8
As Corey was walking across the parking lot to his car, a blue Ford truck rolled up behind him and honked.
It was Leon, again. Shit. Corey got a quivery feeling in his knees.
“Corey!” Leon waved from the driver’s side window. “Slow up, man!”
Corey looked around to see if anyone was watching them. They were alone in the parking lot. Evening rush-hour traffic traveled back and forth on the adjoining road, the bleat of horns and rumble of engines like discordant music.
He approached Leon’s truck. Leon wore a pair of wraparound mirror sunglasses. He was the only one inside the vehicle. The dull-eyed pervert was gone.
“What’re you doing here?” Corey asked.
“I was in the area, my man, thought I’d drop by,” Leon said. He took a draw on a cigarette. “I figured we could grab a cold one and chitchat a bit.”
Corey glared at him. “My wife told me she ran in to you at lunch. Why the hell are you following us?”
“Following you?” Leon grinned. “Don’t be a paranoid. Come on, it was pure, unadulterated coincidence. I’ve been going to that Chipotle spot for weeks. I love Mexican cuisine, amo el alimento mexicano.”
“Whatever. That’s bullshit. I know you better than that. What kind of game are you trying to run on me?”
Smirking, Leon pointed ahead with his cigarette, reflections of passing traffic floating across the lenses of his sunglasses. “There’s a sports bar down the road, you still guzzle Heineken by the keg, I know you haven’t changed that much, let’s roll, vamos, climb up in the saddle here and let’s go get that brewski, it’s so damn hot and smoggy in this bitch nothing’ll hit the sweet spot like an ice cold lager.”
Sucking in a breath, Corey looked around again. All clear.
“I’ll take my own car,” Corey said. “Follow me.”
As he drove, he tried to think of what he was going to say to Leon. His earlier conversation with Todd replayed through his thoughts. I don’t think I ’d snitch, but I’d probably try to talk you into turning yourself in peacefully.
He decided, finally, that that was what he would do: he would convince Leon to turn himself in to the FBI. Leon had been gifted with the kind of raw intelligence that defied standardized tests and regimented school curriculums, and he had the cold-blooded cunning of a rattlesnake, but no one, not even him, could elude the FBI forever. The Feds had mind-boggling resources, highly trained professionals, and access to a worldwide intelligence network. Sooner or later, they would catch him-and Corey did not intend to find himself and his family caught in the crossfire.
They went to a sports bar called Shooters. Corey had been there once with Todd and their staff. They had a wide selection of beers on draught, good burgers, buffalo wings at five different levels of spiciness, and an abundance of big TV screens positioned to give you a prize view of a sporting event no matter where you sat.
At Leon’s request, they took one of the high-backed booths in the far corner of the dining room, in the smoking section, near the restrooms and a rear emergency exit. Leon settled onto the side that gave him a direct view of the entrance.
He’s positioning himself to see everyone who comes inside, Corey thought. And to make a quick getaway, if he needs to.
It was early yet, the happy hour crowd just beginning to drift in. Corey noted, for his own benefit, that none of the patrons were uniformed police officers.
An energetic young brunette stopped by to take their orders. Leon asked for two Heinekens, on draft. When the waitress flitted away, he removed his sunglasses.
“My man, C-Note,” Leon said. He twirled the shades in his fingers. “Another day, another dollar, nothing like hitting the bar after putting in a hard day of honest work.”
“You know all about putting in that hard day of honest work, I take it.”
“You know it, I’ve had my nose to the grindstone all day, painting houses in this damn near tropical jungle climate is enough to make a grown man cry uncle, but I doubt you know anything about that, sitting up there as you do in your plush, air-conditioned office, looking out the window at the hoi polloi while you sip on chilled Perrier and monitor your stock portfolio.”
Corey let the veiled insult pass. “What’s the address of the house you were painting today, Leon?”
“It’s on Wainwright Way, a stone’s throw from here, a mansion, actually, stucco, eight bedrooms, five bathrooms, Jacuzzi, wine cellar, swimming pool, the whole nine. They had some annoying little rat dog skittering around all over the place. I almost had to kick that sucker in the teeth to get him out of my way.”
“A Chihuahua,” Corey said.
“Yeah, that’s what they call them, one of those Taco Bell mutts. The bastard pissed on my paint brushes and I could’ve wrung his scrawny goddamn neck like a towel, but the lady of the house was there, fine bitch, old as Methuselah but fine. Most definitely she’d had about a million dollars of plastic surgery done, she had these crazy perfect D-cup knockers that made me want to nurse like a newborn, you know what I mean, huh, huh?”
Corey could only shake his head. It was impossible to know whether Leon was telling the truth. He lied with a glibness that Corey had never seen before in anyone else.
There was likely a road nearby called Wainwright Way, and there might have been a home that fit Leon’s thumbnail description. Leon might have even driven past and observed a crew of painters at work there, too. But who knew whether he had worked there himself or not, unless you’d seen him with your own eyes? That was what made him such a good liar. He spun his fabrications from a loom of reality and wove the threads as he saw fit to suit his purposes.
The waitress delivered their beers. Leon raised his mug. “To the good old days.”
Leon took a long sip, belched with satisfaction.
Quiet, Corey left his beer untouched. He was struggling to find the words to express himself, and as far as he was concerned, this meeting of theirs was by no means a celebration of anything.
“Ah, that hits the spot,” Leon said. He grinned. “Remember how we used to do, how we’d kick back and lounge after we put in real work?”
Corey slid his mug aside. “I don’t think about those days any more, Leon. I’m a husband now, a father. I run a business, a legit business.”
“All right, all right, yeah, yeah, I feel you. You’re Mr. Home Security now.” He giggled. “Ironic, still, you know, deliciously ironic.”
“I’m an upstanding member of society. I have a reputation in the community. A good name.”
Leon drank more beer. “A man’s only as good as his name, uh-huh, yeah, that’s what I always say, right, right, right.”
“These days, when I’m faced with a decision, I do the right thing,” Corey said. “It’s not all about me any more. At the end of the day, I have responsibilities to other people that I have to keep in mind.”
“Of course you do, that’s cool.” Leon fidgeted with his sunglasses. “It’s all good, I like to hear this from you, stepping up to the plate for the family and the business, comme il faut, my man, you make me proud.”
Corey pushed out a breath from the bottom of his lungs. “Listen, I don’t know why you’ve been following me and my wife, and I don’t know how long you have, and to be frank, I don’t care-because it all ends here. I looked you up online, Leon. I think you know damn well what I found.”
“What’s that?” Leon fished in his pocket and withdrew the cigarette lighter. He flicked the striker wheel and brought the flame to a fresh cigarette. Taking a slow drag, he left the lighter lying in plain sight on the table next to the beer mug. “Share the fruits of your research, good buddy.”
Corey cracked a knuckle. Prying his gaze away from the lighter was like escaping the gravity pull of a black hole.
“Turn yourself in peacefully,” Corey said softly. “Please.”
“Why should I?” Leon tapped ashes into a tray. “Believe it or not, I like how I’m living. I’m here in the ATL maxi
ng and relaxing with my best partner from back in the day, having a cold brew. My life’s all biscuits and gravy.”
“Be serious.”
“I am serious. I’m a celebrity, don’t you know, this pretty mug has been cycling all over the glass teat. Hey, want my John Hancock?”
Leon pulled a square beverage napkin toward him, removed an ink pen from his pocket, and did a loopy scrawl of his signature. He slid the napkin across the table to Corey.
“Give that to the wifey.” Leon winked.
“Listen.” Corey crumbled the napkin in his fist. “You’re putting me and my family in a very dangerous situation. I’m trying to help you.”
Leon sneered. “Wrong, wrong, wrong, you’re trying to help yourself, and in my informed opinion, you don’t need any more help, Mr. Husband-Father-Hot Shit Entrepreneur. Matter of fact, it looks as if you ought to be doing like Mother Teresa and lending a helping hand to the less fortunate who remember you from way back when, when your only ride was a rusty little Huffy dirt bike and your dear old grandma dribbled water in the milk so you could eat Frosted Flakes till the first of the month.”
Leon picked up the lighter again and thumbed the wheel. He balanced the palm of his hand on the flame’s edge, savage eyes lacerating Corey as the heat singed his flesh. It was a morbid game he and Corey had played as teenagers, and Leon had always outlasted him.
“You want money,” Corey whispered.
“You owe me. Remember all those things I did for you, wingman?”
Corey didn’t want to remember any of it. “We did those things together.”
“I did time for you, too, do you remember that? A three-year bid, we didn’t do that together.”
“But that was for something you did on your own! That was your own solo job.”
“I could’ve brought you down to the sewer with me, and you know it, I could’ve brought you down for a whole truckload of dirt that I haven’t told anyone about-yet.”
Leon flicked the lid shut on the lighter and slammed it onto the table. Corey flinched in his seat.
“You’ve done well for yourself, and I’m proud of that,” Leon said. He exhaled a ring of smoke toward Corey’s face. “But you’ve forgotten your roots, kiddo, it’s time to pay the devil his due.”
Understanding washed over Corey like cold water. “That’s why you followed my wife today, isn’t it? You wanted to prove you could get to someone close to me if I don’t agree to what you want.”
Leon smirked. “Did I say that?”
“I know how you think,” Corey said. “You know what? I bet me running in to you this morning wasn’t coincidence, either, not by a long shot. You planned that somehow-something tipped you off about me and my business. What was it, huh? Did you plug my name into Google, too, learn all about my company, and figure you could run some half-assed extortion scheme on me?”
“If you say you know how I think, then you should know I don’t plan anything. I live in the moment.”
“Bullshit,” Corey spat.
“Think so? Okay-want to know what I’m planning at this precise moment? Do you? How about this. I’m planning to drop an e-mail to the law in Detroit describing a cold case that involves this upstanding citizen who lives in Atlanta but who actually has a quite unsavory past, and this e-mail will rather strenuously suggest that they investigate this particular individual, uh-huh, perhaps request a DNA sample from said person, ’cause, golly, the crime scene techs must have collected forensic evidence for this lingering, perplexing case, and it would be a simple process for them to pop all of it under the ole microscope and see if there’s a match-”
“That’s enough,” Corey said. “I get it.”
Grinning, Leon took another pull on his cigarette and chased it with a gulp of beer.
Looking around, Corey blotted his damp palms on his khakis. With Leon’s refusal to turn himself in, he saw only one way out of this. He didn’t like it, but it might be the only way to spare him and his family further involvement.
He dug his wallet out of his pocket.
“You have seen the light,” Leon said. “I have trained you well, grasshopper.”
Corey passed Leon all of the cash in his wallet: a hundred and twenty dollars.
“This is all I have on me,” Corey said.
“A hundred and twenty dollars?” Leon riffled through the bills, folded them into his pocket. His eyes burned. “You actually think I’m going to saddle up and gallop into the sunset for a hundred and twenty fuckin’ dollars?”
“Look, man.” Corey opened his wallet, showed it to him. “I’m telling you, that’s all I’ve got.”
“You’ve got more in the bank, a whole lot more. You think I’m the village idiot?”
Corey wiped sweat from his forehead. “How much do you want?”
“How much is your freedom worth to you?”
Corey had handled the household finances ever since he’d married. He did a mental calculation on how much he could withdraw from their accounts without Simone immediately noticing.
“I could give you five thousand tomorrow,” he said.
“That’s all your nouveau riche life is worth? Five thousand lousy dollars? You spent that much on window treatments in your McMansion. Do you realize how absurd and insulting that sounds, do you have any fucking clue how ridiculous it is, do you, do you, huh?”
Corey stammered. “Maybe. . maybe I could get you six thousand, or seven-”
“Fifty large.”
Corey thought he had heard him wrong. “Fifty thousand dollars?”
“You know what? Make it a hundred.”
“Leon, I. . I can’t.”
“Two fifty.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Three hundred.”
Corey was shaking his head.
“You know you have it,” Leon said.
“That’s not the point. Listen, I’m not paying you fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or some other crazy amount. Hell, no. I’m not doing it, Leon. You can’t bully me the way you used to, forget it, those days are over.”
Leon glowered at him, eyebrow twitching.
“You’ll take what I’m offering,” Corey said. “That’s five thousand dollars, cash. I get it to you tomorrow, you take it, and then you stay the hell away from me and my family and we forget we ever ran into each other again. Okay? That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”
Leon was silent for a breathless moment-and then he hurled his beer mug across the dining room. It exploded like a grenade against a far wall, bits of glass and foam spraying everywhere.
People spun around, gawking. A hush fell over the room.
Getting to his feet, Leon stuffed the cigarette lighter into his pocket and snapped on his sunglasses. He pointed at Corey, spittle spluttering from his lips.
“You’re gonna give me everything you’ve got, one way or another. You owe me, motherfucker, you’re gonna pay up, one way or another. That’s the deal.”
Leon stormed to the doors. One of the bartenders shouted at him, and Leon flipped the guy the finger and told him to kiss his ass. He shoved through the exit.
Corey’s heart had crawled halfway up his throat. He swallowed.
The waitress appeared beside the table, cheeks flushed red. “Someone has to pay for that broken glass, sir.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Corey said. “And the beers, too, I guess.”
With a sigh of disgust, he slid out his credit card.
9
Driving home, Corey took a less direct route, repeatedly checking the rearview mirror to see whether he was being followed. He didn’t appear to be, but that gave him little comfort.
He didn’t know for sure how long Leon had been watching him, didn’t know the depth of Leon’s knowledge of him and his family. Leon had demonstrated that he knew where Simone worked. There was no telling what else he might know.
Home was a welcome sight, as always. Blood-orange evening s
unshine shimmered on the gabled roof, and the newly planted hibiscus fronting the bay window was blooming, pink petals as bright as cotton candy. The Bermuda grass, tended by a landscaping service that visited weekly, was so lush, green, and finely edged that it might have been artificial turf.
He and Simone had worked hard, and sacrificed much, to achieve this house, their piece of the American Dream. He could not bear the thought of losing it all.
He parked in the garage next to Simone’s SUV and cut off the engine. He hit the remote control clipped to the sun visor, and the big sectional door rumbled shut.
One thing was certain: he couldn’t tell Simone what was going on. If he told her what had happened at the bar, she would insist on contacting the police. It was the logical, good citizen thing to do. He would be unable to explain to her satisfaction why calling the cops was out of the question, not without delving into the truth.
Listen here, babe, we can’t call the police and report that we saw Leon because Leon has some dirt on me. Yeah, some old, serious dirt-the kind of dirt that gets you sent to prison for a long time. .
She would pressure him for full disclosure. Once he shared those sordid details, everything for which he’d struggled so hard all these years would come crashing down: his marriage, his business, his reputation.
How had his life ever come to this? Hadn’t he paid his dues? Hadn’t he rendered his pound of flesh on the altar of the golden rule, hard work, service to others, and sacrifice?
But you’ve forgotten your roots, kiddo, it’s time to pay the devil his due. .
Hadn’t he done everything he was supposed to do to make peace with his past?
It all seemed so unfair that he wanted to punch the crap out of something. Leon’s smug face would have been a satisfying target.
He snatched the key out of the ignition and went inside.
“Daddy!” Jada cried when he entered the kitchen. She catapulted into his arms.
“Hi, Pumpkin.” He bent and kissed her forehead.
The touch of his daughter, the sweet, innocent smell of her, made his throat tight. He could not lose her; he would not. She meant more to him than any house, any business, any amount of money.
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