Roark took a deep slug, wiped his mouth, and didn’t pretend he didn’t know what Jax wanted. “Ain’t pretty. It’s family business.”
Jax nearly snorted up his beer. “You remembermyfamily? What’s a little murder and fraud among friends?”
“Yeah, well, your real daddy was honorable, even if it got him killed. My daddy ain’t honorable or dead, not for lack of tryin’ on the dead part.”
Jax waited.
Roark grimaced at the familiar tactic. He ran a rough hand through his thick curls. “My dad grew up t’inking it was okay to grift. His family was poor, his dad died in an oil rig explosion, his mom needed money for his siblings, you know da song.”
“He danced for the money they paid.” Jax quoted a line he’d heard his parents use. He thought it referred to Gypsies, Romani, whatever. Roark looked enough like one to qualify.
Roark snorted and chugged the beer. “Did a bit of dat, too, I expect. Good lookin’ SOB. I don’t know for certain since I wasn’t born den, but I get the impression he cheated women, alotof women, in his younger days. He’s too fat and slow dese days.”
“You’re one of the results?” Jax asked cynically.
“Nah, he actually married my mom. My granny is a scary Vodou priestess, probably threatened to raise the spirits on his black soul. He settled down, worked on da rigs, came home and gave my mother a baby every year. Until he punched da wrong guy in the face and lost his job. Old story. He came home and started punching us—until I got big enough to punch back. Things kinda went to hell after dat.”
Jax thought they sounded like hell before that happened, but he’d lived a privileged life. “How old were you?”
’Bout twelve, I reckon. We had our own garden patch and we ate good. I grew fast. You’ve seen the official records. I got baseball scholarships, got out, came home ever’ so often to t’reaten to beat the crap out of him if he hurt Ma or the kids. She finally got one of her brothers and his wife to move in and look after da youngers so she could work. After that, she booted my dad out.”
“And he went on to bigger and better things?” Jax guessed.
Roark shrugged and crushed his can. “He was outta my life. I didn’t follow his. But recently, he apparently got syndicated.”
Jax waited. He imagined Ariel was inside, frantically working through computer files, looking for Roark’s father, even though the crafty bastard hadn’t mentioned his name. Ariel wasn’t as good at Google as she was at money, but she wasn’t bad, either.
Roark glared, then reluctantly continued. “Me, I don’ know who and what he did. But he was dragging in my brothers, and Ma got hot under the collar. I went down to persuade her to move to Texas with her sister, get the kids outta that hole where there ain’t two coins to rub together, but she likes her job and being near family. The stink got so bad, my grandma threatened to put a hex on him. You don’t wanna get on the wrong side of that woman.”
“Stink?” Jax took superstition with a cellar of salt. But since meeting Evie and her auras and Loretta and her bubble souls... He probably ought to pay closer attention.
“Da was runnin’ this dodgy phone bank in an old storage shed with a bunch of punks who could talk a good talk. My brothers said weed flowed like water, but all they were doin’ was making sales calls. I sent the boys to Texas and called in cops. Cops poked around, shrugged, and nuttin’ changed.”
Jax pinched his nose. “So you blew it up?”
“Mais, j’mais, no. I tapped lines, connected dots. They had so many phone scams goin’, they was losing track of dem all.” He was slipping deeper into his native dialect with his fury. “Tellin’ old ladies they won prizes if they sent a hundred bucks to cover shipping. They even had one sellingpsychicservices. Evie woulda rolled heads.”
“Evie would have pulled noses and cut phone cords and taunted them to the devil. You’re the one who blows up things.” Actually, Evie would have looked for ghosts to spook them, but that wasn’t relevant.
“Didnotdo dat, no. Me, I reported dem to the phone company. When no one did nuttin’, I cut the lines, warned everyone the cops were coming, and while the bastards ran like acocodrilon their heels, I told Da what would happen if he ever scammed anyone again. Told him I’d reported him to the FBI, which I maybe sorta did, except no one got back to me. We got in a fight but ain’t no way he can win. So he pulled a gun. He got me once before I kicked it and punched him flat. Gun went off again and hit a barrel of fireworks. Place blew. I rolled out.” He huffed and glared at the cloudy sky. “Don’ know if Da did, but I got threats from his phone sayin’ I’d never see Ma again if I didn’t leave town.”
“So you left?” Jax asked in incredulity. Roark never backed down.
“Dey blew up her chickens and her car. She and Gran ordered me out. I figgered something bad was going down besides Da’s griftin’, and I needed reinforcements, but I’m flat busted. I hoped I could get the van, and you could connect me with one of dem para-military units, give me time to make some cash before I go back in. Someone has to protect my family, and it ain’t Da.”
The front door crashed open. Ariel’s long brown hair flew loose down her narrow back as she cried, “Stupid!” and flung a phone at Jax and glared at Roark. “Speak English.” A second later, she was gone, as if she hadn’t been there at all.
“Want to match all your siblings against my one?” Jax asked, opening the cheap phone she’d flung.
“Mine ain’t crazy, just young and stupid. Dat...thatphone you got was in my jeans. Is she washing my clothes?” Roark tried to look casual and didn’t snatch it back.
It didn’t take a second to locate an enormous file of phone numbers. “You stole this from the call center?” he asked. From Roark’s look of defeat, he gathered Roark hadn’t planned on sharing. What else was he hiding?
Jax sent the file of numbers to Reuben. It wouldn’t hurt to check these out. Then he glared at Roark. “You’re wounded. You’re not going anywhere. Besides, your family can’t afford for you to get blown away in some foreign war. You have one right here to fight. I already have a reporter from New Orleans sniffing around, so you’re probably right and something or someone bigger than your father’s grifting is going down. Better to clear the air with friends at your back.”
Roark looked alarmed. “I ain’t bringing trouble down on friends! Dat...” He grimaced at the security camera to show he’d heard—and respected—Ariel’s command. “That’swhy I ditched my phone and traveled incognito. I didn’t want anyone following me.”
An MIT grad, Roark knew how to speak English, probably better than the university’s Boston students. But he’d hidden his brains for so long, it was second nature to slip into country boy mode. Jax flipped through the list of numbers and other stolen documents, but none were immediately comprehensible.