Page 23 of The Handyman
Wide eyes trained on me as Riley paused, her sandwich about three inches off her plate.
I sat back to cup the back of my head in both my hands. “The modern interpretation of the Mob, at least. I’m a handyman. I do whatever jobs land in my lap. If someone wants something done, and they’re willing to pay the right price, I’ll do it.”
It took her a long moment to speak up, “S-so. . . you really could do what you said last night to Brandon?”
I nodded firmly.
Riley’s slender brows drew in a troubled look as she tilted her head to gaze at her sandwich.
“I will do it. I’ve done it before for less. The fact that Brandon’s such a pussy that he shit himself when I didn’t even do anything is a good thing, by the way. That means I won’t actually have to. It’s bad to mix business with the personal.” I wanted to preempt any questions Riley might ask me, but I didn’t know where to begin. There were things I simply couldn’t tell her because it’d risk both of us.
She slowly lifted her sandwich to her lips, and thecrunchof toasted bread echoed loudly in the dense atmosphere.
“I know how to fix sinks and other shit like that, of course. I’m a certified HVAC technician, and I have a plumber’s license. I do some electrical shit, too. Mostly, though, I clean up after other people. Does that bother you?” I regretted asking, a sour taste coated my tongue.
Riley chewed deliberately slowly.
Reaching for my own sandwich, anxiety curdled my blood as now, the egg and bacon were totally tasteless.
“D-do you like it?” Riley swallowed her bite. “Like do you enjoy it? Or. . .?”
Surprise twitched my brows as I paused. “It’s a job. I don’t just do it because it’s fun, if that’s what you’re asking, Riley. I do it because I get paid for it. It’s like taking an office job rather than working at McDonalds, sorta. I don’t know if you’d consider that worse than enjoying it though, to be honest.” I sniffed a little to clear the disbelief from clogging my sinuses.
Riley frowned under furrowed brows.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just—I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it. Youseriouslywork for the Mob?” She cocked her head at me, setting her sandwich down to swipe back her frizzed bedhead. “Like— really?”
I nodded firmly. “Yeah,reallyreally. It’s not crazy dramatic or anything, but sometimes interesting shit happens. I got fielded a job once to find a bunch of stolen dogs— they were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they got stolen from a breeder. That was nuts.” My lips tingled as I stopped the story short— I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell Riley that the guy who stole the dogs got tortured to death at the breeder’s request.
Her brows rose high at this story.
I lifted my sandwich to nod at her. “Another time, I got a job to blow up a warehouse full of drugs because this other guy turned it down. Like, tens of millions of dollars worth of the stuff. I felt like Bruce Willis when I did that.”
“Why’d you do that? That’s a lot of money to set on fire?”
Gradually, I was steering Riley away from the worse stories, like killing a freshly legal brat at the behest of his dad. Taking a bite of my sandwich, I thought back to those days so long ago.
Carlyle went ape shit; it was the only time in my ten years working for him that I’d seen him lose control. The absolute chaos that followed was glorious, and after a few months, all the heat had died down.No pun intended.
“Uh— I guess to make a point? I generally don’t know who requests what or why, but the dog case was unique. I’ve been to some really cool places, too. Once, I went to Hawaii to do surveillance on this chick’s wedding, but it ended up just me, hangin’ out on a beach, drinking a lot and getting really bad sunburn for a week. So, I suppose it really depends on which jobs you take and what drama you want to be involved in that makes things particularly dangerous, and by that measure, I’m on the low end.” Maybe, this was wrong— to downplay what I did, and only highlight the less murderous jobs I’d done. Still, they were jobs I did and I’d done them for this exact reason.So I could pass off as a PI or something plausible and not have to lie.
17
Riley
“Your mom gave you all this stuff? What are you going to do with it?” Scanning the pages and pages ofstuff, I glanced up over the edge of the folder to arch a brow. Reece didn’t seem particularly interested in keeping or using it, but storage fees in New York City were killer. “Would she want you to use it, or—”
“It doesn’t really matter what she wants. She’s dead. And anyway, all she wanted was that it didn’t fall into my siblings or her family’s hands, and she achieved that. Whether I keep it in storage forever, or sell it— it makes no difference to her anymore.”
I puffed out my lips thoughtfully at Reece’s explanation and flipped the page. The list seemed never ending.
From his position in front of the sink, Reece went on, “Honestly, I haven’t put a lot of thought into it. The best option seems to be to try to sell it, so maybe I’ll auction it off. Everything seems like it requires a lot of work, though.”
“I wonder how much it’s worth. . .” Obviously, Reece’s mom had cared for this stuff more than anything else, including her kids and her siblings. How sad was that? But I thought it was really nice how she acknowledged that Reece was a proper member of society, and she put her faith in him. “Maybe, you can put it on eBay or Craigslist. . . or even Facebook Marketplace.”
“If you wanted to organize all that, I’ll split the money with you, Riley. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Now, it’s just a storage unit full of shit I don’t want. My mom’s lawyer shipped it all to New York City when word went around she was dead, so I couldn’t be like ‘hey, don’t do that’. I do wonder what happened to the house— just morbid curiosity. I expect that, by now, my sisters have started escalating the fighting over it.”