always dressed a level above everyone else, and perfectly well-put-together. More than that, she still had the same grace and essence that she’d had back then.
Which just made it even more confusing that someone like her would wind up in a club party setting like this. If she looked drugged out, that would have been one thing, but this?
“So why don’t you go for her?”
Why don’t you go for her? Do you hear yourself, Fitz? Do you have any idea why that would be insane? I did something in response that I rarely did.
I laughed.
And finally, realizing Fitz wouldn’t get the hint that I just wanted to be alone, I turned away.
“I have my reasons,” I said.
Fitz patted me on the back and started to walk away. I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked around the room. A quick scan showed that Biggie and Uncle were there, but they were distracted by two women who seemed intent on getting their pants off. It was a bit of a painful realization to recognize that Fitz was the only person here who was sober and able to understand the importance of what was going on.
“Oh, Fitz!”
He turned back to me. He looked quite surprised that I had reached out to him. He wasn’t exactly wrong to feel that way.
“Yeah?”
The eagerness of his words made me begin to regret trying to speak to him.
“Marcel,” I said. “Is he coming?”
He shook his head. That was of little surprise to me.
“Still recovering. Spending time with Christine. Why?”
I waved him over, deciding someone needed to know about what was going on. I opened the email and showed it to Fitz.
“It’s Kyle,” I explained. “I think he’s getting tired of us being around.”
“Then I guess Marcel’s and Biggie’s family feud ain’t over yet, huh?”
I just chuckled. That was an understatement. Families like this, once they started feuding, never stopped until someone died or someone moved away.
“It’s just getting started,” I said.
Fitz looked exhausted. He had just helped resolve a conflict with the Las Vegas Savage Saints, and he didn’t look too keen on taking on yet another challenge.
For me? It was just one in a line of many, many challenges in my life. Facing hardship wasn’t something that I avoided. It was just a part of life.
“Have you told Biggie and Uncle?” Fitz asked.
I looked at them until Fitz followed my line of sight. That was enough to get me a few moments to look at Carrie Griffith and try and make sense of her presence. I would need a whole lot more than just a few moments, but it was a start.
“Alright, well, I think we should organize an emergency meeting,” Fitz said, taking a deep breath. “If Kyle is doing this, he’s—”
“We will,” I said, hoping that shut down the conversation.
It sort of did.
“OK, I’m going to text Marcel and let him know,” Fitz said. “You can, uh, let me know if you need anything.”
I would.
The job of sergeant-at-arms was like being a cop. I could never do it alone. That was doubly true when going into violent and difficult situations. Kyle may not have been violent himself, but I knew better than to think a politician would never go behind closed doors to use violent means. That was doubly true for Kyle.
But I didn’t say that to Fitz.
Frankly, I was just happy to spend a few moments in silence to try and make sense of why she was here.
* * *
Carrie Griffith
I hated parties.
I loved being around groups of people. I loved being around my closest friends. I loved being in an atmosphere in which people were joyful and in a celebratory mood.
But parties with dark rooms, loud music, and an excess of alcohol? I hated that. If I went the rest of my life without attending a party after ten in the evening, my life would be better for it.
Still, having been dragged to this party by my best New York friend and my co-owner at my restaurant, Caroline, I tried to make the most of it. I danced with the music. I drank a little bit of booze. I talked to a couple of the guys.
But that was the other part of it, too. The guys just weren’t my type. They were loud and boisterous as if trying to prove a point. I preferred the quiet and contemplative type, the kind whom I could be around and relax in silence with.
There was one guy standing off to the side who looked awfully familiar, as if I knew him from somewhere. I couldn’t place his face, given it was so dark, and his facial hair made him look like a lot of other dudes with beards, but there was something about his presence that just felt so familiar.
It was New York City, though. Everyone had a doppelganger somewhere in the city. And even then, I met so many people at my restaurant that it was certainly possible I’d spoken to him before.
I looked at Caroline, dancing in an almost fanatic state a few feet away. I looked at the rest of the party. Girls far more extroverted and social than me had latched themselves onto a respective man. I didn’t feel alone, but I felt like I wanted to be alone. I risked playing the role of party-pooper and interrupted my best friend’s fanatic dancing.
“Hey,” I said, too quietly at first. Caroline kept dancing like she needed it to survive. “Hey!” Again, she kept on dancing, oblivious to me.
“Hey!”
Finally, I got her attention—but only to encourage me to dance as well. She took my hand, raised it in the air, and though I went along with it for half a second to appease her, I quickly retracted it and pulled her to the side.
“Girl, this isn’t my scene. Can you walk with me to the subway stop and then you can come back?”
“What?” she said as if this scene were everyone’s scene. “Carrie, you’ve been stressing yourself out with the store for weeks now! You need to let loose a little!”
“I know! But I like to let loose with something a little less crazy than—Caroline!”
She had gone back to dancing in her trance. I didn’t want to make the walk by myself, but I didn’t want to stay here.
“Ten minutes, and you walk me?”
“OK!”
I was ninety percent sure that she only said yes becaus
e it would get me to shut up and start dancing, but at least we finally had a plan. Those ten minutes were miserable, and I counted off every single second of them, but with just a minute left, I could taste freedom. I looked to Caroline, who…looked even more engrossed in the music than before. Now she was laughing to herself.
This is not promising.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
I looked behind me to see an older man approaching me, with gray hairs at his temple and a cocky smirk.
“You two fine ladies look like you’re enjoying yourselves. The name’s Uncle.”
“Uncle? Are you going to make me call you Daddy later?” Caroline said.
Uncle bellowed in laughter.
“I like her. You? You can come too. You should be more like your friend. Maybe you can be with Biggie or weirdo Niner over there.”
That was enough for me. I grabbed Caroline and forcefully led her out the front door. Caroline tried to pull away from me, but only when we’d gotten to the sidewalk did I finally let go of her.
“Why did you do that?”
“You know that’s not my scene,” I said.
I took a deep breath.
“Look, you’re right, OK?” I said. “The restaurant isn’t doing well. If it keeps up like this for another week, we’re either going to have to lay off a bunch of people and have us work to death, or we’re just going to have to call it a day and close the shop. If that happens, then you can also kiss my time in New York goodbye.”
“No, Carrie—”
“I’m homesick, Caroline,” I said. “There’s nothing to remind me of Georgia. Sure, we occasionally see UGA football televised or the Braves baseball game on, but that’s not the same as the chill, Southern vibe that Georgia gives me. I wanted to come here to challenge myself, but now?”
I laughed as someone came out from the party and threw up all over the sidewalk, thankfully a good few feet away from us.
“Oh, and the fact that I dislike parties hasn’t changed one bit.”
“OK, so that may be a bit much,” Caroline said. “But I would argue that your stress is exactly why you need to party. You miss that vibe? I get that, but what happens when you move back to Georgia to be with your family and you swing in the other direction? You’ll be so bored that you’ll yearn for a chance to celebrate.”
See, that was where Caroline and I differed—and where I think the city life and the country life in me differed. For Caroline, FOMO was a real thing. If she went for a while without the party, she’d start to crave one and go out on a weekday.
Me? I never missed it. I had never liked it in the first place. I guess when I was a student at the University of Georgia, I had gone to the occasional fun party, but that was usually when it was a small group of us having some wine and playing board games and cooking competitions, not when everyone was slammed to the bottom of a liquor bottle and seeing who could make the dumbest decisions they could excuse with being drunk.
“Nah,” I said. “Look, we’re already outside? Can you just—”
Someone came out of the party.
But this time, it wasn’t anyone drunk. It was the same man that I had seen standing quietly, watching the rest of the party unfold from the side. He grabbed the man who had thrown up, almost literally tossed him inside, and turned to us.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Is everything OK?”
You look so familiar. I feel like I should know you. But no one came to mind. The best I could muster was a customer that I had had some good conversations with, but that didn’t seem right. I usually remembered my most loquacious and interesting customers, and while this guy intrigued me, he wasn’t that talkative.
“Oh, we’re fine,” Caroline said. “My friend’s getting lame and tired.”
“Hey!”
The man shrugged.
“These things aren’t my scene anyway. If I didn’t work here, I’d probably be home right now.”
“Don’t encourage her!” Caroline said, but she started to recognize that she was defeated. “Alright, fine, I’ll walk you to the subway, Carrie.”
I looked at the man, who looked like he had much more that he wanted to say. I certainly had some questions. Who was he? Why had I caught him looking at me—and not just in a sexual way? What did he want? Did he know me? Did I know him?
But neither of us said a word. The exhaustion of being in a setting neither of us thrived in had sapped our voices and our desire for further stimulation, and though I gave a short nod when I turned, I didn’t say anything. The handsome man only nodded back before he vanished from my line of sight.
“Someday, girl, someday I’m going to get you to really party,” Caroline said.
“You’re running out of time. I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m pretty sure that if I was going to party like you do, it would have happened by now.”
“I know! God, I just want you to have fun!”
“I did,” I said plainly, which seemed to baffle Caroline only further.
In fact, the most fun part was trying to figure out who that man was. I relished intellectual puzzles far more than alcohol and handsome men; it wasn’t so much that I needed to debate an Ivy League graduate as it was that I just needed someone who could pique my interest more than they could pique my arousal.
Not to say that I had no interest in the physical, of course. That wasn’t true at all; that man, whatever his name was, was extraordinarily handsome and someone that, if I spent more time around, I’d think about in certain ways.
But for right now, I wasn’t thinking about the intellectual challenge or the looks or anything else having to do with the man. I wasn’t thinking about the shop, my life in New York City, or if I’d move back to Georgia. I wasn’t thinking about anything.
Frankly, I was just happy to spend a few moments in silence.
Chapter 1: Niner
It was a Thursday afternoon, just a few hours before the end of my shift and our ensuing Savage Saints meeting.
Despite Kyle’s warning, things had largely gone smoothly at Brooklyn Repairs. We’d had the occasional irate customer, but that wasn’t anything we weren’t used to. Dealing with ornery people was barely a challenge—as long as they didn’t start shooting at me, I was good.
It was a clear day. Sweat beat down on my body, staining by Brooklyn Repairs uniform. Biggie worked across from me, while Marcel, in a walking boot, sat in the office, ready to take on anyone else who entered requesting service. We were just a few minutes away from closing time, though, so it seemed unlikely that we’d get anyone else.
“Ah, shit,” Marcel said from the office.
And that was something that reminded me of my time from the police force—whenever you least suspected it was when things were bound to go to shit. No one ever committed a crime with the police watching; it was always whenever eyes were averted, and everyone thought that things were going smoothly that trouble struck.
At least I’d traded in my badge for a wrench. At least I’d traded in my shootouts for customers that wanted to keep us open a little bit later. Not that I had much of a choice.
Marcel rose from his chair, limping as he walked out of the store.
“He’s a slow healer, that bastard,” Biggie said with a laugh. “Man needs to man up and act presidential! Stand up straight! Look good for the cameras!”
I gave a half-hearted smile. I liked Biggie. He was boisterous and loved to laugh, but he never tried to make me act as he did. He was the one that got me into the club.
I thought Marcel was getting better in his role. He’d dive in headfirst without really thinking about the consequences—in some ways, it wasn’t Richard that had shot him in the foot, but himself—but he was gradually learning.
Uncle was the reason this club had financial security, but I found him to be a bit crass and arrogant. I never trusted the banker types, and Uncle gave me little reason to change my mind. It didn’t help that he was hitting on girls half his age; I didn’t pretend like youn
ger women didn’t turn me on, but I certainly hoped I didn’t turn into him in my forties.
And Fitz? Well, at least Fitz wasn’t trying to be malicious. That was about the best I could say.
“What the hell?”
I followed Biggie’s eyes as the garage door opened. I gulped at what I saw. It was a car that needed work, alright.
An NYPD car.
There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the exterior; it most likely just needed an oil change and a tire rotation. But the issue wasn’t the car itself; it was who might be inside. If it was anyone who had been in the service more than two years…
“Appreciate it,” the cop in the driver’s seat said as he got out. “Call us when—holy shit. Bentley? Lane Bentley?”
I folded my arms and stared dully at the man before me: Officer Williams. Officer Williams was someone I only knew tangentially, but he was the classic case of a young kid who had become a cop for power-trip purposes and abused the hell out of it. He liked to pull people over and then toy with them until he gave them the final punishment.
“So, you went from disgraced cop to a disgraced mechanic, eh?” he said, laughing and turning to his partner, a cop I didn’t recognize. “Martinez! Take a look at Lane Bentley. He was once one of us. You might even say that he was a good cop. But he didn’t know how to be a cop when the going got bad, and now he’s here! Look at this—”
“Do you need anything else, sir?” Biggie said, stepping between the two of us.
I could no longer see Williams, but I could certainly imagine the shift in expression from bullying to shocked and back to bullying.
“Are you threatening an officer?” Williams said. “You are aware that that is a felony, right? Is that something that you want to deal with? Do you want to be disgraced like him?”
Biggie didn’t say a word. I could see Williams getting close to him, even appearing to poke him in the chest, but Biggie did not budge.
“That’s what I thought,” Williams said. “Never forget, you work with that asshole behind you, you’re going to get fucked over in the end. Martinez! Let’s leave these assholes behind. You owe me some dinner, anyway.”