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“It’s about time to do something about that, yeah?” Pop cracks an eye open at me, then lets it drift lazily shut.
“Yeah.” I pause. “I don’t need his money.”
Max did okay as a reporter for theKing’s Crossing Chronicle.Better than me and Pop, but I have a roof over my head and can afford dog chow for Baby, and lately, that’s all I need. I don’t care about, or want, Max’s savings account or his 401k, or anything else he put away because he was a responsible human being. I hate banks and keep cash under my pillow next to my Glock.
“Maybe he wanted you to have something else.”
Yeah, a pain in the ass.
I push the car door open and let Baby out of the backseat. She’s a good girl, taken down a hood or two, and patient. Would just as soon lick you senseless than gnaw your arm off. She’s never let me down, not like some females of the human variety. She gracefully hops out of the car like she wasn’t just sleeping in a nest made out of Mickey D wrappers and lifts her leg near a row of hedges that have lost some of their leaves. I breathe in the early winter air, pulling at my jacket. It’s going to snow soon. I can smell it in the breeze whistling through the trees.
Headlights blink on down the road, and Pop straightens behind the wheel. “Looks like she has plans after all.”
Baby wags her tail with anticipation and jumps into the car. I settle into the passenger seat and close the heavy door as quietly as I can.
Pop eases away from the curb. “Tomorrow.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
It shuts him up, and we follow the soon-to-be divorcée to a twenty-four hour liquor store and watch her buy a case of white zin. The lone clerk helps her load it into the back of her SUV, and after all of fifteen minutes, she drives home.
We call it a night, and he drops me off at my loft apartment near the industrial park.
I don’t want to see Max’s attorney, and too keyed up to sleep, I take Baby for a run. We do a quick six miles and all the while I feel like I’m running away from something I’ll never be able to escape.
I sleep like garbage, but Pop’s asking me do something I don’t want to do. That doesn’t happen very often. Baby can get me to let her out for a leak in the middle of the night, but that’s about it. Even my mother can’t talk me into doing shit for her anymore, and she stopped trying a long time ago.
Sipping on hot, black coffee, I stand under an equally hot shower, trying to rinse some of the fuzz out of my brain. I wrap a towel around my waist and stand in front of my closet, my gaze swinging back and forth. Max’s attorney’s office is located downtown. I won’t fit in no matter how hard I try, but I guess I should make an effort and I pull on black dress pants and a white button-down shirt. I look like a waiter, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t wear ties. The last time I wore one was at Max’s funeral.
I feel even worse thinking about it, and I push the day from my mind. It’s harder to blank out Zarah Maddox’s expression when I told her she wasn’t welcome at my brother’s funeral and that if she wanted to pay her respects, she could do it at the memorial service the night before at the funeral home. I hadn’t known then he’d been sleeping with her. I hadn’t known then Max had been hopelessly in love with her.
Not sure if knowing would have made much difference.
It was the Maddox bullshit that got Max killed, and no one can convince me otherwise.
Baby stays home, and she shoots me a mournful look when I palm my keys off a little table near the door. I had to buy the table so I wouldn’t keep losing my keys. A guy got away from me a few years ago because my truck keys were shoved between the cushions of my couch and I couldn’t find them. We didn’t get paid, and Pop was pissed.
I never make the same mistake twice.
Well, I try not to.
I am a man, after all.
“You’d hate it,” I say, rubbing her neck and trying to smooth out her hurt feelings.
She snorts like she doesn’t believe me and closes her eyes as I open the door.
My truck’s new and she goes from zero to seventy in fifteen seconds. She’s my pride and joy besides Baby.
The traffic’s light, and too soon for my liking, skyscrapers block out the struggling autumn sun. Winter in Minnesota is a fucking drag, and I’m not looking forward to it. It’s hard to get anything done. Sometimes the cold can be an advantage, if we’re chasing a runaway kid who has nowhere to go or tracking down a homeless guy who had family pop up out of the woodwork, but sitting on a stakeout gets old fast and there’s nothing as disappointing as learning a person you were looking for fell through a frozen part of the Renegade and is in the morgue dead from hypothermia.
You don’t get paid for a dead guy.
Lucky for us, we aren’t bounty hunters and tracking down a jerk running from the cops doesn’t happen very often.
I tap my thumb on the steering wheel as I look for a place to park. Like hell I want to pay twenty bucks at a parking garage for a half an hour’s worth of time, but finding a place on the street is going to be impossible. I swallow a mouthful of swear words and park in the ramp across from Maddox Industries. Zane Maddox let my brother die, and I want to shove my way into his office and beat the shit out of him. I don’t have any pride in the fact Max helped tear down half the assholes in King’s Crossing.