Burn (8 page)

“Well, hey, ” Eyebrow Larry said, kicking up the ball bat with a boot heel and giving it a twirl. “We got history. I appreciate the fact you came forward.”

As if to prove it, Larry reached around behind him and found a pair of pliers in the back pocket of his jeans.

For the sake of history, Andrew assumed, he'd pulled most of the nails out of the slugging end of the bat first.

“Lawrence.”

In the darkness of the living room, low golden lamplight illuminated half of the last face in the world Andrew expected to find waiting for him at the end of this long, outrageous day.

The eyebrow half got the light; the other half remained in shadow. The unmistakable grin overlapped both hemispheres.

“Gee, Torch. Try not to sound so happy to see me.”

“You should have called first.”

“Yeah, funny thing. You don't seem to be listed.”

Andrew's left hand began to ache; he realized he'd instinctively made a fist around his keyring, arranging the keys so that they poked out between his knuckles. He relaxed his grip. But not completely.

“How long have you been in town?”

Black leather creaked as Larry shifted. “Few days.”

Andrew said nothing to that. The coat Larry wore looked new and expensive. Andrew could still smell the leather from where he stood. He kept standing there.

Larry glanced toward the pulled window shades to his right. “What's that street above the highway? Palm trees all up and down both sides? Runs next to a little park with a footpath through it, has a railing so you don't fall off the cliff?”

“Ocean Avenue.”

“Ocean. I guess that makes sense.” Larry scratched his nose. “You might want to have a peek out the window. Couple plainclothes types up there with binocs. I think they might be watching you.”

Andrew had already spotted the men Larry meant. One white, one black, both in jeans and short-sleeved weekender shirts. It wasn't the weekend. He'd bought a sandwich and a paperback novel and watched them from a distant park bench for most of the afternoon and evening. After they'd ridden out the sunset without vacating their position, Andrew had finally given up and vacated his.

So the cops were staking out the beach house. He didn't see much to be done about it. Except maybe wave, if he saw them again tomorrow.

“I went ahead and let myself in around the other side, ” Larry said. “Don't think they saw me from up there, but you never know.”

“I take it the alarm system didn't give you much trouble.”

Larry smirked. “You trying to hurt my feelings?”

“How'd you find the place?”

“That Laney Borland, ” Larry said, shaking his head. “I guess the little shit hasn't done so bad for himself out here in La La Land. Two addresses on the property rolls, and each of 'em almost a million tax value apiece. Go figure.”

“I'm still trying to figure out what you're doing here.”

Eyebrow Larry Tomiczek drummed his thumbs on the wide wooden arms of the chair.

“You know, ” he said, “I came three thousand miles to see you, and you still haven't even said hello.”

“What do you want, Larry?”

Larry smiled. “That all depends what you got to drink around here.”

On his way west, Andrew had heard a psychologist on some
A.M.
talk-radio program use a phrase that wound up sticking in his aching brain.

He'd been in the car at the time, trancing to the whine of tires on asphalt, the bone-white reach of highway in his high beams. This was several hours past the desolate beauty of the Nebraska Sandhills, the scrubby dunes and stubby derricks of northeastern Colorado behind him, Denver's pale glow low in the sky ahead, Los Angeles still two sunsets away. His broken ribs had yet to heal, and the stiletto ache still spiked his breath. The deep gashes at his eye and mouth and jaw still seeped hot, watery red fluid between the butterfly strips holding them closed.

Family of choice.
That was the phrase the radio therapist had used. Forget the old saying about not being able to choose your family the therapist had been telling the caller on the line; when it comes down to it, all families are bound by choice, not genetic code. Most of us happen to choose our blood relatives, or at least choose not to choose otherwise. Some of us choose to mix and match until some other combination works. Some of us even choose to sever all ties and start fresh, embracing our people where we find them. But we always choose.

It had been a notion Andrew couldn't help but ponder as he chewed his way through the miles. He found himself imagining the many possible ways things might have turned out differently if he and Larry had started out as brothers in the traditional sense of the term. If nothing else, being blood siblings almost certainly would have prevented the specific disagreement that had done them in.

It seemed silly, looking back at more than a decade in the rearview mirror.

The irony? Caroline—seventeen going on thirty back then—had already broken it off with Larry herself by the time Andrew had discovered through the grapevine that the two of them had been carrying on.

Of course Andrew hadn't known this the day he found Larry at their regular spot outside Warek's. Larry, because he was Larry, hadn't volunteered the information.

He'd simply given Andrew a canary-feather smirk, admitted, yeah, he'd been meaning to come clean about a couple things. Should have said something sooner about what had been going on between him and Caroline, never really planned it in the first place, but still. Wasn't
right, keeping it quiet. It really had been bugging him. What could he say?

You can say so long, Casanova, Andrew had informed him. Because there's no way you're going out with my cousin. A: She's just a kid. B: She's going to college, not staying around this neighborhood. C: What's the matter with you?

He still remembered the way Larry had looked at him. Surprised. Slightly amused.

He'd said:

First of all, Caroline's no kid. Second of all, you'd think it'd set a guy at ease, seeing family with his oldest pal instead of some punk he didn't even know. Three, mind your own fucking business.

Andrew mentioned something about the problem being that his oldest pal happened to
be
a punk.

The conversation basically went off the rails from there.

Andrew hadn't intended for things to go loud with Larry right there on the sidewalk outside Warek's at three o'clock in the afternoon. He probably should have known better. So much for hindsight.

Once it was on, it was on. They'd made a mess of the place: clumsy, bullish, unstoppable. At one point, Andrew managed to find himself on the doling end of a headlock—but he was no match for Larry in a fair fight, and the tables had been about to turn. He remembered being flat on his back against a sewer grate, about to lose his hold. When Larry had begun to find leverage against the curb with his boots, Andrew had known he was through.

That was when he'd remembered the lighter in his jacket pocket…

… and so went up, in a sudden sizzle and a brief
stink of singed hair and skin, a friendship that went all the way back to the days when they'd still been grade school paperboys, delivering envelopes for the previous generation of guys who'd held down the chairs outside Warek's Café.

It had been a problematic situation, fraught with complications on many levels. Despite Andrew's fighting words, Larry Tomiczek was no punk. By then, Larry was known all over the harbor and beyond as the youngest guy ever to run his own crew for Cedric Zaganos. Technically, Larry had been Andrew's superior.

By nightfall, word of their tangle had spread to the far reaches of the kingdom and its rivals. The story was already mutating into different versions of itself, each one grander and gorier than the last.

Nobody but Andrew and Larry had known the pitiful truth about what had really sparked their rumble that day. Andrew had only gotten the better end because the cops had cleared the place before things could get any uglier. But the truth wouldn't have changed the reality of the situation.

Because losing an eyebrow was one thing. Losing face was something else entirely, and the thing at Warek's had been bad all around. Bad for Larry, bad for the organization. Very bad for Andrew, considering Larry rightfully had the organization on his side.

He'd given his friend little choice. Andrew had understood that even then. A guy in Larry's position didn't stay a guy in Larry's position by letting business like what had happened at Warek's slide. Friends were friends, but the food chain ruled.

Andrew had woken up the next morning hiding under a phony name in a Motel 6 near the airport. As for choices, under the circumstances he'd counted only two.

In Baltimore, the Zaganos organization dominated half the waterfront, plus anything worth dominating in the West that wasn't directly controlled by New York. Cedric Z had only one important competitor: a 260-pound sociopath named Henrietta Mingo, who controlled the other half of the waterfront and ran the rackets in East Baltimore. Inheritor of the organization her infamous father Henry had built, Henrietta Mingo had been successfully recruiting away Zaganos employees for years.

So Andrew—suddenly out of work, faced with the prospect of spending his days scanning the horizon for signs of Larry—had decided to make things easier for everybody.

He'd joined those who had already defected, exchanging asylum for what turned out to be more than a decade of indentured servitude to the scariest fairy godmother in all Baltimore.

Maybe you really did choose your family. But that didn't mean you always had appealing options.

“By the way, it's hotter than hell out here.” Larry perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and sipped at the bourbon Andrew had poured. Two glasses, three fingers each, both neat. “The travel guide said seventy-five and sunny all year round.”

“Did the travel guide recommend anything in terms of beachwear?”

“I didn't read that far. Why?”

“No reason.”

“I get it.” Larry tugged a black leather lapel and smoothed it with his fingers. “Like the skin? I bought it special for the trip. Figured I'd try to look like I fit in with all the movie stars.”

“You look like a Polack goombah.”

Larry held out a sleeve, considered it.

“Maybe you're right. I should borrow something of yours.” He gestured with his drink. “Nice pants you got on there, J. Crew. Retired a couple months and already shopping outta the yuppie catalogs, huh?”

Andrew leaned against the corner of the refrigerator. “You never answered my question.”

“Sorry, what was it again? I forgot.”

Andrew sipped his whiskey.

“Oh, right. What am I doing here. That's easy.” Larry made a gesture with his hand, pantomiming the act of aiming a remote control at a television. “I just turned on CNN, saw California was on fire, and thought to myself, hey, what do you know? The Torch must have gone to visit his cousin. Pretty simple from there. I just followed the smoke.”

“Hilarious.”

“Don't worry. Nobody else is coming to visit, if that's what you're wondering.”

“All I'm wondering right now, ” Andrew said, “is why did you?”

Larry took a sip. Then he grinned and said, “Turns out life's got a sense of humor.”

Andrew stood by, wondering when Larry was going to decide to let him in on the joke.

“And you owe me a favor, ” Larry said.

“I don't know how you're keeping score. By my count, you and me are just about even.”

“You still owe me, by mine.”

“You'll have to explain how you figure that.”

Larry finished his first round and brought himself another from the bottle Andrew had left on the counter. He held the bottle up; Andrew declined by raising his glass,
still two fingers full. Or one finger empty, depending on your viewpoint.

“What I said before? About nobody else coming to visit?” Larry tilted his head. “Why do you think that is?”

“Not worth the trouble, I assume.”

“Man. I swear, Torchie. Only you.” Larry took the top off his freshened drink and shook his head. “When you walked in naked that night and said you were quits, I figured you must be dumber than I realized. But in a million years, I never thought you'd be dumb enough to skip town with the advance cash from three open jobs. I gotta be honest, there's a part of me still doesn't believe it.”