Luke

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Friday night in Westlake, when it wasn’t football season, was never all that wild. There were a few places on the downtown strip that had their regulars: the Fire Pit, which didn’t serve alcohol, for the high schoolers; the Irish Brogue for the middle aged drinkers (though there was barely a drop of Irish blood anywhere in Westlake); the White Martini which pretended to be a dance bar/hookup spot and was mostly just gross. And, at the end of the strip, a rundown place called the Barn, where the hardcore, don’t-fuck-with-me drinkers went.

Ronny Red was one of those don’t-fuck-with-me drinkers, especially since Dad had tried to run him over. He was sitting at the Barn’s greasy bar, drinking beer from a none-too-clean glass, breathing the sweaty air and staring at nothing. Until I came through the door, and then he was staring at me.

His eyes went wide, and he shifted on his stool. Ronny was about fifty, with sparse hair and a face that showed years of hard drinking. He was wearing old army pants and a stained T-shirt, and he had a medical boot on one foot.

I walked toward him, not looking left or right. “Ronny,” I said.

He put down his beer and hopped off his stool. “Gotta go,” he said to the bartender, and he hobbled away from me, across the dim room toward the back door.

“Ronny,” I said, following him, “you don’t go very fast.”

“Fuck off, Luke Riggs.”

I kept following him, taking my time.

“I said fuck off,” Ronny said again. I didn’t touch him—I had no intention to—but it didn’t escape me that exactly none of the other people in the Barn, including the bartender, came to Ronny’s rescue or said a word. They just let me herd him out the back door while they sipped their beer.

“I got nothing to say to you,” Ronny shouted back over his shoulder as he stumped down the rear hallway and pushed open the back door. “You just stay away from me, Luke.”

“What about me?” Ryan said. He was standing right outside the Barn’s back door, legs apart and arms crossed. Behind him was his car, the big showy black SUV. He had a smirk on his lips, because he was enjoying this. “You want me to stay away?”

Ronny stopped short when he saw Ryan, then swiveled left. “I’ll call the cops,” he said, wiping sweat from his lip. “See if I don’t. You Riggs boys are crazy.”

“No, we’re not.” Jace came out of the shadows, herding Ronny back toward the SUV. “That’s just Dex.”

“Yeah, I am,” Dex agreed. He was standing by the driver’s door. “Get in the car, Ronny. We just want to talk.”

Ronny looked at us, standing in a circle around him. Four on one was overkill, maybe, but we wanted to get the message across. If I’d approached Ronny alone, he would have run to his car and driven away without another word. Ronny was a chicken, but he could be mean when cornered. You had to have a show of force to make him obey.

Besides, we weren’t going to beat him up. That I knew of.

“Seriously, man, just get in the car,” I said.

Ronny caved. He hobbled toward the SUV, where Jace herded him into the back seat. Then Jace got in one side of him, I got on the other, Ryan got in the passenger side, and Dex got behind the wheel. He started the SUV and pulled out onto Winchester Street.

“What’s this about?” Ronny said.

Ryan’s SUV was big, but I was still too close to Ronny in this back seat, my leg touching his. It was unpleasant, to say the least. “We have some questions,” I said.

“I don’t know what about. Mike already tried to kill me. I just want you to leave me alone.”

In the front seat, Dex said to Ryan, “You know what they say about SUV’s like this? They’re a cover for your tiny dick.”

“Shut up, Dex,” Ryan said. “Why the hell are you driving, anyway? You’re probably high as a kite.”

“Because I’m the oldest.”

“Yeah, well, scratch my car and you’ll be dead. Then I’ll be the oldest.”

I shut my eyes for a second. Jesus. “Guys, we’re in the middle of something here.”

“Right,” Ryan said. “How have you been, Ronny Red?”

“Not so good,” Ronny said. He smelled like stale beer and desperation. “My ankle and all.”

“Yeah, that’s too bad,” Dex said. “Pretty rude of Dad to mess you up like that. But I guess he’s paying the price.”

Ronny twitched in his seat. “I didn’t send him to prison, man. I didn’t even call the cops. It was the waitress at the Barn who did it. She saw the whole thing. I would have worked it out with Mike, man to man.”

He thought we were coming for revenge. Like we gave a shit that Dad was locked up. “What we want to know is why,” I told him. “Why did he try to run you over?”

Ronny looked at his lap and said nothing.

“Just tell us,” I said.

“I don’t remember. Mike was drunk. He was just mad, that’s all.”

“Ryan,” Dex said in the front seat, “you remember the route to the old quarry? No one there this time of night.”

“True,” Ryan said. “You take Line Five, just to the right up here. The turnoff is hard to see in the dark.”

“Right, I remember. Ronny, let’s take a trip.”

“Don’t,” Ronny said. He was really scared now. Dex had that effect on people. In fact, even I wasn’t sure if he’d drive us out to the old quarry in the dark. And if he did, what he’d do with Ronny once we got there.

“Just tell us,” I said to him again. “Why did Dad run you over?”

Ronny sighed and wiped his sweaty hands on his old army pants. “There’s a leak,” he said.

“A leak?” This was Ryan.

“In the organization,” Ronny said. “Not just in the ranks. The big guys, at the top—they were getting busted. The guys who ran the big money and, you know, the stuff.”

That probably meant drugs, I figured. If Dad was working for a bigger organization, then stolen cars were probably just a part of it. The big money was always in drugs.

“They were starting to panic at the top,” Ronny said. “They didn’t know who was ratting to the cops. There was a rumor for a while that it was you, Jace.”

Jace hadn’t said anything so far in this little excursion, but now he turned and looked at Ronny, and his eyes were like chips of ice. I’d never seen my brother’s eyes like that. “I just did twenty months inside,” he said. “I got a cavity search on my way in the door, and now I piss into a cup for a parole officer. And you think I’m a snitch?”

Ronny twitched again. “No, man, no,” he said. “I don’t think that. No one does. It was just panic, you know, trying to find someone to blame. And Dex was a cop—”

“Dex is not a cop,” Jace said, his voice so cold that even Dex shut his mouth for once.

“Sure, sure,” Ronny said. “Right, Jace, that’s right. Anyway, it was just talk. There were all these arrests. And one night Mike got drunk and decided it was me who was the snitch. Me! I’ve been working with him for six years, and we’ve both made money, and suddenly he decides I’m the one talking to the cops! It was fucking outrageous.”

“So he hit you with his car,” I said.

“We were at the Barn, and it got heated, so we took it out back. Mike was drunk as hell. He had it in his head that it was me. He was convinced. Eventually he got in his car and revved it and aimed it right at me. I couldn’t believe what the fuck was happening. I tried to run, but I wasn’t fast enough.” He looked down at his boot.

I looked out the window and saw that Dex had, after all, taken the turnoff onto Line Five, toward the quarry. It was a two-lane road to nowhere leading out of Westlake, bare of lights and blistered with potholes. The SUV gave a low growl as Dex accelerated.

Ronny noticed, too. “What are you doing? Where are we going? Come on, man!”

This wasn’t part of the plan. Dex was improvising, like he’d done all his life. It went without saying that we shouldn’t be doing this. And suddenly, I didn’t fucking care.

When you come from the wrong side of the tracks, you get to stir the shit every once in a while.

I grabbed Ronny’s collar to get his attention. “Names,” I growled at him. “I want everyone’s names—the guys at the top, the guys in the middle, everyone. I want to know everything you know.”

“I can’t do that,” Ronny said. The SUV picked up speed and bounced hard over a pothole, nearly sending all of our skulls into the ceiling. In front, Ryan cursed, worried about his precious car. On the other side of Ronny, Jace swiveled to look back out the window, checking for cops. His eyes were worried but his jaw was set.

“Names,” I said to Ronny again, “or Dex drives us all into the quarry.”

“Yeehaw!” Dex shouted from the driver’s seat. He steered with his pinky finger while he took a joint from his pocket and lit it, the sweet smoke filling the car. Ryan grabbed the wheel from him, cursing again.

“This is fucking nuts!” Ronny shouted. He was sweating like a fountain. “These are gangsters! Dangerous guys! You’re messing with the wrong people!”

“Dex,” I shouted, “did you hear that? These are dangerous guys.”

“I’m fucking terrified,” Dex said, and he drove the SUV over another pothole, jostling us all into the roof again. “Dangerous fucking guys!” he shouted. “Dangerous fucking guys!”

I barked a laugh; I couldn’t help it. Dex was nuts. Maybe it was only funny if you didn’t care about driving off the edge of a quarry in the last minutes of your life, but I laughed anyway.

The SUV went over another bump and something started rattling in the undercarriage. I thought Ryan would be pissed, but instead he turned around from the passenger seat and grabbed Ronny by the front of his shirt. “I left my kid everything,” he said, his wild eyes staring right into Ronny’s terrified ones. “Every penny. I don’t give a shit about gangsters, and neither do my brothers. Dex is going to drive us all into the quarry. I’m telling you, he’ll do it. Now give us the fucking information.”

“Jace,” Dex said. “You see any cops back there?”

“No cops,” Jace said. “Go faster, Dex.”

“Yessir,” Dex said, giving a salute while squinting into the dark through the smoke from his joint. Then he floored it even harder. “Was that a sign for the quarry?” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

“It was,” Jace shouted back. “Go faster. Let’s go down quick.”

“Okay! Okay!” Ronny was screaming so loud his voice broke. “Okay!” he screamed again in a rasp. “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Just stop!”

We were actually approaching the quarry—that wasn’t a lie. Dex was driving straight for it at top speed. My heart was racing and my breath was short, but the adrenaline high was so hard I didn’t feel much else. In that moment, he could have driven us over like he promised, and I would probably have just floated into oblivion. My only regret would have been that I’d miss seeing Emily Parker naked in my bed ever again.

But Dex couldn’t make anything easy. He hit the brakes and turned the wheel, and we spun hard, throwing gravel and dirt up from under the SUV’s tires. The spin seemed to last and last, and then we were stopped, the SUV rocking on its frame. The broken-down chain link fence that circled the quarry was tangled over our rear end, and we were on an angle because one rear tire was actually over the edge of the quarry, its rim staring into the blackness below.

Ryan was still holding Ronny’s shirt. Jace and I were braced against our doors. Dex turned around and looked at Ronny, squinting through the weed smoke again. His gaze was calm, dark, and empty, like a shark’s.

“Spill,” he said.

Ronny needed no more prompting; he started to talk. He talked and talked and talked. He named names. He told us everything there was to know, and Ronny Red knew a lot more than anyone gave him credit for.

Now we knew it, too.

When he was done we drove Ronny back into town and we dumped him in the Barn parking lot, shaking and trying not to puke. Dex wanted to leave him out by the quarry, but for once the rest of us outvoted him. Even a Riggs has to have some manners, after all.

“I take it back,” Dex said when Ronny had gone and we all got out of Ryan’s SUV in the Barn’s empty lot. The SUV was filthy, the back end was scratched to shit, something was definitely rattling, and one of the tires was going flat. “The car isn’t so bad. You still have a tiny dick, though.”

“I hate every last fucking one of you,” Ryan said.

For the Riggs brothers, that passed for a farewell.

We all went home.