“Likewise,
pintón
.”
“Unless we die.”
Ruben shoved him. “Thanks.”
Andy shrugged. “Well… life isn’t everything.”
The goofy Sears-dad laugh made Ruben’s hair stand on end, and somehow, the poisonous guilt started to leach out of him as if draining out of his fingers and face onto the concrete with each drop of sweat. He didn’t want a drink: he wanted a shower… with Andy.
Here they were trapped and bloody in a basement in Scarsdale, and he didn’t want to be anywhere else. An honest man would’ve had the sense to look miserable.
Not Andy. Crooked son of a bitch did the bit where his mouth stayed still, but his eyes melted.
Ruben scowled. “Don’t you hustle me, Bauer.”
“I wasn’t. Well, I wasn’t
really
. Just, I like watching you take charge of my bullshit. Ownership. You’re the looker, I’m the leaper, right?”
“I’m never gonna be able to trust you if you keep taking these stupid risks for no benefit. It’s—”
“Investment.” Andy nodded.
“I was gonna say important, but fine.”
“I trust you,
Señor
Oso.”
“You better,
pintón
, you know what’s good for you.” He took hold of Andy’s thick hair right at the cowlick and shook his skull playfully. “I got enough to worry about. I’m serious.”
“Same.” Andy scanned his face. “I see you, y’know? You can’t hide.” Andy squinted. “Hangman’s face with a hero’s heart.” He tapped Ruben’s chest.
“Ow. Fuck off.”
“That didn’t hurt.”
Blink.
True.
Andy pressed his face into Ruben’s throat and inhaled. “That’s why it’s called a moment of truth.” A nod.
“I guess. We still gotta get out of this place.”
Andy’s eyes searched his, digging for something… a promise, an answer? “We will. I swear.
Serious
.” The word had become a secret code between them. Everything they needed: serious life, serious money, serious danger, serious trust, serious emotion. Andy stepped back and shifted toward the door.
“Wait…. Are you leaving?”
Andy frowned, looked down and then right at him. “I love you, Ruben Oso. Like nothing I ever knew in my whole worthless fake of a life.”
You do?
Ruben nodded, too dumbstruck to make words.
The early sunlight fell across them like a kiss on the cheek from God.
Andy pressed their foreheads together. “I been spoiled, stubborn, and stupid since I was a kid. I never… I never—” A careful kiss.
“Me either.” Ruben swallowed, his mouth gluey. “Like the world’s a tuxedo, and I’m a brown shoe. A sneaker.” Andy shook his head, but Ruben shushed him. “I wanna tell the truth. You were right. Not about everything but about some of it. You know me, and I shouldn’t-a left you like that. None of this woulda—”
“No, Rube.”
“Look. I’m a lazy drunk. I’ve lied and stolen and cut corners. Only reason I’m
alive
is ’cause better people took pity on me. Family, my ex. I don’t deserve anything, least of all a second chance.” Swallow. “With us.”
Andy wiped his eyes and his mouth and nodded at the floor. “Okay. Okay.”
“Yeah?” Better than booze, that sweet flutter under his sternum. “Okay.”
“Good.” A dazzling salesman’s smile and Andy wiped his hands on his baggy, bloodstained khakis. “That’s that then.”
“That’s what?”
“We have a deal.” Andy swept into motion.
The hell?
Ruben made a face.
“Not you and me. Me and Tibbitt. My stepfucker. I’ll never be rid of him, but I don’t have to care. You’re right. I don’t need him. It doesn’t matter to anyone that matters.”
“Wait, what?”
Andy was already yanking through a wardrobe.
“You hungry? You need clothes.”
“Slow down. Slow down.”
He tossed a handmade dress shirt at Ruben. “My dad was bigger. That should fit.”
“Uhh.” His father’s shirt. Ruben decided not to be weirded out by that.
“Sorry. It’s dumb, but they won’t let you in without a collar and a jacket.”
“Bauer, what the fuck are you doing? Where are we going? I thought you were a prisoner.”
“I have been. I was. But you fixed that, too, by charging in.” Andy dropped to his knees and rifled through a drawer. “If I don’t have to fight him, then we can walk away free and clear. No time to shower. Get dressed.”
Ruben knew what his face had to look like. Blood and bruises and worse. “Andy, he tried to kill us.”
“No. He tried to convince us. That—” He pointed at Ruben’s body and face. “—was just a conversation. He’s a crappy negotiator. We aren’t prisoners. It’s my mom’s house.”
“They attacked me.”
“An intruder. With weapons. C’mon. And you look fucking scary.”
My bull’s-eye face.
Ruben’s fingers fumbled with the buttons, still fuzzy on Andy’s plan but closing the cotton over his battered torso. “Then why are we in the basement?”
Andy laughed. “This is my room. Was. Or it’s where I slept when I came home from boarding school. Privacy.” Shrug. “I was fifteen. Place to jerk off and get high. Without having to listen to him fight with the air.”
Ruben looked at the boxes piled everywhere.
“Storage now. I just….” He shook his head. “I brought you to my room because I didn’t want you anywhere else.”
Ruben touched his back. “He’s not your dad, he’s your enemy. Even if he— He didn’t raise you. He’s just a problem we’re going to solve.”
“Jacket should fit.” Andy lifted a navy blazer out of the closet and eyed the tiny gold shield on its lapel. “His Columbia pin, even.”
Ruben accepted the jacket numbly. “I thought you were in trouble.”
“I was. I’d screwed up my mother’s life, left her with Tibbitt when I knew better, and then poked the mangy bear for twenty years. I’m trapped in that goddamn penthouse spying on the city ’cause I’m too afraid to live in it. Then I’d lost you. I was—” Another headshake and a frown. “Over and out.” He snapped on the overhead light.
Sure enough, posters on the wall and battered textbooks revealed themselves. A boy’s room buried under junk.
“You hungry? C’mon.” Andy flipped a keyring. “We’re going to brunch.”
Upstairs, they walked through a very plush suburban mansion. The rooms were dimly lit, but Andy knew the way.
“Are we stealing one of his cars?” Ruben shook his head, woozy still and struggling to keep up. “Jesus! What are you talking about?” He jammed the shirttails into his pants. “Stop. Stop!”
A garage with two Jags, a Range Rover, and a Mercedes convertible. A half million dollars in automotive arrogance lined up like candy in a rack. Andy pressed one of the keys on the ring, and lights glowed from the Mercedes. “Good choice.”
Ruben’s voice echoed inside the garage. “They took you! They trashed your place? Blood, Andy.”
Andy opened the door, but waited. “That is my stepfucker’s idea of a conversation. He wants to show me how
serious
he can be. I’m only here because I wouldn’t give him Apex and let him terrorize everyone he hates. Now I can.”
“How?”
“Well, not the way he wants it.” Andy gave the barracuda grin and climbed inside. The motor purred to life. “Now I’m serious.”
Ruben popped the door and did the same, sitting his sore body on the buttery leather. “Fuck but I love that.”
Andy turned.
“That shark thing you do.”
“Yeah?” Andy held out his hand.
Ruben took it. “Sexy as hell. You don’t know.”
As the garage opened, Andy inched the car back in the swift arc of an expert driver on familiar turf.
“I wish I could be that ruthless.” Ruben laced their fingers.
Andy nosed up the driveway, his eyes on the road hard as porphyry. “Practice.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ALL PRAYERS
get answered. Most of the time, the answer is no.
Andy drove like the map was burnt into his brain, barely looking at the road. Twenty-four minutes later they pulled through gates that said Scarsdale Golf Club.
“I thought this was a country club.”
“It’s both. Same diff.” Andy rolled his eyes. “Don’t judge.”
“Why stop now?” Ruben rolled his sleeves down. His bruises looked even worse against his dark skin. “Andy, I look like a convict.” He glanced over. “And you look like something convicts use to clean the john.”
True enough. Andy’s black eye had hit that “oily rainbow” stage. Butterfly tape held an ugly tear on his forehead together up to where his hairline was matted with blood. His arm hair was gummy with tape and showed raw stripes where it had been ripped free.
Andy nodded at them. “Good, huh? We turn up with war wounds; my stepfather has to answer a lot of questions.” He squeezed Ruben’s hand, then downshifted into second as he approached the valet stand. “The worse we look, the better this goes.”
Ruben drummed the door with his fingers, scowling.
“I’d ask you to punch me just to get things flowing again, but my face hurts too much.”
“Stop. I’m not gonna hit you.”
“We want to make a terrible impression.”
Ruben chuckled. “Ow. It hurts to laugh. That Walrus asshole got my ribs good.”
“With the mustache? Ernie. That was payback for the other night, I expect. You almost fractured his jaw a couple weeks back.”
Ruben stopped talking. Andy knew their names. Of course he did, they worked for his stepfather. He’d known them all along. Even the mugging that first day, Andy had known.
Shrug. “Ernie’s a claims adjuster. No genius, obviously.”
They glided to a halt under a porte cochère.
On cue, a scrubbed teenager trotted out in a melon-pink knit shirt with a logo over his pec. As soon as Ruben climbed out, he stepped back. “Whoa, man.” He scratched at his neck and eyed Ruben with uncloaked fascination. “Jeez—”
“We’re here for brunch.” Andy tossed the keys. “Bauer.”
To his credit the kid caught them, almost without looking, but he eyed Andy’s injuries. “Uhh. You guys need any, y’know umm, help?”
Andy smiled. “Just the car.”
“Uhh, sure.” The kid backed away from them all the way around the Mercedes. He didn’t climb inside.
Ruben raised an eyebrow. “There a problem?”
The boy swallowed and scratched his neck again. “Nah.” Nervous headshake. “It’s…. You both look like a TV show, is all? Uhh. Have a great brunch.”
The car pulled away.
Andy nudged Ruben and steered him toward the entrance. “Remember: if he pisses himself in the car, it’s not our car.” His eyes shone fever bright. Was he enjoying this? “Let’s go make a deal.”
Retaliation. Retirement. Relationship.
How could Andy protect himself and his mom? Would he actually give up his business? And how did Ruben factor in?
The old man wanted into Apex so he could take out his enemies. Financial assassination. He wanted to use Andy as a weapon, a hitman. The only way to get Andy out was to make him radioactive.
They passed through a silent lobby. Some overfed white folks stood in clumps.
Andy veered left. “Clubhouse.”
Ruben muttered, “What are you… what do you need me to do?”
“Look scary. Let him assume anything. Everything.”
They’d reached a large sunlit dining room. Ruben scanned the space, not knowing what he was looking for. “Wolf tickets.”
“You been talking to Hope,
Señor
Oso.” Andy grinned and nodded. “That’s the one: sell him some wolf tickets.” He smoothed his ill-fitting blazer.
They walked into a sort of lounge overlooking the pool and the green, featuring a bar on one wall and a gigantic curved sideboard piled with meat, fruit, and a freestanding omelet station. A handful of middle-aged couples clustered at low tables around the room.
Ruben asked, “And what are you gonna do?”
“Win.”
There.
Andy focused on a man in his late sixties, shortish with a receding hairline, nursing a Bloody Mary alone.
He saw them and stood. “Andrew. You look terrible.” Tibbitt perused Ruben’s injuries without making eye contact.
“We came for brunch.”
“You can’t afford attention any more than I.” His gaze flicked to the scatter of other grayish suburbanites.
“And to do some business. My partner.” Andy turned. “Ruben Oso. From Colombia.”
Tibbitt swallowed that. “They do business down there?” The older man regarded Ruben with the mercy of a polygraph. “Only things I know come from Colombia are emeralds and cocaine.”
Ruben clenched his fists but kept his face still. “He’s filthy rich. I’m just filthy.”
“This club is filled with minorities who swear they’re victims.” Tibbitt exhaled.
Anger made Ruben’s voice louder than necessary. “And prisons are bulging with numbskulls who swear they were framed.”
Andy put a calm hand on his arm.
Tibbitt wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You shouldn’t have come here with him. Your mother is outside.”
Ruben ignored Andy and made the threat clear. “I’m not going anywhere, pops. Or else we’re all going. I’d love to take a fire extinguisher to your face.”
Three tables over, a young couple with a toddler looked up nervously.
“Jesus.” Tibbitt looked ready to shit himself.
Andy patted his back. “Ruben. I got it.” He held a chair for Ruben and then sat himself. After a long moment, Tibbitt sat stiffly.
Ruben breathed and watched the stream of pastel idiots migrating to and from the buffet loaded down with waffles and pineapple.
Keep it together.
This was Andy’s show. None of his business.
The old man thought Ruben was just hired muscle. That was something. Long as he didn’t know about their relationship, this stupid plan might work. He would let his resting thug face do the talking.
The old man tapped his glass and frowned at Ruben’s lapel. “I’m to believe you two met at Columbia?”
Ruben didn’t say anything, but Tibbitt took the silence for assent.
Tibbitt huffed. “Light is the glory of life. Life in the dark is misery, and rather death than life.”
The fuck?
Andy answered casually. “He means the motto.”
Ruben looked down at the pin.
Tibbitt frowned. “No one goes to church anymore.”
Andy’s tone stayed goofy and noncommittal. “Ruben does. He goes to church a couple times a week.”