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"Life gets in the way," I guessed.
"For all of us," he agreed.
"How old are they?"
"My sisters? Twenty-five for the twins. Then twenty-three, twenty-one, and nineteen."
Five sisters. Jesus.
"Just babies still," I said, butting my hip into his to guide him down a side street.
"Yeah," he agreed with a sage nod, the kind that could only rightly come from a criminal when he couldn't be any older than thirty, someone who had lived a very different, very difficult kind of life. "But you try telling them that."
To that, I smiled. "Yeah. It was that way with Astrid too. I mean, it still is at times. I know I'm only a few years older, but I look at her and see just a kid still."
"Yeah. It's about that twenty-eight mark when life starts to really fuck you up."
"They think they're so grown and they have yet to wake up with aches in their lower backs yet," I agreed, smiling, feeling a twinge in my ankle, the kind that always bothered me in the cold. I had a knee that ached in the wet too. And fingers that started to sound like fireworks popping off when I stretched them in the morning.
"A sub shop?" Roderick asked, brows drawn down when we stopped outside it.
"His brother owns it. He claims that is how he knows it isn't bugged. Don't even think about ordering anything. I think you can get salmonella from simply breathing in here."
"Who is that?" Eduardo asked, jumping up from his table in the back, upturning his chair in the process, making it clatter to the floor, drawing the attention from the people behind the counter. "No. No no no no. You know you can't be bringing no narcs in here."
"Easy, Eddie. He's not a narc," I assured him. "Turn around," I demanded, pumping my elbow into Roderick's arm. "See, he's a Henchmen."
"What is a Henchmen doing with you? Ain't you enemies and shit? Competition?"
"Not enemies. Just not friendly either. Except on this job. We need each other to try to track down some hard-to-find merchandise," I explained, watching as he righted his chair, seeming to lose a bit of the tension as he sat back down, waving a hand in front of himself, inviting us to sit across from him.
"Merchandise is a fluid thing," he said, looking around at the people eating there suspiciously when he should have been looking at them with pity for their upcoming Exorcist impressions over the food. "Maybe you can help me out here by solving this crossword puzzle," he suggested, pushing an empty one toward us.
Eduardo thought he lived in some spy movie, that everyone was listening, that he had to be covert all the time or risk being found out.
I pushed the paper and pen over to Roderick, letting him do the silly shit.
"This is important, Eddie. We need this by Christmas."
He took the paper back, eyeing Roderick's surprisingly neat handwriting for a long minute. "This, this shouldn't be too hard," he said, pointing with the tip of his pen. "You'll pay, but it is doable. But this one," he said, pointing to the Double Trigger, "this one will be a problem. The only people who want these things are collectors. And collectors, well, they collect. They hold on. Hoard. So not many of these things hit the market unless someone dies, or someone falls on hard times and needs to sell."
"Can you think of anyone we can talk to who might know where to find this kind of merchandise?"
"I have a few names, maybe."
"There is no maybe. You either do or you don't," I told him, getting a bit worked up, feeling Roderick's hip bump into mine, leaving me to wonder if it was just because we were standing close, or if it was intentional like he was trying to tell me to play nice or something.
"Hey. Not everyone wants to get involved with you, Liv. I need to reach out, put feelers out."
"Those feelers better be out and touching things sometime tonight," I told him. "I want some names tomorrow," I specified, fishing a hundred out of my wallet, pushing it across the table toward him, having to fight back a smile while he fumbled like an amateur to quickly hide the money under the pile of crossword puzzles, appearing like some inept spy in a silly spoof movie.
"Fine. Tomorrow. Ten a.m."
"We'll be here," I agreed, turning and walking out, rolling my eyes a bit when Roderick stayed behind to thank him before jogging up to catch me near the corner of the street already.
"You could try a softer touch with him," he suggested.
"Don't tell me how to talk to my contacts."
"I'm just saying, he looked like he was going to piss himself while you were talking to him. But when I stroked his ego a bit, he gave me a name to have Astrid look into when we get home too."
