Vengeance (15 page)

“Perfect,” Casey said. “That keeps me completely out of it. Call me when you know the address.”

Casey exited and I resumed talking to Paige. “Can we do this soon?” I asked.

“We can do it right now,” she said. I wasn’t sure there wasn’t some innuendo coming through. “You want me to come to the motel?”

“I’m not there anymore.”

“Then come pick me up,” she said and gave me her address. It was on an alphabet street, back across the river, so it wouldn’t be hard to find.

Back at the table, I saw Casey had dropped a twenty to cover the tab. I gulped down a few more bites of my cold meal, chasing it with lukewarm coffee. I considered waiting to pay the bill in person and collecting what was sure to be about five bucks in change even after the tip. But as broke as I was, that felt like stealing from the waitress.

Chapter 16

I crept along the final block scanning the house numbers. Once I found Paige’s house I slipped into a free spot along the curb. When she didn’t come out after a minute I went up to knock.

“You changed cars,” she said, peering over my shoulder at the idling Buick.

I was halfway back down the front steps while she was still locking the front door.

“Hey!” she said. “Wait for me.”

I paused at the bottom of the steps. It’s not as if she would have gotten lost on the way to the car. The ground wasn’t icy and she wasn’t an old lady in need of an arm to steady herself on. She was my brother’s ex-lover and she had come onto me a few nights before. She repulsed me. But… I had been tempted, too. So I repulsed myself. Grief does funny things to people, they say. It’s an aphrodisiac of sorts. As far as I was concerned, it was disgusting to think about kissing my brother’s ex-, much less actually fucking her.

But in that air so cold it sterilized your nostrils it was impossible to ignore her perfume. She was a good-looking woman. Even more so in the daylight. I was just going to have to avoid noticing her as much as possible.

“You know, some men get the car door for a lady,” she said, settling into the passenger seat next to me. I already had my foot on the brake and had shifted into drive.

“This isn’t a date,” I said.

“No shit it isn’t. But you never got the car door for a lady?” she said.

“Where are we headed?” I asked as we came to a stop at the corner. I could feel her glare on the side of my face. I looked left, as if checking for oncoming traffic.

“Straight,” she finally said.

As I continued onto the next block, I hoped she would volunteer more directions in advance. Before the next stop sign, she offered, “Go like you’re heading to your motel.”

We were on the northwest side of town, which I wasn’t familiar with. But I must have been going in the right direction or she would have said something. I was about to head straight through an intersection when she said, “Head over to L Street. It’s faster.”

In a few blocks, I saw the elevated interstate and realized where I was. I turned right on L Street to head toward the motel and waited for her to guide me.

“Take a right here,” she said. We were coming up on a corner. The street sign said it was 8th Avenue. She told me to turn onto 4th Street. One block up, she pointed across my body and said, “That place.”

“The blue house?” I said.

“That’s it.”

I couldn’t read the house number, but I knew the cross streets so I could find the place again. And I had the general location for Casey.

“You used to bring him here,” I said.

“A few times. If he was in no shape to get here himself.”

“If he was in no shape, why would he need drugs?”

“Hey, fuck you, OK? I loved Aiden,” she said. “Sometimes he’d be drinking with some buddies and they all wanted to get high. It wasn’t a big deal. Sometimes he’d get a certain way. If you ever saw him like that, and if you knew what it took to get him through it, you’d do it, too.”

I circled around the block to head back the way we had come.

“That’s it?” Paige asked when she realized we were heading back. “You’re not going to talk to him?”

“Nope.”

I didn’t see the need to fill her in on the details of the plan.

“Why are you so rude to me all of a sudden?” Paige asked.

“I’m not being rude,” I stated. I didn’t feel at all like talking.

“To hell you’re not! I thought you were nice when I met you. Aiden always said so. You were his innocent little brother.”

“Yeah, I thought you were nice, too, until you tried to fuck me.”

“I never tried to fuck you! What are you even talking about?!”

“At the motel. You were all over me,” I said.

“I was drunk! And upset. Jesus! You never did something stupid when you were drunk? Oh, I forgot! You’re Ethan ‘The Saint’ Tanner. You don’t even get drunk, do you? Yeah. That’s the thing Aiden never could stomach about you. You know that? His self-righteous little brother, always thinking he was better than his own blood.”

The only fitting reply was silence. Aiden hadn’t supplied me with ammunition to strike back at her with. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t even know her. And I shouldn’t have been so taken back by this stranger accusing me of being judgmental toward my brother. But the problem was she had heard it from Aiden, himself. I knew she had. As much as I loved him, he and I had become more different than not as we grew up. He knew I wasn’t thrilled about some of his life choices. But it was because I loved him and wanted better for him – because he was my brother and he
was
better and deserved better. I never put him down. I tried to lift him up. But we all interpret the situation from our own perspective, and I know Aiden thought I put myself above him in moments like that. If I were going to start a list of regrets, that would be a contender for first place.

I cracked my window to let in some air. She immediately reached for the heater controls. The sound of the blower almost overpowered the grunge from the stereo. The music just seemed to snarl some ineffable discord, as if channeling the atmosphere from within that very car.

“Aiden always wanted to make our dad proud,” I said. The words appeared of their own volition. They wanted to be heard. “That led him to make a lot of choices he might not have made on his own. I wanted him out of this lifestyle. He could have been so much more. Is that such a bad thing to want for my brother?”

I put my window back up and we drove back to her house in silence. But the tension had dissolved, at least on my side. I realized I didn’t need to prove to anyone how much Aiden meant to me. After all, there I was, entertaining some so far baseless theory that his death had been orchestrated. All I wanted after my brother died was to find some comfort. And comfort was the last thing investigating his death was providing. The fact that I was chasing down leads that everyone else thought pointed to something but no one else felt compelled to pursue should have spoken for itself. None of them was qualified to criticize my love of Aiden.

I pulled up at the curb and Paige sensed I wasn’t going to even shift into park, so she got out alone. As soon as she closed the door, she tapped on the window and pulled the door back open wide enough to stick her face in. “Do you want to come in for a minute?” she asked.

“No,” I said. Then I tried to soften my curt reply by adding, “Thanks. But I need to go make some calls.”

“Oh, God. I’m not going to throw myself at you. Come on. You can use my phone.”

That would be more convenient and warmer than a phone booth, I decided.

“Nice place,” I said as I entered.

The living room spread across the whole front end of the house. The dining room extended down one side, to where the kitchen waited around the corner. Stairs led up to probably two or three bedrooms and the only full bath in the place. It was a pretty typical floor plan for houses around there. I’d lived in similar enough houses that I could have found my way around in the dark.

“Help yourself,” Paige said, pointing to the phone on a table at the end of the sofa. She caught on from my hovering that I wanted to make my call in private. So she disappeared into the kitchen and ran the water, maybe for no other purpose than to ensure me she wasn’t eavesdropping. I left a brief voice message on Casey’s beeper letting him know D’Bag’s address. I hadn’t considered that he might not be available to return the call right away and that I might have to hang out with Paige. It was probably better than waiting on the curb next to a pay phone with the passenger side window down so I could hear when it rang. I cradled the phone noisily, which sent the intended message because the water stopped.

Paige stuck her head into the dining room and asked, “Can I get you anything?”

I wasn’t sure whether it was a sincere offer or a way to check if it was all right to join me in the living room. Either way, I declined.

“This is all about what happened to Aiden?” she asked. I had been standing next to the phone. She sat on the far end of the sofa and I joined her on my end. “What have you found out?”

“Not much.”

“Who did you call?” she asked. Her eyes rolled up to one corner as if peering inside her own head and she did some quick math. “Casey?”

When I didn’t respond, she knew I was trying to figure out a convincing lie.

“That makes sense,” she said. “He knows people.”

“He’s not really involved,” I said, trying to perform damage control. “He’s just someone to bounce ideas off.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, not hiding her sarcasm. “Aiden was in with a lot of those guys. Your dad always told him who to meet, what to say. But I think Casey introduced him to the younger crowd.”

“My dad’s been out of the business since I was little. His heart has always been in it, though. Aiden getting in with those guys was his second chance,” I said. I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know. Instead, I thought maybe she could tell me something I was curious about. “What’s the deal with Casey? I mean, is he dealing drugs? How’s he connected?”

“Ha! No, he’s no drug dealer. That punk doesn’t have the balls for anything like that. I think of him as some kind of errand boy,” she said. “He does favors, gets things, takes care of people. He’s a delivery boy, pimp, chauffeur, and whatever else they need him to be.”

“It’s the perfect job for him. He was always good at brown-nosing.”

“Oh, God, that fucker is such a kiss-up! Aiden told me he puts all his effort into impressing the higher-ups and he ends up pissing off the boots on the ground more often than not.”

I thought about the nickname Louis had used. Weasel. Casey may have been a man who knew how to get things done, but that didn’t mean he was popular. The phone rang and Paige nodded to signal it was fine for me to answer, since we both expected the call to be from Casey.

“Ethan?” he confirmed when I picked up. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Paige’s place.”

There was a pause. I didn’t know if he was distracted or calculating what my location meant. “Meet me at your dad’s house in twenty minutes.”

Chapter 17

It took under fifteen minutes to get to my dad’s house. But the idea of making small talk with my dad while we waited for Casey was unbearable, so I stayed outside. The tail end of one Pearl Jam song and the first two verses of “Mister Jones” later, I was already feeling stupid sitting in a car in broad daylight. I paused on the first step, letting the plank fully bow and creak under my weight, hoping Casey would pull in before I knocked. Instead, the noise drew attention. I heard my dad barking about who was outside, followed by Vickie’s hurried footfalls and a muttered curse just before she cracked the door to see who it was. I was still on the top step, not yet on the porch. Instead of inviting me in, she turned around and called, “It’s your son!”

There was no escaping so I proceeded across the porch. I half-expected Vickie to greet me, but she had left the door hovering slightly open, assuming I was going to come in.

“I’m not paying to heat the outside!” my dad yelled.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me. My dad was on the far end of the sofa. Vickie was nowhere in sight, but I heard a cabinet close from the kitchen.

“So you’re still alive?” he growled.

I was speechless for a second. Then I realized no one had told him about my encounter with Rook the night before. I can’t even say I assumed Casey had. I hadn’t answered to him, or anyone, for so long, that I hadn’t given it a thought. I called myself independent. I guess it came from growing up with no one giving a shit about me. But I could tell he was upset. Anger was as close as he could come to showing affection for me. How much it must have hurt for every positive emotion to corkscrew through him like that and malign itself into a tangle of rusty barbed wire before he uttered it.

I thought of how to respond as I crossed the room, stopping with the coffee table between us. Before I could speak, he continued.

“Called your motel. Never got an answer. Drove out there around four this morning. Your car wasn’t there, but they finally showed me your room after I made a holy stink,” he said. “Place was empty. I didn’t know if you got dropped in the river for real this time and they had cleaned every trace of you being in town.”

“The motel clerk knew I left,” I said. But just because he had fed Casey information for twenty bucks didn’t mean he was going to share more information with anyone asking about me.

“You could have called this morning.”

“I’ve been busy. I’m tracking shit down.”

That bit of news cut his tirade short. The momentary vacuum made Vickie’s deliberate silence in the next room the most prominent motion in the house.

“So Rook came through?” he asked in a tone of mixed delight and surprise.

“No. That fucker didn’t say a thing. If I hadn’t gotten his locket like you told me to, I’m pretty sure I would have ended up dead. I’m still not sure I’m in the clear. Casey got me a different place to crash and a car to use. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for that gorilla.”

“Nothing? He didn’t give you anything?” my dad said, all his previous delight gnashed into burning resentment. “That
muh
—ther fucker!”

“It was stupid. I don’t know how I ever let you guys talk me into that. Twice. That shit’s way out of my league. No way was I ever going to squeeze information from—”

We both snapped our heads toward double rap at the door. It was Casey and he was already letting himself in. He seemed awfully comfortable in my dad’s house.

“Liam,” Casey said to announce his arrival.

“Rook didn’t give up anything? After all these—! That
muh
—ther fucker!” my dad repeated, now with less anger and markedly more frustration. But still something more. Was he disappointed? Not in me for not getting the information, but in Rook for not giving it? Was I imagining things, or did he actually sound hurt?

“It’s fine, Liam,” Casey said. “We got something else.”

My dad was still grinding out curses toward Rook as Casey joined him on the sofa. I was still standing like a boy taking a scolding, so I turned and sat on the armchair in the corner across from my dad, leaning forward with my forearms propped on my thighs. It was becoming our standard arrangement.

“So, we found out—” Casey started. But my dad put up his hand like a stop sign.

“Honey!” he called into the kitchen. “Honey. Run to the store and get me some smokes?”

I couldn’t help but smirk. If I had turned the corner into the kitchen I bet I would’ve found a carton of cigarettes on top of the fridge. But my dad needed everything to seem important. Too important for a “civilian” to overhear. Everyone knew the errand was a ploy to get her out of the house so the men could talk business. Old school. Or maybe she did need to be gone. Maybe what we were going to say shouldn’t be overheard. But it smacked of so many of his covert late night counsels in the living room when I was growing up—counsels that never amounted to anything—that it was just laughable now.

Still, I was one of the confidants this time.

“Aiden’s dealer was a guy called D-Bag on the northwest side,” Casey told my dad, once Vickie had departed in her signature hurricane. He knew how to make the old man feel important, like briefing him on the morning’s events. “Now, D-Bag works for a supplier who micro-manages his business.”

“Not a bad idea,” my dad said. “Gotta keep a close eye on drug dealers.”

“Right,” Casey continued. “Well, this supplier runs his dealers like a chapter out of business school. Stock reports, scheduled inventories, and the whole nine yards. In fact, he’s got them keeping ledgers.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Drug dealers keep records on their customers?”

“These ones do,” Casey said. “I don’t know if it’s in code. I don’t know where D-Bag keeps it. All I know is this thing exists. And if you can get your hands on it, that’s the hard evidence you’ve been looking for.”

“I don’t get it,” my dad said.

“We’re working on the idea that a hit was put on Aiden because he ran up some debt with his dealer,” Casey explained. “This ledger will confirm the debt.”

“I’m not fucking ignorant,” my dad barked. “That just shows he owed money to a drug dealer. It doesn’t mean the dealer put a hit on him.”

“Right. And there’s no way the dealer made that call, anyway,” Casey said. “But if we know Aiden was in debt that gives us a trail to follow. From the dealer to the supplier.”

“What if there are other people in the ledger who owed money? And what if something happened to them?” I added. “If there’s a pattern, it’s too much to be a coincidence.”

“There’s our detective!” Casey said.

My dad grumbled. “Great, he’s a fucking detective.” I could read his mind and knew the word sounded too close to “cop” for him to be happy about it. “But he’s a pussy. You expect him to march into this guy’s place and beat the ledger out of him?”

“Hey, didn’t he tell you? Your ‘pussy’ son took down Rook last night!”

I appreciated the assist from Casey, but my dad just scowled as if it were no big accomplishment. I’d like to have seen him do the same, even before he had become a broken down cuss of a mule.

“Anyway, we’re going to apply a little finesse to this situation,” Casey said. “This D-Bag delivers pizza four nights a week, including tonight.”

“So I’m supposed to break into his place?”

“Like you’ve never done that before!” my dad scoffed.

“Let me tell you what I found out,” Casey said. “Easiest job ever.”

So we sat there and went over the plan. It didn’t seem complicated enough to require three heads, but Casey and my dad brought up the possibility of alarms and watch dogs and how to deal with them. Then my dad would share a quick anecdote from his glory days. It seemed more like an ego stroke than a legit game plan. But I didn’t rain on their parade. Let the old man have his moment. My dad was beaming with authority and speaking from experience. It had been so long since someone had sought his expertise in the scheming of a crime. That was the sort of moment he could only dream of those days. And Casey had made sure to include him. I wasn’t sure whether he was doing the old man a favor or working some other angle.

I let them hash out the minutia. For my part, I needed to consider the gravity of what that ledger might hold. It was more than the vague notion of information I had hoped to get out of Rook. That ledger promised to be both the motive and the death warrant. A few days before, I never would have believed Aiden could get so mixed up in drugs that it would kill him. Now I was an afternoon away from finding the key to the whole mess. If it did turn out Aiden had been killed over a debt, I would climb up the ladder from dealer to supplier to whoever I found at the top and collect a debt of my own.