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Still, I couldn’t be with her. And so, the best thing I could do was ensure she remained safe when I inevitably left her.
I leaned down and held out the ball to the boy. He meekly approached me to take it, making sure to stand behind the guard. He only made eye contact for a few seconds before his gaze skittered away.
“Hey there, buddy,” I said, smiling to put him at ease. “My name is Monty. What’s yours?”
He stuck a finger in his mouth before he admitted, “Elijah.”
“Hi, Elijah,” I said. “Is your mother around?”
He shook his head.
“Who’s in charge here?”
“I am.” A tiny middle-aged woman came out of one of the outhouses, looking at me curiously. She looked cautious but not unfriendly as she approached.
“Hi, I’m Monty Leith,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. He used to own this compound.”
She nodded in understanding. “You must be talking about Beau.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Where is he?”
“In the main quarters. Come on. I’ll show you.”
The security guard showed obvious disapproval and opened his mouth to protest, but the woman continued with a smile, “It’s okay, Ken. I know who he is.”
“You do?” I inquired.
“Yeah. Beau has mentioned you a few times. Come on.”
“Alright.” I gave the security guard a nod and the little boy a fistbump, which he returned with a shy smile. Then, I followed the lady deeper into the compound. As we started walking to the back of the place, I looked around the solace, noting that there were a few men around, but nothing to the level it had been at.
Finally, we came to a smaller duplex at the back, and she opened the door familiarly, shooting me a smile as we walked in. “Sorry. He usually takes a nap around this time, so we might have to wake him.”
“That’s not a problem.”Naps? Since when did Beau take naps?
I waited for her and analyzed the living room as it was while she went to get Beau. It was neat, but it had lost some of its glitz and glamour, looking homier than usual.
“Monty?” I heard from behind me. “Is that really you?”
I turned around, and my eyes nearly popped open when I saw my normally vibrant friend being brought out in a wheelchair. He had probably lost about thirty pounds and looked like a shadow of his former self, but his eyes lit up with happiness when he saw me.
“Beau.” I went to him, shaking my head. “What happened?”
He sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ll leave you two to it then,” the woman said as she smiled and headed out. I noticed Beau’s gaze lingered on her back for a few minutes as she left, but I chose not to comment on it. There were more pressing matters to attend to.
“We have time,” I said, sitting down. “Catch me up.”
“Ha. Where to begin?” Beau then told me the story of the splintering of his security agency.
“I’d been wanting to get out of the business for some time,” he explained, looking off to the distance. “In the beginning, I had been able to lie to myself, tell myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong because I only dealt with other lowlives, but at some point, a man has to admit he’s wrong. The truth was that I hurt people doing what I did, even more than I helped. I lost my family because of it and because I didn’t want to deal with my shit….” He shook his head, pain clear on his face. “Anyway, one day, I decided to shut it all down. Some of the men were not in agreement, but I tried to give them a heads up and said I would take on a few more jobs so I could afford severance, which wasn’t half of what they were making. I asked for the account book, and that was when I realized Simon, my second-in-command, had been taking on jobs behind my back, with clients I would never have worked for.”
I remembered Simon, an ambitious young boy at the time, fresh out of service. He had always struck me as the slimy type. “What happened?”
“He was using the money to fund his gambling habit. And he did a bunch of shit I never knew about.” Guilt radiated from Beau, and his wrinkled eyes pleaded with me. “I swear to you, I never knew.”
For some reason, I believed him. I had known Beau a long time. He had never been the type.
