“You old enough to beina bar?” he asked.
“What, the Slap started to card people?” Grade averted his eyes from the gory mess that was Ezra’s arm. “And I’m twenty-six. For the record.”
“Great.” Ezra tossed back the full glass of whiskey in one gulp. He hissed softly and wiped the back of his good hand over his mouth. “So why are you in here instead of getting rid of my problem?”
“I get paid upfront,” Grade said. “And what do you want me to do with the body?”
Ezra made an aggrieved sound. “What, do you think I’m picking out hymns? Get rid of him. And for fuck’s sake, Clay, get on with it.”
Clay pulled a battered camo-print bag out from under the table. He unzipped it and pulled out a heavy-duty surgical stapler. He took the second glass of whiskey and poured half of it over Ezra’s arm. The sting of alcohol on raw flesh was enough to make Ezra swear and try to pull away. Rather than let him, Clay grabbed Ezra’s wrist, fingers folded over the heavy gold watch, and casually ran a row of staples along the cut to seal it together.
The sight of it made Grade’s stomach turn, and he shifted his focus to the other side of Ezra’s face so he could only see the bloody arm in his blurry peripheral vision.
“I think he means, do you want the body to disappear,” Clay said, between the solidker-thunkof the stapler, “or turn up in a field somewhere?”
Ezra closed his eyes and sucked in a breath as the metal pinched down on raw flesh. His hand tightened around his phone until his knuckles turned white and sharp-looking under his skin. Sweat broke on his face and ran down onto his collar.
“Ah, fuck, you’re a goddamn butcher,” he accused Clay through clenched teeth.
“You want a good job, go to a hospital,” Clay said. “You want an interesting scar, I’m your man. There. Done. Jesus, you’d think I cut it off.”
He finished the job with one last staple, dunked the stapler into the whiskey, and grabbed a roll of gauze to wrap around Ezra’s arm. It was safe to look, now the whole mess was covered, and Grade was briefly distracted by how nice Clay’s hands were. Under the scars, ink, and tan—which were not negatives either—they were long-fingered and elegant, even when bloody from impromptu surgery.
The thought ofthatwas enough to make Grade feel vaguely off-balance again. He swallowed and cleared his throat.
“I take cash or money transfer,” he said. “No checks.”
Ezra pulled his arm away from Clay and stuck the tape down over his hairy forearm himself. He glanced at Clay and gave an impatient jerk of his chin toward the bottle of whiskey.
“You get paid when the job’s done,” he said. “Not before. What if you’re incompetent? Prove yourself and I’ll give you a nice bonus. Free night at the Chicken Choke, all the lap dances you want.”
“My sister works there,” Grade said. That made Clay snort—then shrug when they both looked at him—as he handed what was left of the bottle to Ezra. “So no, thanks. I prefer money anyhow, and I find people are alotless willing to pay up once the mess is gone.”
Ezra took a quick, hard pull on the whiskey and then smacked the bottle down on the desk. He wiped the back of his mouth on his hand.
“Or if you don’t do what I want, I’ll shoot you too,” Ezra said.
Grade stuck his hands in his pockets. “Then you’ll have two corpses.”
“He’s got you there,” Clay said with a chuckle.
“Get the fuck out. Do something useful and help find TJ before he screws us all over,” Ezra said flatly. He waited until Clay did as he was told, the door clicked shut behind him, and then pulled a worn billfold out of his back pocket. It took him a minute to flick it open and fumble through the bills with one arm not cooperating. Finally, he pulled out a handful of notes, folded them between his fingers, and held them out to Grade. “Make sure you do a good job. I wanna be able to eat off the floor in there when you’re done.”
Grade took the money and thumbed through it quickly.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “But I just do bodies, not catering.”
Chapter Two
Clay scrubbed bloodoff his hands in the kitchen sink. The bar of soap was thin and piss yellow. It smelled of coal tar, and that took him back. He let his brain idle in neutral as he picked the blood out from under his nails.
It was one of the things the military had taught him, right after the fact that no matter what the recruiter had promised, a high school dropout from rural Kentucky wasn’t going to be on the fast track to fuck all. Luckily, the second lesson had made the first more bearable: soldiers didn’t need to think. Not on a daily basis. In fact, a lot of the time, it was better if you didn’t.
That’s what basic training was for: getting rank-and-file recruits to the point they could get on with the job without their brains having to check in more than once a day. Everything was rote. Everything was practice. Break down that rifle thirty-two times—fingers raw as the oiled black parts were spread over the table—and then put it back together again for the next recruit in line.
The military wanted soldiers todoand officers tothink.
And if the officers weren’t holding up their end of the deal, well, best not to think about that.
