Preacher: The East End Boys

Home > Fiction > Preacher: The East End Boys > Page 22
Preacher: The East End Boys Page 22

by Christopher Harlan


  “You feel good? You can’t touch me physically, and if the best you can do is have some dumb cop come to my house a few times and be annoying, I’m not worried. I’ve been through a lot worse than what you can throw at me.”

  His grin makes me violent. It’s a face only an entitled asshole would make—someone who thinks of themselves as completely untouchable. All of these guys make that face, and all of them probably believe the lies they tell themselves about what their money can buy them.

  My dad believed that same thing.

  He doesn’t anymore.

  “I feel great. I’d be even better if that fine piece of ass who thinks you’re the man left you in your shack and came to hang out with me for a while.” This guy wants to die. I’m going to oblige him if he keeps putting her name in his mouth. “Not that I already haven’t tasted those sweet lips. But I definitely want more.” I ball my fist. I’m not a hit first kind of guy, but like I said, there are exceptions to every rule. “Later.”

  Luckily for them I’m no snitch—but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to fuck him up one day—and not just for what he’s trying to do to me, for what he did do to Lyric.

  But not yet.

  That was a week ago.

  Now I’m home doing my new favorite activity—sending inappropriate texts to Lyric when her mom won’t let her out of the house.

  It’s starting to get dark and my mom is asking questions about Pope. She still worries about him like he’s a little kid. “He’s fine, Ma. He can take care of himself.”

  “I know,” she told me. “But what if he got arrested or something? That cop’s been all over us since that terrible thing happened in town.”

  “Don’t worry about that moron. He can’t do anything to us.”

  Mom always looks shaky when I get in trouble. I traumatized everyone enough with getting sent to juvie. I tried to keep my nose clean since I got here but haven’t been so good at it.

  I look at my watch. “It’s getting close to dinner, right?”

  “Yup,” she tells me. “Making pasta.”

  “It smells amazing.” Mom’s the best cook. “And look, I’ll text him if he takes much longer.”

  It takes much longer. I text him but he doesn’t answer back. Mom and I eat dinner by ourselves, and the whole time I can tell she’s worried. “It’s okay. If he doesn’t answer next time I text him, I’ll just go out and find him. Knowing him he probably passed out at some girl’s house while he was studying for some test. Don’t worry.”

  Easier said than done. Mom worries. We’ve given her lots of reasons—and by we, I mean me. This isn’t like my brother, and I’m quietly a little worried also. I’m hoping my little fake scenario is actually what happened. Pope’s been popular with the girls so far—nothing new there. Hopefully some chick in his Advanced-Whatever class invited him over so they can work on their Ivy League applications together or some shit. I hope nothing happened to the kid.

  Dinner comes and goes, and as it gets dark out I text him again. Ten minutes later he answers.

  Pope: Come out front. Now. Don’t tell Mom you’re coming out to see me. I’m around the side by the kitchen.

  Me: Alright, you shady bastard. Be right out.

  I made an excuse and went out the side door. In between our house and the next one over I see my brother, covered in all sorts of crap and looking like he just outran the Devil. “What the f...”

  “Shh. Come here.”

  I step outside and shut the door. I’m not used to seeing Mr. Cool and Collected looking panicked and filthy. “You’re a mess. Where the hell have you been? You missed dinner.”

  “Forget dinner,” he says. “We need to talk right now.”

  “Yeah, no shit. What’s going on with the clandestine spy stuff? Where have you been?”

  “Tell Mom you’re taking a walk or something so she doesn’t come out here.”

  “Pope, she’s. . .”

  He grabs me. Literally. It’s not aggressive, otherwise I would have pounded him out right on the spot. It’s desperate. “Just do it—I need your help.”

  “Alright. Hold on.”

  I lean in and yell that I’m going to walk down the block where there’s better cell service and see where Pope is. “What’s going on?” I stop and get a better look at him. “Forget that question, I have a better one—why are you wearing my jacket?”

  “Mine was dirty. Remember that thing in the cafeteria?”

  “Right.” There was a food fight last week. Pope got pelted with a big wad of spaghetti marinara. His clothes are still at the dry cleaners. “So where the hell have you been, it’s past dinner time.”

  “I told Mom I was hanging out with a friend, but that’s not where I was. I was in town. . .” He keeps starting and stopping his sentences and it’s driving me nuts. Something’s wrong—he’s upset. “I had to do it man. I had to. I couldn’t let those guys get the better of us.”

  “Woah, slow down man. What guys? What are you talking about?” I look down at his hands and they’re covered in blood. “Holy shit.”

  “I know. I cut myself pretty good.”

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “I broke in. I trashed the whole place.”

  “What whole place?” I’m starting to worry the more he speaks. Nothing about this weird moment is anything like my brother, and I need some answers asap. “Listen. You need to take a big deep breath, let it out, and when you breathe back in you need to explain what you did, why you’re bleeding, and what the hell I need to know about. For real.”

  It takes a few minutes but I finally get the whole story out of him, and when he’s done I can’t believe what I heard.

  “You broke into his office? How much damage?”

  “A lot. I had a bat with me. I got rid of it, don’t worry.” He smells like he raided the liquor cabinet.

  “Where? Who saw you?”

  “I don’t think anyone. I’m not sure though. Fuck, Preach, I can’t believe I fucking did that, but someone had to show those assholes that they can’t fuck with us at will.”

  Aldrich Griffin—and of course that’s his name—is Draven’s father—an investment banker and local Scrooge McDuck whose office sits in the middle of Main Street like a castle. Unbeknownst to me, Pope broke into his office after hours, smashed the place up, and ran like a fucking bandit.

  “Why the fuck did you do that, idiot? What were you thinking?”

  He pulls away from my grasp. He looks pissed. “What was I thinking? Ironic that you of all people are asking me that. I was thinking the same thing you were thinking the night you got arrested. The same thing when you brawled Draven in the street.”

  I told Pope about my little run in with Draven the other day. I never thought he’d do something about it—and especially not something so stupid—something I would do. This isn’t like him, and it would kill our mom to find out.

  I go big brother on him.

  “Alright, you got rid of the bat?”

  “Yeah. I dumped it where no one will find it.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “No one that I saw.”

  “Security cameras?”

  No answer. He looks at me panicked. “I didn’t even think of that.”

  I smack him upside the head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Sorry, I’m not a criminal, I didn’t think of everything. It wasn’t a plan like that, I just. . . I just got pissed when you told me about the fire and what they were trying to do to our family. And now I need your help man. I can’t get caught. My hands are covered in blood and I’m panicked as hell. What do I do?”

  For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to tell him.

  For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do.

  Forty-Two—Lyric

  The Present

  “What happened next?”

  I don’t know how to feel right now, so instead of feeling anything I just ask him questions like a reporter. I’v
e wanted to know what he’s telling me for a such a long time that this is hardly how I thought I’d react once I found out. He continues his story.

  “Two days later Officer Asshole paid me another visit. But that time was different.”

  “Different how?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but I remember he had this swag about him, like he was already celebrating a victory over me. Something in the way he smiled and carried himself, like a guy at a poker table who knows he has the hand that’s going to beat everyone at the table—all he has to do is put them down and declare victory. And there was something else.”

  “What?”

  “This time he wasn’t acting on behalf of the Arkham police department. He was just the puppet. The strings were being pulled by the big man.”

  The big man. He means Mr. Griffin. “Draven’s dad?”

  He nods. “The one and only. Even back then, the guy was an evil bastard. I never met him personally, but between how his son turned out and the way he used the cops as his own personal goons, I felt pretty comfortable hating the guy.”

  I had met Mr. Griffin, and he was every bit the corporate villain that Lucien is describing—rich, entitled, old, and angry. He was the kind of guy who had kids just so a son could carry on his legacy.

  “So what did Gorply say to you?”

  “I’d never tell him this to his face, but Pope’s a brilliant kid—he always has been. But being a great student apparently doesn’t also make you an arch criminal, ‘cause the security camera’s at Griffin’s company caught Pope in the midst of his little game of solo baseball—not his face, luckily, but his back and almost a full profile. The problem is from behind me and him could be twins—same color hair, about the same height, and wouldn’t you know that he borrowed my jacket in the middle of his crime.”

  What he’s saying is true—head on they don’t look alike at all, but if you were to look quickly or see them from the right—or in this case the wrong angle— it would be easy to mistake Lucien for Pope, and vice versa. “They had us dead to rights—sort of. At least he thought so when he grabbed me on my way home from school. Put me in his car and drove me to the station where we talked, alone.”

  “And what did he say to you?”

  Lucien takes a big, deep breath, like he doesn’t want to remember what he’s about to remember. “He told me that Mr. Griffin had surveillance footage of me vandalizing his office to the tune of $25,000 in damage.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Pope missed his calling as an MLB player. But Gorply didn’t know it was him. He thought it was me. In his warped mind, I not only started the fire in town, I vandalized Mr. Griffin’s office because, you know, I’m a criminal and that’s what criminals do, right?” He stops and looks up with a twisted face. “That’s when Gorply stopped speaking for himself and became Griffin’s mouthpiece. He knew my family couldn’t afford restitution on those damages. So he told me that if I—and I quote here—got my ass out of their town for good, he’d forgive my little debt.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars was pocket change to that guy. Gorply told me if I left, for good, and never came back, that the ‘big man’ would let everything go—but if I stayed, he’d not only go after me, but he’d go after my family. So I did the only thing that I could do,” he says. “I got the hell out of Dodge.”

  I’m speechless.

  Almost.

  “So that’s why you left? To protect Pope?”

  “I left to save a brother who didn’t need his promising future derailed, and to save a mom who didn’t need the heartache of having her other son in jail. But he paid me back for everything I did for him—literally.”

  “What does that mean, he paid you back?”

  Lucien takes a big, deep breath. “Even though he’s younger, he was always our father’s chosen son. Dad knew pretty early that I wasn’t cut out for being his successor, so he groomed Pope. Treated him better, shielded him from the beatings. The bastard saved the worst for me and my mom.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Long time ago, right? Pope got the company when Dad died, not me. He was named as CEO in his will, and he gave 99.9 % of his net worth to him also, after the money he probably sent to the Cayman Islands to be tax protected.”

  “So, how. . . how did...”

  “How did I end up the richer brother who’s in control of the company?” I nod. “Pope. Call it guilt, or responsibility, or just a sense of family, I don’t fucking know, but for whatever reason Pope legally ceded 70% of his equity in the company to me, giving me majority control and making me instantly rich.”

  I never thought of Pope as a guy who’d do something like that, but I guess he had his reasons. “And don’t get it twisted, 30% still gives him the kind of fuck you money people only dream of, but he realized that despite what Dad thought, my personality was actually better suited to run a company like his. Turns out I can be a little forceful when I need to be.” If this wasn’t such a serious conversation I’d laugh at that. “So The Carter Organization is mine—payment for services rendered.”

  Ironic. I’ve needed to hear these words for a decade, but somehow, I wasn’t ready to hear them tonight.

  But now that I’ve heard them, I don’t know how to feel. Angry, relieved, resentful, understanding. All of those emotions are flowing through my mind, and all in equal parts. They all start to rush to the surface.

  “Why. . . why didn’t you tell me all of this? Why did you just up and leave?”

  “Because you would have tried to stop me. I know you would have. Shit, you might have even tried to talk to Mr. Griffin yourself to get him to change his mind. I knew you, and even though I love all those qualities, I couldn’t risk anything threatening my family. It had to be a clean break.”

  Those words are gasoline on the small fire that’s been burning in my belly for ten years. “A clean break?” I yell. I don’t even realize it but I’m on my feet, and my voice is louder than I like to make it. “A clean break is ‘I’m leaving town. I love you but I have to go. Take care of yourself.’—Disappearing is something a coward does.” I’m full out yelling now, and then I remember that he’s still drunk and reeling from a funeral. This isn’t the time to have a dramatic fight, but I still can’t ignore what he just said.

  “Lyric, I. . .”

  But I don’t want to hear anymore of what he has to say. I have my precious answers—the ones I so desperately wanted—and it feels terrible. I grab my bag and storm out. It’s the only thing I can do to avoid this escalating.

  I leave him behind, disappearing like he did.

  Guess I’m going back to my old house after all.

  Forty-Three—Lyric

  The Next Day

  I never thought I’d sit in this booth again.

  The diner hasn’t changed much since I was in high school—and by that, I mean it hasn’t changed at all. It’s like someone locked this town in some kind of time warp. Even some of the waitresses are the same, just with greyer hair and few more wrinkles in their brows.

  The only difference between then and now is that twenty-eight-year-old me is sitting across from twenty-eight-year-old Jessalyn, and we’re not cutting class to be here—not that Jess ever really cut class anyhow. I order a coffee. I need it after spending the night in my old house with my crazy mom.

  “Do you have any of those giant, Friends sized cups?” The waitress looks at me sideways. I guess Friends hasn’t made it to Arkham just yet. I won’t spoil it by telling them that Ross and Rachel were on a break when he slept with that girl. “Okay,” I tell her, just to stop the staring contest we’re having. “Nevermind. Just a regular cup is fine, but come back every five minutes or so—I’m going to need a lot of refills.”

  “Is Mom really that bad?”

  I look at my sister like she just sprung horns out of her head. “The fact that you’re asking me that proves what I’ve always known—you have Stockholm Syndrome. You n
eed to do what Lucien did and get out of here—only don’t do it like a complete selfish asshole.”

  I told Jess everything that happened last night. I didn’t text Lucien and he didn’t try to contact me after I left. I’m fine with that—I don’t really want to see him right now after finding out that he wasn’t willing to stay and fight for what I thought we had together.

  “I was thinking about that whole thing,” Jess says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever think that Draven had something to do with all this from the start?”

  “You mean did he plan all that stuff to get rid of Lucien? I don’t know if he’s smart enough for that. That sounds like something you could do if you used those IQ points for evil instead of good.”

  She smiles. “There are different kinds of smart, Lyric. You don’t need a high IQ to be opportunistic. I don’t know if Draven planned it all out ahead of time—that’s not what I’m saying. I mean, do you think that maybe once he read the situation that he twisted his father’s arm a certain way to get his competition out of the picture?”

  “What competition? I wasn’t into Draven. I hated him.”

  “Yeah, you know that. Kennedy and I know that. Any rational person knows that—but Draven was always obsessed with you. From, like, middle school. I even think the scavenger hunt thing was his twisted way of trying to get you to be with him.”

  Even though we’re twins, my sister’s mind works very differently than mine. We’re both analytical, but I see things with emotion and Jessalyn’s all objective. She’s made a great data analyst because she can see a situation from the outside, even when it’s her own sister’s situation, which means she sees things that I can’t.

  “Huh,” I answer, gulping the first cup of coffee in almost one shot like a true caffeine whore. “I never even considered it, but honestly I didn’t really go over the details like that—all I understood was that Lucien left me—after that, my brain stopped doing any fact checking. All I could think of was Dad.”

 

‹ Prev