“You ain’t my type.”
Harry snorted. “Please,” he said as he licked his thumb and smoothed his eyebrow. “I’m a catch.”
Clay laughed around his cigarette and then held up his hand as the phone balanced on the dashboard started to ring. TJ had left it in his jacket, hung over the back of a seat in the main bar when he went for a piss. Then he decided to just murder the bagman for the biggest deal Ezra had ever gotten a sniff of and leg it out the back, with a brief stop to lay Ezra’s arm open with a switchblade when he’d tried to grab him.
It made no sense, but fuck it. Half of the people Clay had killed had been complete strangers, so who was he to judge.
The contact that flashed on the screen said “Dad,” which was pathetic enough to make Clay feel a bit bad for TJ, even after the mess he’d made of Clay’s night. It might be biologically accurate, but expecting Arlo to play any sort of role other than loser was wishful thinking.
He clamped the cigarette between his lips as he picked up the phone and swiped it on. For a second, he blanked on what TJ would say. After a glance at Harry—whose shrug passed the buck back—Clay went with a strangled, whispered, “Yeah?”
“What the hell did you do, boy?” Arlo raged down the phone. “Two of Ezra’s boys were just here, that gay one and some big fuck, asking questions and trying to put the screws on me. Everything I’ve done for you, and you bring this shit to my door? Your mom should have listened to me and taken the damn pills to get rid. You hear me? Whatever you done better have been worth it, because you’re going to need to make this up to me. Where are you?”
Clay turned his mouth down at the corners in a disappointed grimace. Itwasconfirmation that Arlo didn’t know anything, which was useful. Clay had just hoped for more.
“Just outside,” Clay said. “And I think we put those screws on pretty good, Arlo. Now throw the phone out the window and learn to mind your own business.”
The sound of Arlo’s breath rasped down the phone into Clay’s ear.
“Go to hell,” Arlo snarled after a shocked moment. “What thefuckyou gonna do about it?”
Clay leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him into the deep footwell. He leaned over into Harry’s side and pressed down on the steering wheel. The blare of the horn made the cricket jump off the car, and Clay swore to god, if it got in through his window, he’d shove it up Harry’s ass.
On the other end of the line, he heard the replay of the horn.
“I could come back in,” he said.
The line cut out. Clay shook his head and tossed the phone into the pocket on the door next to him. It could rattle around with the spare change and drink lids. Clay had no immediate use for it, but someone with more brains than Arlo might try and call TJ.
“One day, someone is going to call your bluff,” Harry said dryly as he pulled out of the lay-by. The car jolted as the tires ran over the deep ruts dried into the ground after the last rain. “Then what you gonna do, Clay?”
That’s what he liked about Harry the most. Harry still thought Clay was bluffing.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” Clay said. He meant it too. Lanie made a good pot roast, and in Clay’s experience, when he did have to follow through on a threat, dinner invitations dried right up. Clay flicked his cigarette out the window into the dark. Hopefully, it would hit that fucking cricket. He leaned back in the front seat and closed his eyes. “Drop me off back at my car. I’ll go tell Ezra what’s gone down.”
Chapter Three
Grade didn’t usuallydo toilets, but here he was, arm deep in a U-bend. The bleach covered most of the smell, but the fact there seemed to be barnacles under the rim was a bit off-putting. He tried to ignore them as he shifted position to get his shoulder into it.
Almost.
He felt his fingers start to cramp as he twisted his wrist at an odd angle and strained just that little bit closer…
His fingernail caught on the sharp edge, and he—carefully—pulled the tooth up the slick, curved side of the bowl.
“Little bastard,” he said as he turned it over in his hand to check if there were any other bits to find.
It had broken off at the root—probably when the bullet had smashed through the corpse’s skull—but the rest of it was intact right down to the filling. Grade dropped it into a small jar with the rest of the bits and pieces he’d collected. Then he flushed the toilet and wiped it down for fingerprints before he left the stall.
He closed the warped, graffiti-covered door behind him and pulled a handful of antibacterial wipes from the industrial packet he’d brought with him to scrub down his arms and hands. His knuckles were red and itchy from the chemicals—or the syphilis, he thought as he remembered Clay’s crack and then tried to pretend he hadn’t—but he was almost done.
Just a few last touches.
There was a spare pair of gloves left on top of his kit bag. He dried his hands and then pulled the thin latex on with a tug at the fingertips to get the fit snug. The playlist that filtered through his earbud switched from pop to country rap, with the hard beat of the song enough to give him a boost of energy for the last few minutes. He hummed along absently as he fished the pipes out of the oxygen-bleach bath and reattached them. Plumber’s tape sealed them up neater than they’d been before. The bleach then went down the drains, and he left that to fizz while he rolled up the bloody plastic sheets and shoved them into bin bags. The doors he’d taken off to scrub down had to be reattached too, braced with one shoulder as he jiggled the hinges into place.
Once everything was done, he took a second to appreciate the squeaky-clean bathroom. Then he set about making it look like nobody had cleaned in here since 1963.
A spray bottle of piss and shit—Grade aggressively didn’t think about that—gave an appropriately disgusting patina to the urinals and toilets. Grade got down on his hands and knees, which ached despite the pads, and rubbed dirty grease into the grout and over the tiles. Once that was finished, he turned back to the stalls. Most of the graffiti had survived being bleached, but a few had faded. Grade pulled a couple of Sharpies out of his pocket and touched them up. He gave in to temptation and added an unprofessional dig at one of his old high school bullies.
