Luke

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Dad had lost weight, and he’d grown a beard. He was wearing old jeans and a denim-colored prison shirt, his hair still long and tied back like he’d always worn it. He was led in to sit behind the Plexiglas partition, and he leaned back in his chair as the guard walked away.

“Well, well,” he said. “Two of my boys. I finally got your attention.”

Jesus, it was weird to see him. I hadn’t actually seen my father in eight years. I hadn’t missed him—his lazy attitude, his shitty parenting, his random annoyed punches to the head. He’d given us a roof over our heads and the occasional supply of food, like we were stray dogs he’d let in the house once in a while. I’d had to answer the big questions of life on my own—how to be a good person, how to be a good man, how to find what was going to make me happy. I still hadn’t figured out most of that shit, but everything I’d learned, I’d learned alone while I was driving around the country, looking for something I couldn’t explain.

So I should have felt nothing. Irritation, maybe, and a dose of pity. Instead, when I looked at him the little kid inside me wondered what I could have been if I’d actually had someone in my corner growing up.

I shut that voice up, hard.

“You have our attention,” Dex said. He was sitting in the folding chair next to mine, and I could feel the tension radiating off him like a smell. Whatever his don’t-give-a-shit attitude, Dex didn’t find this a walk in the park either. “You have fifteen minutes. I don’t want to spend any longer than that in this shithole.”

“I take it you got my note,” Dad said. He stared at Dex, ignoring me for the moment. “Dex, the bigshot cop. Guess it didn’t work out quite like you thought, did it?”

Dex had always been Dad’s favorite punching bag; he’d taken more flack than any of us. Jace and I could fly under the radar, and Ryan’s baseball talent made him partly immune, but something about Dex got under Dad’s skin. The idea of Dex becoming a cop had made him angry, which was the only reason Dex had gone through with it.

“Cut the shit,” Dex said now.

“Did he tell you he couldn’t hack it?” Dad turned to me. “Cracked under pressure, our Dex did. He acts tough, but underneath he’s all coward. Went dirty, too.”

“Shut up,” Dex said, his voice deceptively quiet.

I’d heard rumors about how Dex’s career had crashed and burned, but since we weren’t exactly close I’d never asked him about it. “Dex isn’t dirty,” I said to Dad.

Dad just laughed.

“Fuck, why am I even here?” Dex muttered under his breath.

“And you,” Dad said to me. He seemed to have been saving up his hostility, sitting alone in a cell. “Thought you could just walk away, like you were better than the rest of us. Like you could turn your back. But I got you to come back, too.”

Was that what he thought? That I saw myself as better than them? “It was more of a survival tactic to get the fuck away from you,” I said.

“I should have stowed away in your trunk,” Dex added.

“I know all about you,” Dad said, ignoring Dex this time. It was one of his favorite digs, to pretend you didn’t exist when you weren’t saying anything useful to him. “My sons don’t visit me in here, but the boys from the shop do. Big Jim was just here yesterday. I know you’re living in the house and running the shop like a good boy. I even hear that Nora Parker’s hot blonde daughter has been to the shop, sniffing around you like a bitch.”

He was trying to get to me. I ignored the hot twinge of anger at the back of my neck and let a cocky grin slide onto my face. “Sure,” I said. “She’s all over me. She can’t get enough.”

Dad laughed his mean laugh, because he didn’t believe it. No one believed it. “That girl wouldn’t spit on you,” he said, “but I’d love to see you beg for her attention. That would make my day.”

“If we’re done with the Oprah moment,” Dex said, “can we discuss business so Luke and I can get the fuck out of here? This place smells like puke.”

Dad scratched his chin, his face going sober as he got down to brass tacks. “Like the note said, money’s dropped on the nineteenth,” he said. “I made a few arrangements before I went in. The setup will run itself for a while.”

“Tell us about the setup,” Dex said.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

But Dad’s eyes betrayed him. He was worried—just a little, but it was there.

I pressed the advantage. “You don’t have a choice,” I said. “You’re in there, and we’re out here. You need us.”

“I don’t need you,” Dad said. But it was a lie, and the lie was killing him. He hated more than anything that he needed his sons, the kids he’d treated like dirt all these years.

“You do,” I said. “You had a nice little side business, but it’s our business now. We get to run it.”

“A side business?” Dad barked a laugh. “You call that kind of money a side business? You really are even stupider than I thought.”

“Enlighten us,” Dex said.

Dad gritted his teeth. I watched the frustration work its way through him, that he wasn’t in control anymore. That for all his bluster, we were really all he had. Finally he said, “The cars come through with the others for repair. An outside driver brings them in—no one watching would know the difference. We receive them, paint them, deal with serial numbers and license plates and whatever electronic GPS shit they have, and send them out again.” He looked from Dex to me. “We’ve been doing it at Riggs Auto for years. It’s easy money, boys. All you have to do is let Big Jim handle the repairs and let the money roll in.”

I felt a headache starting somewhere in the back of my neck and clawing its way upward. “And that’s it?” I said. “Just hot cars?” Like years of fencing hot cars wasn’t bad enough.

Dad shrugged. “It’s a simple operation. Ask Jace if you don’t believe me. He got me plenty of inventory before he was stupid enough to get caught.”

“And where do these refurbed cars go when they leave Riggs Auto?” Dex asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Dad said. “I deliver them to a guy, who works for another guy, who works for another guy. No one ever introduced me to the top guy. I’m supposed to deliver cars, I deliver cars. Since I want to live past the next few weeks, I keep my mouth shut and I don’t ask questions.”

“And that’s it?” Dex said in disbelief. “We just let Big Jim do his thing and take payment? What’s your cut?”

“Fifty percent,” Dad said. “You can pay my lawyer bills out of my cut and keep the rest in the safe deposit box. That’s my fund for when I get out.”

I laughed. “You’re deluded. You’re not getting out.”

“You’re not getting fifty percent, either,” Dex said. “That’s bullshit.”

“That’s what you think,” Dad said. “Trust me, I don’t plan to die in here. And when I’m out, I want my money.”

Dex kicked his chair back and stood. “I’m done,” he said, his voice tight. “You can stay here if you want, Luke. I’m leaving.” He walked across the visiting room and out the door.

I turned to find Dad watching me. “What are you going to do, Luke?” he asked. “I left you a nice little legacy. All you have to do is let it ride.”

I shook my head. Dad had never been particularly likeable, but the last eight years, plus prison, had taken him to a new level of asshole. “I don’t work for you,” I said.

“Wrong,” Dad said as I pushed my own chair back and stood. “You do work for me. You all work for me.” He kept talking as I turned my back to leave. “You think you don’t want my money, Luke, but you do. You’re my son. Dirty money doesn’t bother you any more than it does me. And if you don’t believe me, just ask your brother. Being dirty never bothered Dex one bit.”

I didn’t answer. But as I left, I could hear Dad laughing.