Page 97 of The Instruments of Darkness

Pinette played with a discarded ring pull. Around us conversation resumed, but at a lower level than before. The pool game had been abandoned and the women were now fully dressed. I noticed that Pinette’s jeans were very new and his black boots carefully polished. Even the laces were clean. There was a military precision to him, a discipline, even though he’d never served. When he delivered a beating, it was reputed to be with no more or less intensity than the misdeed required, carried out with the minimum of exertion and without any great alteration in his demeanor. But that wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy it.

Pinette’s eyes were moving between Angel and Louis, sizing them up.

“Is it true what they say?” he asked.

“And what would that be?” answered Louis.

“That you’re, you know, together.”

Louis’s face remained deadpan.

“We’re here,” he said, “and you can count to two, so yeah, I’d describe that as a fair summation.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know.”

Pinette shook his head at the ways of the world.

“Bobby Ocean really fucking hates you three guys.”

“Bobby has a long list of people he hates,” I replied, “most of whom he’s never met.”

“You’re all right up there with the best of them.”

“And your feelings about us? Just to avoid any confusion.”

Pinette pointed at Angel and Louis.

“I hate those two for what they are”—his finger shifted toward me—“and I hate you for the company you keep, among other things.”

His attention became fixed on Angel.

“You’re very quiet,” he said.

“I’m trying not to breathe too deeply,” said Angel. “This place smells of stale sperm.”

“I figure you’d know,” said Pinette, as the front door opened and Olin returned, trailed by two younger men. They were both eating greasy pizza from paper plates, but the first of them stopped chewing as soon as he saw me. Leo Pinette resembled a failed laboratory effort to replicate his older brother. The same looks were present, but clouded by physical indolence and intellectual sloth. He wore box-fresh white Nikes, a black Lonsdale tracksuit, and a UFC baseball cap with the holographic sticker still on the visor, which was nature’s way of communicating that here, incontestably, was a dick. Leo was gym-heavy from hours spent in a mixed-martial-arts dump over by the Jetport, but a halfway decent boxer could have put him on the floor in minutes, if not seconds, because he lacked application and skill. The tougher competitors, those who could take the hits, might have hoped to make some money from MMA, but most of the meatheads who gravitated to it did so because they wanted to learn how to hurt someone weaker than themselves and got their kicks from watching others being hurt in turn. The sight of blood gave them a hard-on, as long as the blood wasn’t their own. Leo Pinette would never set foot inside a ring for a fair fight and would never throw a punch outside one before first checking that his boys had his back. He was, I imagined, a grave disappointment to his brother, someday destined to land himself in a mess from which Antoine wouldn’t be able to extricate him.

Leo was also an object lesson for those who didn’t actively resist the encroachments of the far right. When the dust cleared, the local gauleiter would be someone like Leo: a petty tyrant, an abuser of men and women, and therefore the last person to whom authority should ever be ceded.

“I think you know Mr. Parker,” said Antoine, as Olin leaned against the door, more to prevent anyone from entering than leaving. Leo might have been a coward, but he wouldn’t want to lose face in front of his brother and his buddies, and calculated he was safe while they were nearby.

Behind Leo, the kid who’d entered with him was doing his best to make like a snowflake and melt, drifting toward the pool table as a prelude to vanishing.

“Did I tell you to go anywhere?” said Antoine.

The kid paused, a half-eaten slice still in his hand. He was afraid to set it down so it sat congealing in his hand, excess grease dripping to the floor. In another bar, or another life, I might have felt sorry for him.

“You borrowed my car last night,” said Antoine to Leo. “Where did you go?”

His voice was mellow, even bored, like a father feigning curiosity in the activities of one of the more tedious of his teenage offspring.

“Around,” replied Leo.

“Around where?”

“Just around.”