Luke

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If you were going to reunite the four Riggs brothers for the first time in eight years, Detroit was probably the place to do it. Down-and-out Detroit, which was still fighting and giving off attitude after the rest of the country had written it off. Dex had been a cop here; Ryan had played minor league baseball in Plymouth; Jace was in a halfway house here. I’d stayed here a few times during my nonstop wandering, never quite able to stay away. I liked the food and the music and the women. We were born in Westlake, but Detroit was a Riggs home away from home.

I picked up Jace at his halfway house. It was only when Jace told me he planned to take the bus across town to the bank that I found out he didn’t have a car. “I think Dad sold it while I was in,” Jace told me calmly on the phone. “I just take the bus now.”

A Riggs without a car—any kind of car, even a junker—was like a Riggs without a dick, and we both knew it. I didn’t rub it in, though, because after twenty months in prison, Jace had been through enough.

I found the halfway house, and my stomach sank. It was a shitty, boxy building, a 1980s brick square of apartments on a rundown street a few blocks from the community center. A woman, rail-thin and tired, sat on the front step smoking a cigarette.

I wasn’t a stranger to people who were down and out. Whatever money the body shop made, Dad kept it, and my brothers and I lived off of whatever cash we could lift from his wallet. I’d had days when I went to school hungry, and so had my brothers. So to me, being on the down side of life wasn’t something to be ashamed of; it was just something that happened to some of us. The first thing being poor teaches you is that it has nothing to do with whether you’re a good person or a bad one.

Still, it bothered the fuck out of me, seeing Jace live in a place like this. Because even though Dex was the cop and Ryan was the ball player, Jace was the best of us—he just didn’t get any credit for it. He was the quiet one, the brother who sat in the back of the classroom not because he was stupid, but because he was so smart he was bored as hell. He was the brother who stole books from the library while Dex stole cigarettes. Teachers assumed he cheated when his marks were good, because he was a Riggs, so he stopped bothering. Other kids picked fights with him, but it was always Jace who got suspended from school.

Dad gave Dex the most hits—Dad and Dex were like oil and water, with Dex giving the hits back when he got big enough—but Dad pretended Jace didn’t exist at all, like he had never happened. At home, Jace was a shadow. After high school he worked at Riggs Auto for a while, then moved to Detroit where he got a job at another garage. We thought he had at least settled down to a quiet life, which was why we were all surprised as hell when he was arrested for stealing cars. His specialty was getting into parked cars and he’d never hurt anyone, but Jace pleaded guilty and he went down for twenty months, his life spiraled away down the drain.

He came out the front door of the halfway house now, wearing jeans, motorcycle boots, and a worn gray T-shirt under a short-sleeved black button-down worn open. I could see the ink on both his biceps, the trail of it down the inside of his left forearm. His dark hair was cut close to his head at the sides, his beard trim. He had lost weight inside and was packed with lean muscle, not much bulk, but he was tall, wide-shouldered, long-legged. He looked lethal and he moved quick. Anyone coming across Jace in a dark alley would turn and go the other way, with no idea that he was probably thinking about some book he read and not about mugging you at all.

“Hey,” he said when he got in the passenger side. “Thanks for the ride.”

“I’m getting you a car,” I told him, reversing out of the lot.

“No point,” Jace said. “Someone around here will just steal it.”

I pulled out into traffic. If Jace thought that was an ironic statement, he didn’t say so. “How much longer do you have to stay there?”

“Three weeks,” he said, looking out the passenger window at the city going by. “Condition of parole. I got a mechanic’s job at the garage a few blocks away—he takes most of the ex-cons. Not much money, but my PO does random checks to make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be, make sure I’m at work, make sure I’m clean. I pass the checks, I can move out.”

I frowned. “Make sure you’re clean?” I asked.

He smiled his quiet Jace smile at me, then he looked out the window again. “Standard procedure, Luke,” he said. “Imbibing chemicals has never been my thing. Most evenings my PO finds me sitting in my apartment reading a book. I think he thinks I’m fooling him somehow, even though I piss in as many cups as he tells me to. Even when he watches.”

Jesus. I was mad that Jace had to live with this kind of humiliation, and at the same time I couldn’t reconcile the brother I knew with a man who would spend his time stealing cars. Who the hell had that guy been, and what was wrong with him?

“Come live at the house when you’re out,” I told him. “You can have the guest house. We’ll find you a junker behind the body shop and you can at least get around. And you have a job, too.”

Jace was quiet for a long minute, his gaze still fixed out the window. He slowly scratched his beard with fingers even more grease-stained than mine. “You sure you want a felon around?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice coming out more harsh than I intended. “Are you gonna fuck me over?”

“Maybe,” Jace said, surprising me. “You don’t really know.”

“Cut the shit, Jace,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”

It made him sound like he had so many important places he could go instead, but I understood it. This was classic Riggs. We hate to admit we’re in a bind, we hate to take help—especially from each other—and we hate to say thank you. It comes from being assholes, but it also comes from being sure that whatever good thing is being offered to you either comes with a catch or an expiry date. From being sure that even if someone is being nice to you, a minute from now they’ll stop and you’ll be on your own again.

When Mike Riggs is your father, these are the earliest life lessons you learn.

“This thing of Dad’s,” I said, changing the subject, “this safe deposit box. You have any idea what’s in it?”

Jace shook his head. “I don’t talk to Dad much. He’s never said anything about it to me.”

“What about the guy Dad tried to run over?” I asked. “You know him?”

“Ron Ruvinsky,” Jace said. “You’ve met him. He calls himself Ronny Red.”

“Ronny Red?” I said, shocked. Ronny had hung around the body shop from time to time when we were teenagers, getting drunk with Dad. “Dad tried to kill Ronny Red? Why?”

Jace shrugged. “I guess they got in an argument.”

I ran a hand through my hair. Well, it was too late now. For whatever reason, Dad had tried to run over Ronny while drunk, and now he was paying for it.

“You were away a long time,” Jace said. “You missed some things.”

“You left too,” I pointed out.

“We all did,” Jace agreed. “We wanted to get the hell out of Westlake, away from Dad. But none of us went very far, except you. And we’re all back here, so it didn’t work.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said. “I’m the one at Riggs Auto, trying to figure out a pile of Dad’s receipts.”

“Be careful,” Jace said, and for a second his voice was cold. “Dad got into some bad shit in the last few years.”

I stopped at a red light and stared at him. Before I could ask him what he meant, the light changed and Jace spoke again. “I always envied you,” he said.

I blinked. “What?”

“Getting away,” he explained. “We all talked about it, thought about it, but you just got in your car and went. Put your foot on the gas and didn’t take it off.” He shook his head. “You made it look so easy.”

It felt like a gut punch for some reason. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want my brother to have a fake idea of what my life had been like. “It wasn’t that easy,” I said, trying to explain. “There were a lot of times it was hard. Like anything else, I guess.”

“Yeah, but when it got hard, you just packed your bags and kept going,” Jace said. His voice had a wistful note to it. Any guy doing twenty months in a cell would fantasize about getting in a car and driving, not looking back.

Still. “You can pack your bags and keep going,” I told Jace honestly, “but you’re still carrying your shit around with you wherever you go. You’re still you. Except you’re carrying all of your shit in a crowd of strangers.” I shrugged. “To tell the truth, I saw a lot of great things, a lot of great places. But most of it was lonely.”

It was a weird confession, and I didn’t know why I made it.

But Jace just nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, looking out the window again. “I know that feeling.”

The bank was off Rosa Parks, down near West Riverfront Park. I parked the Charger, next to a big, showy black SUV—that was definitely Ryan’s—and a dark green Impala with dented fenders that was most likely Dex’s. I got out, inhaling the smell of dirty water and motor oil, taking in the exotic sight of a closed, boarded-up hotel and a CVS. “This looks like Dad’s kind of place,” I said.

“Swank,” Jace agreed, getting out of the passenger side.

Ryan and Dex were standing by the front doors, Ryan leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, Dex standing with his feet apart and a smoke in his hand. They seemed to be facing off.

This wasn’t new. Ryan and Dex had never gotten along, mostly because they were only four months apart. No, our mother wasn’t a biological wonder—Ryan had a different mother, and the same father, as the rest of us. In short, Dad had knocked up Mom four months before he’d knocked up another woman on the side. Mom produced Dex, and the other woman produced Ryan.

There was a reason the good people of Westlake stayed on the other side of the tracks.

Eventually both women bailed—no woman hangs around the Riggs men for long—and Dad ended up with both sons, plus me and Jace by then. It was like the Brady Bunch, except with cheating and a group of boys who didn’t like each other. Ryan and Dex were particularly toxic, maybe because of their mothers, maybe because they were so close in age, and maybe just because they couldn’t fucking get along.

“Thank God the cavalry is here,” Ryan said as he saw Jace and me approaching. “Someone else deal with this asshole.” He jerked a thumb at Dex.

Ryan, damn him, was probably the best-looking Riggs brother, if you liked the movie-star type. He had dark eyes and thick dark hair—carefully tousled—and he’d been born with a sensitive, soulful look on his face, like he was quietly pondering a deep line of poetry instead of thinking the dirty shit he was really thinking. He’d also been born with an athlete’s grace and a throwing arm that set him apart from every other kid in Westlake. The whole package made girls fall for him in droves, so it was easy to hate Ryan for a while.

But Ryan was his own worst enemy, getting into fights and pissing off coaches, stalling his would-be career. Three years ago a woman had left him with a four-year-old son he didn’t know he had—he’d knocked her up in a one-night stand at twenty. Then his shoulder had put a stop to his career. Today he was clean-shaven, wearing a pair of aviator shades, faded jeans, and a brown leather jacket over a white T-shirt. He was leaning against the wall near the door, and a woman coming out of the bank just about fell down the steps as she stared at him. He didn’t notice.

Dex looked rougher, like he had just gotten out of bed, which he probably had. His old jeans were low-slung and the blue plaid button-down he had pulled on was on its fourth or fifth straight wear. He had a four-days’ beard and a half-crazy look in his eyes I recognized from childhood. Dex was the oldest, the first Riggs to terrorize the schools and the neighborhood, and Dex was the craziest. He was the one who took dares to jump off roofs or stand in the middle of train tracks. He was the one who could shoplift like a pro when he wanted to and somehow get liquor when he was fifteen. His teachers practically had to get PTSD counseling, and guidance counselors despaired.

The fact that Dex ended up as a cop surprised everyone, but it didn’t surprise Jace, Ryan, or me. Dex didn’t become a cop because he wanted to serve and protect—he did it because just the thought of it made Dad furious. Dex may have been crazy, but when he set his mind to something he could always do it—and there was nothing he set his mind to more than making Dad miserable. Dex hated Dad more than he hated anyone.

“Listen, dipshit,” he said to Ryan, “I didn’t ask to be here any more than you did. So let’s just get this over with.”

“Is that a joint?” I asked Dex, catching the smell of his smoke. “Jesus, man, this is a bank. Put that out.”

“I need something to take the edge off,” Dex said, taking another toke. “This is going to suck.”

He was probably right about that. I was dreading whatever Dad had left us in this safe deposit box, and from the looks on my brothers’ faces, they did too.

“Luke the wanderer,” Ryan said, looking me over from his position leaning against the wall. “How’s Westlake?”

“It still sucks, thanks,” I told him.

“Any of the hot girls from high school still there?” he asked.

It was an uncanny question, like he could reach into my brain and see Emily Parker, but of course he didn’t know anything about me and Emily. Not that there was anything to know anymore, except for my dirty thoughts. “A few,” I said.

“So it isn’t all bad, then,” Ryan said, grinning.

“As if you’d have a shot,” Dex said to Ryan, dropping his joint and grinding it out with his toe. “Women don’t like package deals.”

Ryan looked Dex up and down, like he’d looked at me. “Well, Luke doesn’t look like he was scraped off the floor of a homeless shelter,” he commented, “so my money’s on him.”

“I think Jace is the Riggs ninja with women,” I said, because Jace was standing quiet like he always did. “Swift and silent, but I bet he cleans up.”

Jace rolled his eyes and didn’t say a damn thing.

“Yeah, the mysterious one,” Ryan said, giving Jace his once-over look. “I can see it. So are we going inside to get this done?”

Since we were finished with the who-has-the-biggest-dick conversation (it’s definitely me), we trooped into the bank. The manager who’d set the appointment with us was a little surprised to see four degenerates, but this was Detroit, and he looked defeated by life. After we signed a bunch of shit, he led us to a back room with a safe deposit box in it and left us there.

It wasn’t a very big box. It was the size of two shoe boxes, just a plain gray metal box sitting on a table. The four of us gathered around it.

“Okay, so it isn’t a body,” I said. “There’s that.”

“It could be a hand or an eyeball,” Jace pointed out.

“You could fit coke in there,” Dex said. “Or heroin.”

“Anthrax,” Ryan said. “Anthrax isn’t very big.”

“You know he wanted this, right?” Dex said, looking around at us with suspicious eyes. “This whole little show was planned before he went inside. He wanted us all to gather here, stare at this box, just like we’re doing now. We’re doing exactly what he wanted.”

I ran a hand through my hair. None of us trusted Dad as far as we could throw him. I didn’t know what was in this box, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

“Open it,” I said to Dex, who had the key in his hand.

“This fucking sucks,” he complained again, but he put the key in the box’s lock and turned it. He opened the lid and we all peered in.

The box contained four envelopes, one with each of our names on it. They were thick.

I pulled mine out and opened the flap. “Jesus Christ,” I said softly.

It was money. Stacks of hundreds, wrapped and compact. Thousands and thousands of dollars—forty, fifty thousand maybe. And that was just my envelope. My brothers had all opened theirs and found the same.

We all locked eyes for a second in shocked silence. Dad didn’t have money; he’d never had money. He drove a shitty old pickup truck and our house was falling down. He suddenly had money to throw around, Ryan had said to me on the phone.

“Look,” Jace said, breaking the silence. “In the bottom.”

In the bottom of the box, beneath where the envelopes had been stacked, was a handwritten note.

Just the beginning. Next delivery to the second safe on the 19^th. The combination is in the first safe. Don’t fuck it up, boys.

“The second safe?” I said.

“Luke,” Dex said. I looked up to see his crazy laser gaze fixed on me. “Is there a second fucking safe?”

“No,” I said. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.” There was a safe in the Riggs Auto office with no money in it—I’d looked.

“Think harder,” Dex said.

Then it clicked. There was another safe behind the main garage, behind the fence where we kept the cars, splattered with paint and piled behind skids and boxes. I’d assumed it was broken, waiting to go to the junk yard.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a second safe. I’ve never opened it. I assumed it was garbage.”

Dex got a dark look, crazy and calculating at the same time, and for a second I thought he knew a hell of a lot more about this than I did. It was hard to tell with Dex, because he always looked crazy, but I caught his eyes and he looked away.

It was Jace who broke the silence. “I’m not taking this money,” he said. “Wherever this came from, it isn’t legal.” He dropped his envelope back in the box. “I just got out, and there’s is no way I’m going back in. Not for any money. Not for anything.”

“I’ll take mine,” Ryan said, putting it in the pocket of his jacket. “I have a kid to raise.”

“They could be marked bills,” Jace said.

Dex snorted. “That would take some kind of big-league sting operation. No one is going to that kind of trouble for Dad.” He put his envelope in his pocket. “I don’t know where this came from, and it’s probably morally wrong, but I don’t give a fuck. I’ll take it.”

I was quiet, looking at the envelope in my hand. Fifty grand, maybe more.

Don’t fuck it up, boys.

“Luke?” Dex said. He was looking at me, his eyes dancing. He was enjoying this. “Are you in or are you out?”

Dad got into some bad shit in the last few years.

When it got hard, you just packed your bags and kept going.

Don’t fuck it up, boys.

My throat was thick. I put my envelope back in the box.

“I want to know where this came from,” I said. “I mean, I want to know exactly where this came from.”

“Probably wise,” Ryan said.

“Yeah,” Dex agreed. “I want to know, too. I’ll take a look into it while I spend my money.”

“You want to know where it came from,” Jace said in his low voice, “there’s only one guy to ask.”

We looked at each other. Ryan groaned. Dex scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Fuck,” he said. “One of us is going to have to see Dad.”