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“But you’re still lookin’, right?”
“Until the day I die, I’ll always look for her. I run the same dead queries and get the same dead-end results, day after fuckin’ day.”
“We spent a lot of time on that uncle of hers who wouldn’t take our calls.”
“Yeah, I ran his employment records, financials, credit records and DMV records. I was never sure he was even real,” I say, scratching the back of my neck.
Jinx responds, “I think he’s just a garden-variety asshole. He probably doesn’t know anything anyway. Didn’t Beth say he pretty much ignored her for years?”
“Yeah, she said he inherited everything from her grandmother and cut her off. It’s apparently just the two of them left. They don’t have any other family.”
“We could’ve gone further with that,” Jinx says accusingly.
We’ve had this conversation lots of times over the last three years. Finally, I decide to come clean with him. “I had a little face-to-face conversation with him not long ago.”
“You went to talk to him alone? That’s not cool and you fuckin’ well know it, brother.”
“Yeah, but you tend to lean on people too hard. I wasn’t lookin’ to do extensive lasting damage.”
“What?” Jinx asks, sounding truly surprised. “I don’t always inflict maximum damage. You act like that’s some kind of foregone fuckin’ conclusion.”
“Out of the last twenty guys you’ve worked over, how many of them are still walkin’?”
His lips press into a firm line. “Not many, brother. But they all fuckin’ deserved it, every single one of them.”
I shrug. “Maybe, but he’s a fuckin’ lawyer, and a nasty one at that.”
“Let’s fuckin’ change the subject, alright?”
“Yeah, droppin’ the subject sounds like a real good idea about now, brother.”
After a thoughtful pause and another sip of his warm brew, he asks, “You want to tell me about it? You never really talk about what drove her away.”
Even though talking about it is the last thing I want to do, I tell him anyway. Maybe it’ll unfuckin’-burden my mind.
“Everything was golden, until it wasn’t, you know?” I tell him. “I caught her meetin’ with a fuckin’ federal agent.”
Jinx jolts forward in his seat. “What the fuck? Why did you never tell us about that piece of information?”
“I was furious because Beth was my woman and she kept having lunch at the diner with a man wearing a suit. I used to watch them on the security cameras, getting more and more jealous because he looked like a rich banker. One day, when he stood up from the table, I saw a badge on his belt. When I paid more attention to the cut of his suit, I realized he was carrying a gun. I thought for sure that she was informing on our club.”
“Fuck me, Striker. You should have immediately brought this to the club officers.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t. I needed more proof. So, I kept diggin’, looking for dirt on her, and kept coming up with shit that didn’t begin to make sense. It was the kind of shit that maybe wouldn’t mean much on its own but stacked together, it looked pretty fuckin’ incriminatin’, ya know what I mean?”
He nods, clearly unable to believe what he’s hearin’. “Is that why she took off? Because you accused her and pushed her too hard for answers? Or did she run off with that federal agent?” After a brief pause, his expression morphs into one of shock. “What if he fuckin’ arrested her? Maybe that’s why you can’t find her. Did you ever think of that?”
“When I confronted her, she said she was informin’ on her boss, who was engagin’ in securities fraud and money laundering. I interrogated her pretty fuckin’ hard. But she had an answer for everything, like it was rehearsed or the feds were tellin’ her what to say. It was too smooth and polished, ya know?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there before myself a time or two. When they have an answer for everything that fits together seamlessly, the whole thing can sound fabricated.”
“You know what else sounds like a perfectly fabricated fuckin’ story?” I ask.
After a short pause, Jinx lowers his voice. “The truth?”
“Yeah, come to find out she wasn’t doin’ anything wrong. Her boss got arrested a couple of weeks after she took off. It was all over the papers. It turned out to be just like she said. She was listed as a material witness in the case. I showed up during the trial, hoping to see her, but the only people still in the courtroom were the attorneys. I’d missed her testimony.”
“Any idea how many years he got in the end?” Jinx asks.
