It was easy to see they were related, even if Lis probably outweighed his son by a solid hundred pounds. Both were nearly as tall as I was, with the same thick head of hair (Ares’s was only slightly tinted with silver), same pronounced nose, same black eyes that could have doubled as bullets. But while Lis looked like he would melt into a puddle if splashed with water, Ares had the body and spirit of a man who took care of himself. And also a man who would take care of you if you crossed him.
In another life, Ares Antoni and I might have been friends. As it stood, I thought at least we understood each other. Both of us were the sons of some of the most ruthless men on the planet. Both were raised to abandon any sense of ethics to preserve a fucked-up sense of family pride and honor.
“You here to lose some money, pretty boy?” he asked me.
“That’s the plan. One of these days, I’m gonna get lucky, and the Minoan’s gonna be mine again.” It was actually at this very table that I’d lost my final stake. Yeah, Dad had been pretty fucking pissed about that one. I didn’t actually want it back, but a little banter never hurt.
Ares snorted. Because that’s how this worked. I couldn’t just walk in and demand information. There were formalities to adhere to. Customs to observe.
Games to play. Literally.
Two hours later, I was down three hundred grand and had the information I needed. As predicted, Billy Richards had offered to sell information about the Blacks and the Huntingtons. And Ares, bless his dime-sized heart, had decided that keeping me happy was worth more than whatever Billy could offer.
“We didn’t buy shit,” Ares said. “The Blacks and us have done all right over the years. And we don’t mess with snitches or gossips.”
At the head of the table, Lis grunted in agreement.
What a fucking lie. This whole town ran on gossip, and the Antonis loved it as much as I loved blackmail. I had no doubt that if I hadn’t shown up and paid them another way, Lis, Ares, or their thugs would have followed Billy Richards to whatever flea-infested motel he was holing up at and beaten the information out of him just for fun.
I laid my cards on the table, knowing the ten high was going to lose me another fifty thou but would get me the last bit of information I needed. “Location?”
Ares chuckled. “Oasis off Boulder Highway. Room 247.”
Yeah, they were definitely planning to get that story if my “bad luck” and I hadn’t shown up.
“Appreciate it.” I tossed the rest of the cards on the table and stood. “Nice doing business with you, Ares baby. Lis.”
The big man nodded as Ares stood to walk me out to where Mac was waiting by the door.
“Pleasure as always,” he said. “But, Jester?”
I paused at the door, bracing out of habit. Most of the time, Ares actually had something to say, but I’d been punched in the face more than once just as a reminder not to fuck with the guy—or maybe just to prove to his dad he wasn’t going soft. I got it, but I wasn’t in the mood to replace my veneers for the third time.
“Whatever you do, you do it clean. The mayor’s been looking around, and we don’t need anymore heat coming our way. Understood?”
I stood and straightened my tie. “Clean as a fuckin’ hospital OR, my friend. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have an operation to get to.”
I learnedthree things about Billy Richards before I left him in the desert to die.
One: his last meal was a Big Mac.
Two: he had a thing for anime.
Three: he had a daughter named Lily he hadn’t seen in three years and was planning to put through Andover Prep with the payout from the Antonis.
Maybe I’d get the kid free tuition. It was my alma mater, after all. A sort of “sorry your daddy’s dead, here’s an education” kind of scholarship.
I didn’t speak on the drive back. I never did. Neither did Mac. It was as if we were both committed to a moment of silence for the man we’d just committed to darkness.
Or maybe we were just witnessing the darkness of our own ruined souls.
Tonight, though, was worse than most.
“Please.”Richards’s face folded with fear as he stood on the edge of the canyon. “I beg you. I’ll do whatever you want. You need muscle? Intel on the Huntingtons? I can do it, anything you ask.”
With every word, I grew more and more disgusted. He was maybe ten years older than me, but they looked like twenty, with years of abuse, hard living, and fear etching his features like a linocut. We’d found him chain-smoking behind a dumpster at the Oasis, acting like trash that had been taken out.
What’s more, the man was clearly a snitch. He’d been making the same offer since we’d wrapped his hands with duct tape and shoved him into the back of the Rover.
