Clay could have answered that. For once, though, he wasn’t the one in the firing line. Grade shifted his weight uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. The quiet confidence from his last confrontation with Ezra had been lost. He seemed uneasy, off-balance. Either he didn’t get in trouble very often or it was the blow to the head.
Maybe both. It wasn’t like Clay had taken him to the hospital. He’d just given Grade a couple of Tylenol and some mouthwash as a chaser.
“Someone caught me on the Blackfish Line,” Grade said. “Drove me off the road just before the Peele and Hooker intersection. They had guns—”
“You have a gun,” Ezra snapped.
“I don’t.”
Ezra’s eyes bulged. He reached for Grade but pulled back at the last minute and balled his hand into a fist instead. He pushed his knuckles hard against his mouth and made a frustrated sound. Clay could sorta sympathize.
“You don’t have a gun?” Clay said.
Grade turned from the waist to look at him. The lump on his forehead looked tender, the edges of it stained purple as the bruise came up. “I don’t like guns.”
Clay scratched his eyebrow and pulled a dubious face. “It’s a gun,” he said. “It’s like a Grindr hookup. As long as it gets the job done, it doesn’t matter if you like them or not.”
That earned him a quick, speculative look from Grade. “If I had a gun, they’d have shot me,” he said.
Ezra grabbed his face, fingers and thumb pressed into the lightly tanned skin of Grade’s jaw.
“That wouldn’t be a me problem,” he said. “Would it?”
Grade clenched his fist for a second and then stretched his fingers out again. “They’d still have the van, so I don’t see how you’d be any better off.”
Ezra pushed Grade away from him roughly.
“I’d feel better,” he said as he turned to stride restlessly along the porch. The old waxed boards creaked under the heavyset man’s bare feet. He rubbed his fingers over his forehead and up into his unruly sandy hair. “You try to get ahead, and every bastard is just there to tear you down. And this moron doesn’t have a gun. You know who he is, Clay? This baby-faced asshole?”
He stopped mid-pace and pointed at Grade, just to make it clear who he meant. Grade pulled a sour face but held his tongue for once.
Clay leaned back against the porch, one hip hitched up on the handrail, and his booted foot dangled in midair. He held the flask of whiskey in one hand, metal warm against his fingers, and tapped it against his leg as he shrugged.
“The cleaner?” he said.
“Tommy Pulaski’s kid,” Ezra said, with a sort of bitter triumph. Then he grimaced and waved his hand irritably as he turned his back. “You don’t remember Tommy Pulaski, do you?”
Clay shook his head. “Maybe before my time.”
“He was a thief and a con-man,” Ezra said, with pointed cruelty in the boiled-down description. “And he ran off with a cool million stashed in his car. So the family has form.”
The sharp line of Grade’s jaw tightened as the jab hit home. He licked his lips and swallowed hard before he said anything.
“I’m pretty sure Dad’s dead,” Grade said. “Even if he wasn’t, I think meth has a better resale value than a corpse.”
Ezra turned and crossed the distance back to Grade in two long strides. He grabbed Grade by the shirt, fingers twisted into cotton, and shoved him into the wall of the house. Grade’s sneakers scuffed the wood as Ezra pushed him up onto his tiptoes.
“That’s because you,” Ezra said, his voice dangerously calm all of a sudden, “don’t have a fucking clue who you just cut up.”
Clay pushed himself to his feet, tucked his flask into his back pocket, and walked over. He put his hand on Ezra’s arm. The muscles were clenched tight, and Clay could feel the heat of the recently stapled-back-together gash in his forearm through the gauze.
“Ezra,” he said. “Your kids are snitches. You want Janet on your case about bringing work home on the nights you’ve got custody?”
He wasn’t sure why he bothered. The tall, scrawny cleaner was cute enough—in a frat boy wannabe way—but Ezra was his business partner. They went way back. Far enough that they were still friends, even if they didn’t like each other much anymore. Besides, Clay didn’t fuck where he lived. That was the best way to avoid getting tied down or giving anyone leverage over you.
Give him an hour and he could rationalize it to himself. Right now, he just didn’t want to see Grade put through a wall.
After a second, Ezra made a disgusted sound and let go. Grade slid down the wall, staggered, and caught his balance. He rubbed his neck as he shifted to the side.
