“Your luck’s gone to shit,” Ezra said. “And you look like you dived down after it. I’ll send someone who doesn’t look like he’s there to kneecap him to pick Hadley up. He has any good intel, or we hear from Fisher, I’ll keep you in the loop.”
There was alotin how the two men glared at each other. Grade couldn’t tell what any of it was, but it was there. It washeavy.
“Go fuck yourself,” Clay said. He set his untouched tequila down on the edge of the desk and pushed it toward Ezra with one finger. “Last time you decided you were better off without me, you nearly got both of us killed. What’s the address?”
Ezra pulled a sour face at the demand, but then he nodded reluctantly.
“Eighty-nine Heron Road,” he told whoever was at the other end of the call. “First right after the Food Lion. Meet Clay there. He’s on his way.”
He hung up without any niceties and tossed the phone onto the desk.
“Don’t mess this up, Clay,” he said as he sank back down into his chair. It creaked as his weight settled on the leather. He was built heavier than Clay’s rangy, spare build, but he wasn’t fat by any means. It was all muscle. An idle part of Grade’s mind calculated how long it would take to render Ezra down—in the unfortunate event it might be necessary. “We’re running out of time.”
Clay stood and leaned over to dip his finger, up to the knuckle, into the tequila. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked it clean.
“I can’t promise that,” he said. “But worse comes to worst, at least I’ll have someone on hand to clean up the mess. Come on, Grade.”
He turned on his heel and stalked out of the office. Grade hesitated for a second as he looked from a sour-faced Ezra to the door and back again. In the end, he went with Clay. He wasn’t sure why.
OK, he was. He just hoped that under “always had bad taste in hot, dangerous dudes,” there was a better reason to stick with the devil he sorta knew.
§
Heron Road was a dead-tooth street. The streets on either side had playsets out front and curtains in the window. Old men sat outside on kitchen chairs to smoke, and dogs lay sprawled in the shade in the yard. Turn onto Heron, and there were empty lots and boarded-up houses, their drives littered with cars up on bricks that had been tagged with graffiti and left to rust.
The only dog on the street was a heavyset rottweiler in a spiked collar that snarled loudly from behind a rusty chain-link fence as they drove past. No one twitched the burlap-sack curtains stapled up over the windows to see what had set him off.
“You sure Ezra gave you the right address?” Grade asked.
Clay didn’t answer. His fingers just tightened around the steering wheel, and he reached down to flick the radio off. The twang and bluegrass plaint about politics, plumbing, and rednecks cut off mid-verse.
They were both quiet for a moment as they drove slowly along the road, their attention on mailboxes and the sides of houses as they searched for numbers. Most of them were gone, pried off or graffitied over. Grade lasted about three and a half houses before he cleared his throat.
“I’ve heard that a lot of people pay servers a living wage these days,” he said. “I guess Ezra’s not a fan of that idea? There’s sixty-three.”
Clay acknowledged that with a noise in the back of his throat. He put his foot down on the gas, and the car picked up speed.
“Pay’s generous enough,” Clay said. He gave Grade a sidelong look. “But staff don’t get paid up-front, and Hadley only started last week. And Heron Road might not be up to your standards, but compared to where Hadley’s been laying his head, it probably looks pretty palatial to him.”
“Oh yeah? He from Dog Leg?” Grade asked. The old jibe at the rival town was reflex—Dog Leg was slightly better off than Sweeny, economically speaking, but who wanted to admit that—and it caught him off guard how easily it rolled off the tongue. He reallyhadbeen back too long.
“Eddyville,” Clay said flatly.
It wasn’t where he said, it was thewayhe said it. Plenty of people lived in Eddyville and didn’t complain about it. When someone said “Eddyville” the way Clay just had, like it was meant to mean something, and then gave a sidelong look to make sure you’d gotten the point, they meant the Castle. Kentucky State Pen.
“What? Did he get a reference from an old cellmate of yours?” Grade asked.
Clay looked amused as he pulled over to the curb in front of a shabby house with gray paint peeling off the clapboard siding. He turned off the engine and pulled the keys out of the ignition.
“There it is.” Clay twisted around to face Grade, one arm cocked up over the back of the seat. “You’re really invested in that, aren’t you.”
“In what?” Grade couldn’t stop himself from asking the question, even though he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to appreciate the answer.
“Being better than the rest of us,” Clay said. He idly twirled his finger in the air to indicate their surroundings. “Better than Sweeny. Being the one that got out.”
“You sound like my sister,” Grade said. “Just because I want more than a dead-end job in a dead-end town doesn’t mean I look down on the rest of you.”
Clay pulled a dubious face. “Kinda sounds like you do. Yet here you are, back home with the rest of us.”
