A Dangerous Affair (17 page)

"Where did that come from?" asked Lloyd.

"I bought it at a pawn shop."

"What for?"

"Protection," said Josh. "Someone broke into the trailer next to us. Probably the same pervert I caught peeping in our window."

Lloyd peered nervously at the trailer's open screen-door.

Josh dropped the gun in the box and buried it with the rest of the junk he'd collected over the years. "What's up?"

"I could lose my parole just for breathing on a gun. If my PO shows up here—"

"Chill out," said Josh. "The gun's mine."

"It doesn't matter."

"I bought it legal."

"You don't get it," said Lloyd. "I can't be in the same room with a gun. They could send me back to prison."

"I think you're paranoid."

"I think you're foolish."

Josh put the box away. "If someone breaks in our trailer, I'd rather be the fool with the gun than the fool without."

Lloyd shook his head. "Does Sheila know about it?"

"It was her idea. She wanted something for protection when I'm gone at meetings. She hates to be here by herself."

"Buy her a dog instead."

Josh blew smoke. "She's scared a dog would hurt the baby."

Lloyd thought about his brother's twisted logic. "How long have you been going to meetings?"

Josh took another drag. This time he held the smoke in his lungs for a second longer before he exhaled. "Since I got out of rehab. About a year before Dad died."

Lloyd felt his stomach twist in knots like an over-wound rubber band in a balsa wood plane. Prison life taught him to keep his emotions in check from the wolves who could smell weakness, no matter how subtle or subdued. New punks coming into the joint stood the most to lose, followed by inmates who ran to the guards for help at the first sign of trouble. In prison, the normal rules of society were moot. For the uninitiated, any semblance of law and order quickly vanished with a lack of self worth and hope. Boys fought. Men killed. Invisible boundaries were set and never crossed. "If I hadn't been locked up—"

"It wouldn't have changed anything," said Josh. "Dad had his demons like the rest of us. There's nothing you or me or Mom or anyone could have done to stop him."

Josh shook his head. "After you left, he never spoke to me again. Not one word. Like I never existed. You were the one who went to prison."

"And you were the one too busy getting high to care about anything but yourself."

Josh stormed outside and let the screen-door slam behind him. "It's not my fault."

Lloyd followed his brother. He slid his arms through the backpack straps and mounted the Triumph. "Dad was no saint. Half the time I didn't get him either. But he believed in us. He wanted a better life for us."

Josh scratched above his eyebrow. "I can't take it back." He kicked a rock beside the trailer and nudged his dentures with this thumb. "My problems weren't yours to solve."

"I know," Lloyd acknowledged to his brother with empathy in his heart.

"Then why did you take the rap for me?"

Lloyd turned the ignition key and brought the kickstand up. "What do you want me to say? That I wish it was you who went to prison instead of me? I made the choice for both of us."

"I never asked you to."

"That's not the point," said Lloyd. He leaned on the handlebars and nodded at the run-down trailer home. "I tried to give you a second chance. To have a better life—than this. When I went to prison, I expected my world to fall apart. Not yours."

"I'm happy with my life," said Josh. "I've moved on."

"Since when? Dad's dead. Mom's trying to drink herself into an early grave. I feel like I'm the only one who cares about this family anymore."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"Try a little harder," said Lloyd. "Mom can barely function on her own. The house is falling apart around her. She and Dad did a lot for us. The least we can do is return the favor."

Josh watched Sheila's Mustang turn into the community entrance. "I have my own family to take care of now. Sheila's taking classes at night to become a nurse. We're trying to scrape enough together for a nice apartment. Someplace big enough for her kid to have his own room." He puffed his cigarette. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. If I could take it back... I was never cut out for prison. You know that. I would have died in there."

Lloyd pressed the Triumph's starter button. "Part of me already has." He cranked the throttle and took off before Sheila's car reached the mailbox.

* * *

Josh crushed out his cigarette and watched his brother ride away. "What took you so long?" he asked Sheila before she exited the red coupe and unfastened the infant car seat.

Sheila hoisted the groggy baby on her shoulder. "Logan fell asleep in the car after I picked him up from daycare."

Josh gathered grocery bags from the trunk. "My brother just left."

"So?"

"I didn't want you to think I was hiding something."

"Are you?" Sheila asked in an angry tone. "I told you I didn't want him around."

"Why do you have to be such a bitch about this?"

Shelia carried her son inside. "Because he gives me the creeps."

"He's my brother."

"He's a bad influence," Sheila said hotly.

Josh followed her to the baby's crib. "On who?" He watched Sheila lay her baby on his side and cover him with a blue blanket. "Lloyd's been through hell. I'm the only family he has left."

"Stop shouting. You'll wake the baby."

"I'm not shouting," said Josh. He followed Sheila out of the room. "Did you buy more smokes?"

"You didn't tell me to."

"You always pick up more when you buy groceries."

"Well I didn't this time."

"Then I need to run out real quick."

"Not now. I need you to watch Logan for me."

"I'll be back in five minutes."

"I'm already late for class."

"Tonight?"

"I have class every Tuesday and Thursday, Josh. I've told you a hundred times."

Josh poked through the groceries. "I can't believe you didn't pick up more cigarettes at the store."

"I didn't know we needed them." Sheila gathered her books from the table. "I'll only be gone a couple hours. Logan needs a fresh diaper when he wakes up. There's a bottle of formula in the fridge. Don't forget to warm it up before you feed him. You have to test it on your wrist."

"I know."

"I have to go. If you can't survive two hours without a cigarette, you've got bigger problems than I thought."

"You should have bought them at the store."

"You told me you were trying to quit."

Josh eased the screen-door closed behind Sheila, allowing the latch to catch quietly. "Forget what I said before. I'm not a quitter."

Chapter 23

Lloyd rubbed a Saab 9-5 with a chamois to absorb the residual rinse water. He dressed the tires with a creamy white solution, spraying just enough to coat the rubber without wasting the product. The face of a clock, his brother taught him. Four squirts on each tire. One for each quarter turn around the wheel. The less product used, the more profit earned, Josh explained. Making money washing cars didn't take an education. It took cheap labor and attention to detail.

Despite the Florida heat and humidity, Lloyd welcomed the sun's merciless rays roasting his arms and face. He relished the sweat permeating his shirt and jeans. He worked hours side by side with the Central American recruits, mostly refugees from Honduras, San Salvador, Brazil, and other pockets of impoverished countries where minimum wage at Sonny's Car Wash could feed the family back home.

Lloyd earned a five-minute break every two hours, enough time to snag a drink and take a piss before the next car rolled through the wash tunnel.

He performed without fail and without complaint, content, for now, to earn an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. A monotonous routine not unlike his time in prison, where a regimented schedule governed every facet of his day-to-day life.

Inside the penitentiary, he'd witnessed a lifetime of brutality and human suffering from a system run amuck with crooked guards and gang influence meant to bludgeon any semblance of goodwill toward men. With his life behind bars worth less than spit, he forged alliances with other inmates equal to or beyond his own standing with the shot callers who ran the joint. One-on-one fights rarely happened in the open, subjecting victims to random beatings outside the purview of surveillance cameras or the guards on duty. Everything from sharpened plastic to broken pipes became a weapon of choice.

For convicts with the right connections, coke and heroin traded hands with ease; though respect remained the dominate currency. Those who had respect called the shots; those who didn't, slept with one eye open in a world where violence begat violence, and brutality knew no limits.

A black Mercedes 550 SL drove away as the next car rolled through the automated wash tunnel—a red Volvo S40 with tinted glass.

Lloyd glanced at Jamie who left the building and stood beside the tip box outside. "Almost done," he said, strolling over to the Igloo water cooler in the shade. He sipped from a paper cup. He could feel her gaze upon him, inviting him to open up.

* * *

"Thank you," Jamie replied curtly. She curled her fingers around her purse strap to expose her diamond wedding ring. She turned her head, pretending to stare at the parking lot and the line of cars snaked around the back of the building. She folded her arms across her chest, blushing like a school girl with a crush.
The car was dirty,
she told herself.
It needed cleaning. Nothing more.
Get in, get out, and get home. People who play with fire get burned.

Lloyd filled a second funnel cup with water and offered it with a smile. "Thirsty?"

"No thank you."

"It's on the house."

Jamie stuffed two dollars in the tip box and strolled toward the shiny Volvo.

Lloyd opened her door for her. "Do you like motorcycles?"

"Excuse me?"

"Have you ever ridden on the back of a bike?"

"Those are dangerous."

"Life's dangerous. That doesn't mean we stop living."

Jamie closed her door and powered down her window. She wanted to leave and she wanted to stay. Mostly she wanted to stop a bad idea before it started.

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" Lloyd offered before the next car exited the wash tunnel. He wrung out the chamois in his large hands, squeezing every ounce of water from the spongy, synthetic towel.

"I'm married," said Jamie. She flashed her wedding band.

"But are you happy?"

Jamie looked away. Flustered by this man with a smile that scaled her fortress walls, she put the Volvo in gear and drove away with the parking brake on.

Chapter 24

Leslie Dancroft waited in her boss's office, anticipating another apathetic lecture on the county's depleted budget and the unofficial mandate to sell her clients on a plea bargain deal in lieu of a costly trial.