Page 93 of Antihero

“We wanna risk that?” Finn-Finn asked.

“Fine by me,” B-Roll said. “Let him clean it all up. Taz?”

Taz was so wasted that it felt like he was walking along the edge of a skyscraper and he couldn’t look down ’cuz if he looked down he’d see where he was and he didn’t want that, didn’t want to know where he was. The only thing to do was not look and keep going so he nodded and then nodded again. “Right on.” Came out ride on.

“Wonder if we could even get him,” Mikey said. “I mean, this is small-league shit for Dirty Pete.”

“Thought you said he needs money bad since he got out,” B-Roll said. “Don’t he have a kid he’s gotta support?”

“Eleven years old.”

“Well, then.” B-Roll finished the game, started a new one, hit the Green Wombat, tilted his head back. “We could pay him.”

Finn-Finn: “How much? How much?”

B-Roll shrugged. “Five hundo?”

“For what? For what zactly?”

“To handle the scary fucking friend. And the girl, too, if he has to.”

“Handle them how?”

“You got fucking ears, Finn-Finn?” Big Mikey said. “However he needs to. That’s the deal with Dirty Pete.”

B-Roll looked at Taz again. Taz was having trouble keeping his head online. His eyelids felt like concrete. He shrugged.

“I’ll call him,” Mikey said. “Should I call him?”

Taz realized everyone was looking at him, B-Roll with suspicion in his eyes. Maybe Taz was pot paranoid but it seemed like everyone was looking right inside him at his thoughts, and he felt wobbly like he was gonna fall right off the skyscraper.

He shrugged again. “Fuggit.”

Mikey scraped beneath his nails nervously with his front teeth, like he was scooping out dirt. “Okay. Green light. That’s the green light, then.” He dialed. Scratched the back of his head, the hair standing up. “Yo, Pete. Whaddup Cuz?”

Pause.

“Awright. Thass cool. All good. Listen, we might have a job for you.”

Pause.

“Yeah,” Mikey said. “A real job. Guy causing trouble. Need him, ya know, handled.”

Pause.

“Yeah, we could pay. We was thinkin’…” Mikey looked at them wide-eyed, a bit panicked. “Six hundo.”

They could hear Dirty Pete’s raised voice through the line even though the phone was shoved to Mikey’s cheek.

“Okay. Sure, man. Two grand. I get it.” B-Roll and Finn-Finn groaned but Mikey waved at them violently to shut up, said into the phone, “Didn’t mean no disrespect, Cuz. We don’t play this shit like you do, ya know? Still learning.”

He listened for a while, then put the phone to his barrel chest and whispered, “He said he only takes sure things since the kid. He can’t go back to the pen, can’t risk a firearm offense neither. Gotta be clean and easy. This guy he’s gotta handle—the job. Is this a sure thing?”

“Yeah,” B-Roll said. “Tell him we’ve looked into it. He’s just an ordinary dude. It’s fine.”

Mikey scraped the phone back up along his scraggly beard. “It’s fine.”

B-Roll leaned forward and poked at Anca’s shit on the table.