The Evil That Men Do (2 page)

Chapter Three

Riley

It was mid-morning, by the wet heat and the sunlight bombarding the window of the bedroom Riley had until very recently been asleep in.

The bed sheets were a stinking pool of sweat—hers and his—and other fluids of a more carnal nature. The sleeping man next to her in the double bed looked familiar, but Riley was damned if she could remember his name. She rubbed her eyes and felt the swelling in her brain tissue pound against the roof of her skull, tinnitus buzzing in her ears as a host of hornets. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and across the roof of her mouth as she scanned the untidy floor of the bedroom for water. Underneath her denim jeans and leather jacket there was a half can of beer. After taking a swig from it, she realized it had evidently been used as an ashtray at least once.

Gagging, Riley leapt from the bed, dodged the detritus of what had clearly been a reasonable-scale party or the lifetime habits of an unrepentant slob. Pizza boxes, ashtrays filled to overflowing, empty beer cans and wine bottles littered every available surface. As Riley emptied her stomach into the incongruously clean toilet, she resolved to firstly never drink again and secondly; improve her taste in men with immediate effect. There was a clear correlation that overindulgence in the former had a severe impact on the latter. She flushed the toilet, and rinsed her mouth out under the sputtering flow of cold water from the bathroom faucet, using her finger to massage a small amount of toothpaste into her teeth and gums. The minty taste was unsurprisingly nauseating, but anything was better than the flavor of stale beer and ashtray, especially since she was more of a Jack Daniels girl and a non-smoking one at that. She spat out the toothpaste and water, and cradled her head on her arms, balancing her elbows on the edge of the sink, still too weak it seemed to stand unassisted. What in hell had happened last night?

There had been a bike race, of that she knew. The pungent, homely smell of gasoline, dust and sweat was still caked on the inside of her nostrils. Something told her she had not won, this time. Riley hoped she had at least come second, but knowing her own history, it was a rare hangover, especially one with the ferocity this one had, that accompanied second place. This hangover felt like a fifth placer, or even worse. She knew she could beat the local riders anytime, anywhere, so why did this keep happening? Then it was like a Polaroid camera was printing out the memory in her mind’s eye. The bar. Of course there was a bar. She scolded herself for remembering irrelevant information. She really wanted to know where the hell she was, who the sleeping man was in that pit of a bedroom, and where she had left her motorbike. She gingerly stepped to the tub in the mildew encrusted bathroom and turned on the shower, leaving the hot water off. A cold shock was probably what she needed to shake the hangover; the stink and the grime that coated her skin could wait until she could find some soap as there was none to be found in this stranger’s bathroom.

Riley lost herself in the cold water, for how long she couldn’t be sure, but long enough for her previous night’s lover to wake up and inadvertently scare the seven hells out of her by leaving the bed at last and joining her in the shower. She didn’t hear him enter, but certainly felt his hands and one other part of his body as he climbed in with her.

“Damn, why you got it on so cold, Riley?” he said. His voice was hoarse, betraying that it was him that had filled at least some of the ashtrays in the room. Riley spun on the spot as quickly as she was able to, given the wet surface beneath her feet, and attempted to cover her naked body reflexively with her hands, and then felt a little foolish for it. Why did people do that? When really, they had already seen each other more than naked the night previously; the only difference being that alcohol had inebriated the senses and dulled the memories. Then Riley got a decent look at her partner from the night previous.

Goddamn it, Riley. Her elder sister Ricki’s voice always personified her most self-critical thoughts. It was the bartender from O’Malley’s Bar; a fake Irish pub with a bartender who had a reputation amongst the clientele for being a notorious womanizer. This bartender, whose name still escaped her, put his hands on her shoulders and moved in for a kiss. Riley blocked his lips with her right hand and pushed him away with her left, rotating their positions so he was pressed against the shower wall, and she could simply step out onto the bathroom floor.

“Listen… err... buddy, about last night, I guess it was… fun? Anyway, I have to go. Right now. So, thanks? I’ll see you around, I guess.”

She backed further away, still naked, until she felt a slice of pizza under her foot, and stopped as it squelched. Fantastic.

“It’s Steven, by the way,” the bartender... Steven, said. He didn’t appear overly hurt by Riley’s words or her clear failure to remember his name. Instead he propped one arm on the shower’s filthy clear plastic screen, which wobbled under his weight. Another part of him wobbled as well, and Riley found herself actually blushing. He raised an eyebrow at her. Damn it again. She gathered her clothes together as rapidly as she could, pulling on her panties and jeans first. Her vest was a more difficult item to locate until the bartender—no, she reminded herself, Steven—whistled, still naked in the adjoining bathroom and pointed to the wall mounted lamp above the bed. Her vest was hanging by a single strap from the lampshade; clearly she had flung it off in some display of bravado. She recovered it as gracefully as the conditions would allow, balancing on the broken springs of the mattress as she was. Her brassiere turned up in the bed itself, and fortunately she already knew where her jacket was stained with cigarette ash and beer, on the floor next to her boots. At least not naked anymore, she could meet the eye of Steven, who had mercifully gotten out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself. He wasn’t actually too bad on the eyes now that Riley’s hangover had faded under the assault of cold water, embarrassment and the activity of getting dressed. Even so, the context of the situation, the events that led up to the night before were still a blur, and therefore had to be considered to have only have been one of the most embarrassing displays of slatternly behavior and immodesty that Savannah had ever borne witness to; no doubt her sisters would know the full details before she did, and then she would never hear the end of it.

Riley left the apartment, Steven calling after her in half-amused disappointment. The bartender’s rooms turned out to be right on top of O’Malley’s bar, accessible by a steel fire escape which was roughly painted a deep green in accordance with the faux-Irish theme of the bar. At least they were consistent in their commitment to the cause even this far south. Riley and her biker friends would often frequent O’Malley’s after a race meet, whether she raced or not, and there was without fail a never ending rotation of old Irish men, or old Irish men with bad accents, collecting coins for the ‘cause’ back home. The joke that Boston was roughly that-a-way never got tired, especially after the fourth round of drinks. The heels of her leather biker boots were reinforced with steel and clanged as she made her way down from the rooftop apartment. A passer-by spotted her and gave a curt nod. Great. No doubt a local who knew all about Steven’s night time proclivities and predilections. It was an elderly woman, which was unusual for Savannah at midday. Usually the geriatric sorts stayed in and caught up on their shows, waiting for the summer temperature to drop so that they might sit on the veranda instead come evening time.

Having completely forgotten about her motorcycle, Riley had the familiar swell of disappointment to realize that the motorcycle she walked past that was propped up on the side of the bar’s south wall was the one which she currently had the keys for. The bike itself wasn’t terrible, a 500cc Suzuki T500. The problem was that it wasn’t really hers; it was a replacement for the beautiful British racing green Triumph she had lost in a not quite legal street race a month previously. The Suzuki wasn’t in bad shape considering it was after all, nearly twenty years old, but it still didn’t quite suit her as well as the Triumph had. Damn that Darren Harper taking her on the last corner, forcing her into second place and missing out on a cool grand. Not having the cash to pay into the winner’s pot herself, she had to give up her pink slip.

She swung her leg over the seat of the Suzuki, and fished her key from the zippered pocket in her leather jacket. O’Malley’s, Steven and her regrets were soon left behind as the Savannah air flowed through her short hair and over her skull, and even on this hopefully temporary motorbike, the joy of freedom, the speed, the easy way she darted through lunchtime traffic always managed to improve Riley’s mood to no end. She weaved her way across town, heading for home—or, more accurately, her place of work which doubled as her home these days.

She slowed the bike gently as she passed Forsyth Park, taking in the verdant green park lands, then sped on quickly, doubling the speed limit for most of the route to East 49th Street, and the welcome sight of the decaying building that housed R3 Recovery. As she pulled up outside, a familiar pickup truck arrived, honking its horn. Riley dismounted as her sister Roberta opened the door and stepped from her vehicle.

“Sis, you look like hell. Rough night?” she asked.

“You might say that, but I’d rather not talk about it, ever, if you don’t mind,” Riley said, but despite her words she no longer felt embarrassed or glum about her indiscretions of the night before. Roberta smiled at her, kindly.

“Come on Riley, I’ll get the coffee on. I just got done taking in that jumper; Terry had to bring the police van out to collect him; I had the guy handcuffed to my own ride!” Roberta laughed as she relayed the tale of Mike Lewis, embellishing her own dramatic outsmarting of the criminal only a little.

“Nice work, we need all the cash we can get, huh? Hey, can’t your cop boyfriend help out a bit?” Riley said, accentuating the word ‘cop’ with a dash more venom than she had intended.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s a good guy, and we’ve been together six months since yesterday, so get used to it. You’re just mad at him and the police in general, for writing you up with tickets, which I hasten to remind you wouldn’t happen if you didn’t break the limit every darn day.”

“Gee, thanks, Bertie,” Riley said, “tell your cop boyfriend I’ll try and keep it below a hundred or so in the future.” Roberta threw her hands up in mock horror, and turned toward the wood and glass door bearing the legend R3 Recovery—R., R., & R. Vaughan, Proprietors. Through the glass, both sisters could see their third sister behind the office desk. Ricki Vaughan stared frostily through the door at them while cradling a telephone against one ear and holding two separate pieces of paper in her hands. She did not look like she had had a good morning.

Riley and Roberta entered the office, sending the bell over the door jingling.

Chapter Four

Ricki

Ricki’s morning had not been anywhere near as exciting as either of her sisters, but if she was asked her opinion on the matter, it had been far more stressful than both Roberta’s and Riley’s combined.

The air conditioner gave out within fifteen minutes of being started up at eight in the morning when she arrived, and she was now reduced to the ignominy of employing a desk fan in a vain attempt to combat that unrelenting Savannah mid-summer heat. The hot air that was pushed over her skin felt only cooled by a degree and at most two, which made the torture of catching up on the paperwork that all of the Vaughan sisters had ignored for some weeks all the more arduous. In addition to this, Ricki had to cover her own secretarial and telephone answering services in Riley’s absence. Her youngest sister at twenty-two didn’t have Ricki’s experience in running the business, so when she wasn’t out chasing down vehicle repossessions, which was most of the time lately, Ricki press-ganged her into doing the menial office tasks.

How had they allowed it to get so bad? There were multiple invoices to pay, and dozens of letters to reply to, including several important looking ones bearing the seal of the local courthouse—no doubt regarding the bail bondsman license for R3 Recovery that was up for renewal. Ricki shuffled the most official looking letters to the bottom of the pile and attacked instead the letters bearing a handwritten address. In her experience, such missives were invariably pleas for assistance when the local police refused to help. This wasn’t to dismiss the validity of some of the cases, and it was true that one of R3’s biggest cases of the last three years (the recovery of the deeds to over a dozen condominiums that had been swindled) had been as a result of one of these unsolicited begging letters, but that was a rarity. The vast majority of the letters were pointless. Find my lost cat, my husband ran off with my jewels—value: fifty dollars. Still, even answering these non-starters was better than tackling the serious letters at the bottom of the pile. She knew it was irresponsible, and she likewise knew that eventually that she would have to deal with them; just not yet. It was far too hot, and her patience was far too short.

Ricki discarded her neckerchief at ten in the morning, and at eleven kicked off her shoes. Her stockings went at midday, fifteen minutes before Roberta and Riley had arrived. Despite growing up in Savannah, none of the three Vaughan sisters were particularly good at coping with the heat, almost in defiance of their mother who had blamed her daughter’s sun-shyness on their daddy’s white man’s blood. Their father had always agreed happily with his wife, but he was as comfortable in the blazing Savannah sun as she was. Ricki had no particular theory on the reason why, she just knew that she hated being stuck inside, with no air-con, while Roberta was off being an all action hero and Riley; well, where the hell was Riley? She had been due to be in to help with this horrendous mess of paperwork at nine. Ricki was cursing her under her breath for what felt like the fortieth time that hour when she heard the thrumming engine of Riley’s bike, pulling up outside. The cavalry, at last.

The bell over the door rang as Roberta led Riley into the office. Neither of the girls took advantage of the cracked leather sofa in what served as a waiting area for the few visitors that R3 received in person. Ricki grunted a greeting, but felt her face break into the first smile of the day when Roberta dropped the receipt from the police department relating to the re-capture of Mike Lewis.

“Well done sis! That’s the first good news I’ve seen all day,” she said.

“It’s not much, Ricki. Guess it’ll pay for some new paperclips or something. Don’t we have anything a bit juicier to get my teeth into? I’m bored as hell.” Roberta twirled her finger through her hair. Roberta’s smile dropped instantly.

“Bored!” she spat. “Bored, are you? You could come and help me sort through all this rubbish and see if we can’t scrape a few more contracts out of them.” She leaned in her chair to eyeball Riley, who was, at a shade over five feet tall, comfortably hidden by Roberta’s frame. “And you, miss-can’t-get-out-of-bed-too-drunk, you should have been here hours ago. Why am I picking up after your screw ups, again?” Riley looked sheepish.

“C’mon, Ricki I-” she began, but Ricki silenced her with a raised finger, now in full flow.

“C’mon Ricki, nothing. We’re on our own here, ladies. We need to actually work as a team. At least Roberta gets the odd bounty, and I’ve pulled in three investigations across the county, this month alone. Riley, what exactly have you done for us lately? It’s two thousand and fourteen, and you’re acting like you’re waiting for Rock Hudson to walk off the set and carry you off into the sun. A woman has to make her own way these days, get it?” Ricki’s jaw was set, eyes feeling on fire. It felt good to have an enemy to fight, someone to blame, even though it wasn’t all Riley’s fault and she knew she’d feel bad about it later.

“Oh, screw you!” Riley’s yell of pent up anger made Roberta physically jump backwards, standing on Riley’s toe, who was evidently so angry at their elder sister that she barely noticed, or didn’t give any outward appearance of feeling pain.

“I’ve had a really, really crappy morning, I stink, and I could do without the third degree from you, alright? Gosh, when did you turn into such a bitch? You’re not Mom. And you never will be.”

Riley folded her arms in defiance. Ricki stood up out of her chair, finger jabbing and ready to unleash full scale Vaughan family warfare, when her eyes widened at the shape of the man at the door, coming in. Great. A visit from Dumont was all she needed right now. The portly white man—fifty-something and looking a good ten years older, thanks to the combination of what Roberta had always said was a drinking problem of herculean proportions and the wizening effects of the Savannah climate—waddled into the office. Ricki stood motionless, finger in the air. Riley and Roberta turned on the spot and muttered their greetings to the man whose visits invariably accompanied a lecture.

“Good morning, Mr. Dumont,” Ricki echoed her sisters. “How are you feeling today?”

Dumont had, for as long as Ricki could remember, been on the verge of dying for any number of imagined maladies, and Dumont had been a friend of the Vaughan family since before any of the girls had been born.

“Good morning ladies. I do hope I didn’t interrupt any, uh, family business?” Dumont ignored Ricki’s question, and Riley shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot, as she had always done since a child when caught fighting with either Roberta, or Ricki, or both.

“Nothing we can’t sort out, Mr. Dumont,” Roberta said, falsely cheery.

“Yes, we’re just discussing paperwork,” said Ricki.

“Ah, excellent,” said Dumont.

He rummaged for a moment in the inside pocket of his light summer blazer which was like his pants and shirt an off-white shade that made him appear as if he would be more at home selling high cholesterol pineapple chunks than his usual business of being a venture capitalist and a giant pain in the ass for the Vaughan sisters. He withdrew a sheaf of letters, and passed them to Riley, who passed them to Roberta, even though Ricki was standing close to her. Roberta handed over the letters, and Ricki rifled them quickly, and she was sure that she was unable to keep the horror from her eyes as she fought to restrain her mouth.

“What are they, Ricki?” Riley said, standing on tiptoes to try and see over the edge of the letters. Ricki instinctively raised the papers to hide them from her view. Riley scowled.

“What they are, my dear, are bills for the running costs of your business,” said Dumont. “As you can see, the bill runs to some thousands of dollars, which you ladies clearly don’t think is too much of a problem because you have always had me to bail you out.”

The Vaughan sisters made exclamations of denial but Dumont silenced all protests with a chop of one pudgy hand. His face became dark and glowering and when he spoke his voice was no longer his soft southern drawl but was thunderous with anger and frustration.

“Enough! I’ve known all of y’all since you could fit in my hand, and I knew your folks way before then. I’ve been like a grandpappy to you since your parents have been gone, but you have to stop taking me for a ride! I agreed to back R3 Recovery, and y’all know I’m happy to, but you have to break even! Thousands of dollars in unpaid bills and a receipt for a new motorcycle!”

“It’s not exactly new,” said Riley, in a small voice. Dumont glowered, and she was silent.

“Oh, I might have guessed you’d lose your last one. What did you do, wreck it? Never mind, I don’t care,” Dumont spat, voice still at full volume. Ricki had never seen him quite so apoplectic. “You three characters have exactly one month before the electricity company pulls the plug. I guess Riley would be instructed to repossess her own damn bike and I would think Roberta’s truck too, not to mention all the furnishings in here, and you’ll be working at Walgreens. I’ve backed you for five years, and you have never let it get this bad, but promise to your daddy or no, that’s it. Sort your own mess out. Let me know when you have the cash, or when you’re ready to hand over the keys for R3.” Dumont straightened his shirt which had nearly taken leave of his back during his explosion. “Have a nice day, ladies,” he said, and with that marched out of the offices of R3 Recovery.

The sisters looked at each other, agape. The room was silent for several long moments, and Ricki felt that she had tinnitus such was the volume of Hubert Dumont in full flow. She had never seen him quite like that before, not even when she had Roberta had broken the windscreen of his Cadillac throwing stones as children. Ricki, Riley and Roberta shared wide eyed looks. Ricki let the unpaid bills drop onto her desk and slumped back into her chair, head in her hands.

“Ricki, what are we going to do?” Riley said. Ricki raised her face to her little sister, memory of the conflict of only a few minutes previously buried, for now.

“I don’t know. We need,” she examined the bills, “about eight grand. Eight thousand! I don’t think we can do it.” She felt downcast. R3 Recovery had been her life for five years, and sure it wasn’t all that profitable, but the Vaughan sisters had made it by themselves. It was theirs, and now it could all end.

“We’ll find a way, somehow!” said Roberta, forcing a smile. “We’re the Vaughan sisters, right? We can do anything if we put our minds to it. Now, we just need to get a few jobs in, a few real big hitters, and we’re back in the game, right?”

“Yeah!” joined Riley. “We can do it! A few Ferrari repos, some caught fraudsters, they’re always well paid!”

Their optimism was almost enough to break through Ricki’s pragmatism, but the weight of responsibility hung on her heart heavier than her sisters’. It always had done, as the eldest. Then, out of nowhere, there was an unfamiliar, metallic buzzing noise. Ricki couldn’t place it for a moment, and then it ended as Riley picked up the receiver of the telephone on Ricki’s desk.

“R3 Recovery? Yes!” She said, and motioned for a pencil. Ricki handed one over. “Mmmhmm… ya huh… OK! Great! We’re on our way!” Riley hung the phone back up and grinned.

Ricki raised an eyebrow. “So… are we saved?” she said.

Riley’s smile faltered a little.

“Well, no, but it’s a repo! I got a repo; it’ll get us, like, two hundred! That’s a start, right?” Roberta and Ricki shared a slightly crestfallen moment. Nothing was going to be quite that easy, it appeared.

“OK, it’s a start. We have to start somewhere. Get on it, ladies. Roberta, you’re free at the minute. Go with Riley. I’ll get in touch with the courthouse and see if they have any jumpers for you.” Ricki span her pencil that she had received back from Riley. Riley mock saluted, and positively skipped out the door. Roberta merely shrugged and followed her, hips swinging as Ricki picked up the phone.

Maybe, just maybe there would be a light at the end of all this. Losing R3 Recovery could not happen. Must not happen. She had to find a way of keeping the Vaughan family together.