Sadie
Fifteen minutes after I answered the knock at my door to see my brother, Chris, standing on the other side of it, I knew he was in trouble; even before he’d asked for a place to lay low for a while.
“Hey, sis! How’s life in the respectable part of town?”
“You’d know for yourself if you made a habit of being respectable,” I told him, letting him into my apartment. It wasn’t much—two bedrooms, mostly because Chris was pretty frequently in need of a place to crash—but it was as cozy as my job at the bank would let me make it. “Let me guess: you’re hungry and dying for a cup of coffee?”
“If you’ve got any around,” Chris said hopefully. “Don’t put yourself out on my account.”
I rolled my eyes and started the coffee maker, going over to the fridge to get some lunch meats and cheese out for him. Chris always seemed to be hungry, and I was convinced that sometime around the age of nineteen, he’d managed to replace half his blood with caffeine.
Chris sat down at my little kitchen table and I looked at him for a moment while I made a couple of sandwiches and waited for the coffee to brew. I was used to Chris being in hot water from time to time.
Even before he’d started at high school, he’d tended to get into scuffles with other kids, or get caught doing minor things: once he came home with a fish hook through his thumb after shoplifting the lure it had been on, and mom had been called to the school more than once over “petty vandalism” or Chris talking back to a teacher. By high school, he’d started running with an even-tougher crowd, and I’d always suspected that my Christmas presents from that year had “fallen off a truck” somewhere along the way, but I had never asked. I hadn’t wanted to.
So Chris being in trouble wasn’t anything new to me. But usually when he got into some kind of scrape, he looked more or less pleased with himself in some way. Not necessarily because he’d intentionally gotten into trouble, but because he was in less trouble (usually) than he deserved. But as he sat at my table, waiting for me to finish making him food and coffee, I could see something in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years: fear. Okay. Whatever is going on is serious as a heart attack then. I took a deep breath and poured a cup of coffee for him—sugar, no milk—and for me, with milk and no sugar, and sat down at my table, waiting for him to spill.
Chris took a bite of his first sandwich and then looked at me as he chewed it. “I’m not going to ask you to hide a body or something, Say—stop giving me that disappointed look.”
“I’m not disappointed,” I told him. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You look like Mom,” Chris said, sounding petulant. “Like she did whenever I asked her for money to pay for a ticket.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten so many tickets,” I countered. “What’s going on?”
“I need to lie super fucking low for a while,” Chris admitted. “Like—probably more than a week. But not more than a month. I don’t think.” He frowned and ate about half his first sandwich in a few quick bites. “I need to get some money together.” I rolled my eyes again, sitting back in my chair and taking a sip of my coffee.
“I can loan you money,” I said.
“Not this kind of money,” Chris countered, shaking his head quickly. He drank a few gulps of coffee and sighed.
“What kind of money are we talking about?” Chris looked away, almost sheepishly, and I steeled myself again. Oh god, what has he done? Stolen someone’s car or something? Wrecked a friend’s boat? I waited for what my brother would tell me, waited for the “See, what had happened was…” and the charming exploits that almost always went along with his explanations.
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Chris said, finally meeting my gaze again. “But before I do, you have to swear to me that you’re not going to freak out, okay?” I raised an eyebrow at that.
“First of all: if I’ve never freaked out on you before, why are you suddenly scared that I will?” I took another sip of my coffee. It was starting to get chilly outside—not the deeper cold that would come with fall and winter, but summer was definitely on its death bed—and the coffee was nice, even if my reason for drinking a cup was less than comforting. “Second of all, how can I promise not to freak out?”
“Just—just swear, okay? It’s bad—I’ll tell you that much—but don’t flip.” I stared at Chris for a few moments. He’s serious. This is something beyond whatever else he’s been doing lately. Something that actually scares him. I pressed my lips together and considered. My heart was beating faster in my chest at the thought of my big brother in real danger—not just the kind that meant he had to spend a night in jail, or had to show up in court with his public defender to argue his case, but something that could really hurt him. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what the hell is going on and why you can’t just take a loan from me to fix it.”
“Have you ever heard of Micah Rintley?” My stomach felt as though it had dropped straight down between my knees. I’d heard of the guy all right; he’d been in the news a few times over the course of the past few years, for one crime or another—usually drugs, or prostitution, something like that—but always managed to get off with the charges dropped. I shuddered.
“What does he have to do with anything?” Chris looked down at his hands, and I could see he was less than proud of himself at the moment.
“I’ve been doing some work for him,” Chris started.
“What?” The word ripped its way past my lips before I could even fully think it. “What the hell, Chris? Are you insane?” The image of my brother working for a mafioso—killing people, or disposing of bodies, something like that—was impossible to make sense of, and terrifying.
“It’s not like that,” Chris insisted. “I’m not...not really part of his org. Just…” he shrugged. “One of his guys came to me and suggested I could make good money doing something pretty small, and I jumped at the chance.”
“And what was that ‘something pretty small,’ exactly?” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at my brother, still unable to imagine the enormity of his newest crimes.
“I’m a runner,” Chris said, shrugging. “I get an allotment of drugs—usually E, or meth, something like that—and I deliver to some of the girls working for Micah.”
“Why is Micah having you deliver drugs to prostitutes?”
Chris grinned slightly. “Well, see: he had this idea—kind of brilliant, really—to offer it as an add-on service. A lot of guys like to get high and then f— I mean…” Chris looked sheepish as he realized the word he’d been about to say to his little sister and I rolled my eyes again at that.
“They like to get high and then fuck,” I finished for him. I shook my head, sighing. “You don’t do that yourself, do you?” I frowned at my brother. I didn’t want to imagine him having sex with anyone—and I definitely didn’t want to imagine him doing it while bombed out of his mind on E or meth.
“No—no, I’m not a customer,” Chris said, shaking his head. “I’ve been with one or two of the girls, but strictly as a bonus, something like that.” I sighed. Is there a straight man on the planet who has the thoughtfulness not to treat women like disposable pussies? Even my own brother, it seemed, was capable of it. “Don’t look like that, Say,” Chris said, irritable. “I tipped them even though it was on the house. And they’re good girls.”
“I’m sure they’re great,” I said. “If any of them have accounts with the bank I can tell them about some great long-term investing possibilities, in case they ever want out.”
Chris snorted. “Anyway,” he said, finishing off his second sandwich and pushing the plate aside, “I’ve been on the job for a while now, and things have been going good, but someone’s figured out what Micah’s doing.”
“Okay,” I said. I drank down the last of my coffee and decided I wanted some water. I got Chris a glass too, without even asking. Either he’d drink it or he wouldn’t. “Why doesn’t Micah just have the girls have the drugs?” I turned at looked at my brother with a frown.
“Too big a risk,” Chris said, shaking his head. “One, they might be tempted to pilfer—and that’s something you could never really pin down unless you stayed there right in the room with them.” he sipped his water. “Two, if the johns knew that the girls had drugs on them, they’d probably steal themselves.” I thought about it and nodded.
“Makes sense,” I admitted. “So you’re one of the runners. You bring the drugs that whatever client orders, and I assume you get the payment from them.” Chris nodded. I sat down heavily in my chair and shook my head again. It was impossible—still—to imagine my big brother working for someone like Micah Rintley. To imagine him running drugs to prostitutes. It was just too terrible, and too bizarre, to believe.
“Stop doing that, Sadie,” Chris said with a groan.
“You’re the one who’s out there risking god knows what to make quick money you could get legally doing something else,” I told him tartly. “So what’s going on? Why do you need to lay low? Are the cops on your case or something?”
Chris shook his head. “No, nothing like that, thank god,” he replied. My brother was thanking god that the police hadn’t nabbed him—in the midst of his most illegal, most dangerous pursuit yet—was probably a sign that I should have closed the door in his face as soon as I’d seen he was on the other side of it. But even if I knew he was in the deepest shit of his life—and that I was probably just as much in danger as he was—I couldn’t make myself throw my brother out.
“What is it, then?”
Chris bit his bottom lip and finished off his water. “I got robbed,” Chris said. “Money and drugs both, a couple of days ago.” I stared at him. “Micah is going to be expecting that money like—yesterday,” Chris explained. “So while I try and get the money together for him…”
“How the hell are you going to do that?” I slapped my forehead with my palm and then pulled my hair back from my face. “What the hell, Chris?”
“I’ll figure it out—don’t worry about that part,” Chris said. “What I really need is for you to let me stay here. It’s not a part of town Micah would think to look for me, and he doesn’t know I have a sister.”
I sighed. “Who even robbed you?” I was trying to think, trying to understand the situation, trying to do what I did best: figure stuff out.
“Get this,” Chris said, smiling wryly. “It was these two guys who’d used the service twice last week.” I looked up at the ceiling of my little kitchen. I wasn’t praying, but there was definitely a kind of monologue in my head about giving me patience—though I couldn’t really say who I wanted to hear it.
“So these guys used the service last week, and obviously saw you delivering the drugs. And somehow figured out where you’d be, and robbed you.” I ticked the points off on my fingertips. Chris nodded. “Can’t you just tell Micah that happened?”
“No,” Chris said, matter-of-factly. “No, he’d never believe me. He’d never believe anyone. He’d figure I was trying to cover for my own theft.”
“You swear you aren’t doing that right now?”
Chris looked almost offended at the question. “Really, Sadie?”
I shrugged. “Up until maybe twenty minutes ago I never would have thought you were the type of person who’d work for a mob boss,” I pointed out. “For all I know there’s a whole other life you’re living—with drugs and prostitutes and who knows what else—that I don’t know a thing about.”
“I’m not doing drugs, and I didn’t blow the money or the product,” Chris said. “It really did get stolen from me.” He stood and lifted up the hem of his shirt, showing me bruises along his ribcage. He’d obviously been beaten up a bit—not in the face, thankfully. But I thought Micah probably had had people who’d faked a beating to get out of an accusation, too. I took a breath, tried not to feel bad for my brother, since he’d pretty much brought the situation on himself, and rose to my own feet, moving back to the coffee maker.
“Okay,” I said finally. “You can stay here and lie low, but that’s not all we’re going to do.”
# # #
Micah
“That slick motherfucker.” I looked around my office, above the bar of my best-performing club, trying to think of ways to kill Chris Bamber.
“Should I send someone to his place?”
I shrugged off Brody’s question. “Do it—but that asshole is smart enough not to be there by now.” It wouldn’t accomplish anything, but I had to be shown to at least react in some way. Of course, once we figure out where that little pissant shit is, there’ll be a real reaction.
He’d dropped off the radar maybe a day before. I’d assumed he’d just been a little late; Chris was a fucking flake at the best of times, and he’d only been working for me a few weeks. The business was just beginning to take off: the regular clientele I’d used as a sort of “pilot program” as my business guy called it were all hooked on the idea, and with the distribution and the tricks both in my hands, it was barely costing me anything more than it had to run the two businesses separately.
I’d chosen Chris along with a few other guys to work that end of the business, because I wanted to keep it separated from the two streams I was already working. I couldn’t just use the guys who were running the drugs on the streets or the guys taking care of the prostitutes. I wanted to make sure it would work before I expanded it out. It was step one in the process of building things up with the girls, trying to make that part of my business bigger, more profitable.
But so far I’d been losing guys left and right on the deal, and I was starting to really think I was being taken for a ride. I needed to make it work, and for that to happen, I needed guys I could absolutely trust on both ends of the job.
But Chris was obviously not working out. He hadn’t made his check-in call, and when he was supposed to be back at it earlier in the day, no one had caught any sign of him. Asshole probably took the drugs and money off to a casino. I shook my head, glancing out through the window into the darkness outside. Brody left my office to go check at Bamber’s place, and I turned back to thinking how best to kill the guy.
The phone on my desk rang and I picked it up.
“Micah?”
“Who is it?”
“Bitch, you know it’s me.”
I recognized the voice of one of my fellow businessmen—Troy. He worked a different area, and we’d always had respect for each other. When it became clear that Chris was going AWOL, I’d put feelers out to see if he’d gone to Troy or one of the other entrepreneurs, maybe offered secrets, or his service.
“Always good to hear from you, Troy,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Got anything I might want to hear?” Chris wasn’t nearly important enough to have a chance to talk to Troy outright; he’d have had to go to one of the guy’s underlings.
“None of my guys have seen your guy on this side of town,” Troy said. “I’ll put a BOLO on him—take, not kill.”
“I appreciate it, Troy,” I said. The guy owed me, after all; I’d done him similar favors in the past when one of his people tried to sell him out. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see the benefit in taking insider intel: it was that I couldn’t stand a backstabber, and I couldn’t trust anyone who’d go against his boss like that. Troy was the same. “We need to get together sometime, visit with Gino.”
“Gino’s putting in a new champagne lounge,” Troy said; I’d heard the same, myself. “Maybe we could give it a good testing for him.”
“Let’s call the bastard up and suggest it,” I said, laughing. “But yeah—I gotta go check on things downstairs. I’ll hit you up soon.”
I didn’t think that Chris had gone over to another side—but I couldn’t put the idea completely aside. I finished up the call with Troy and got out of my chair, ready to check on what things were doing in my club. I had way too much shit going on for something like Chris to happen to me.