“You said you didn’t mind him going. You let him walk out of here.” Brody’s sounding nervous.
“Sure, I told him that, and I won’t kill him myself. But if he gets hit by a random car on the way to the airport? Well, that’s not anyone’s fault, is it? That’s just bad fucking luck.”
There’s the scrape of a chair, and I can hear the panic in Brody’s voice. “Put that away. I thought we had a deal.”
“We did. You fucked up your end. I gave you one job. Put my brother in prison. What do you do? Let him walk out of custody and into my new fucking strip club.” He’s yelling now. “You couldn’t bring him down, so now I’m going to have to do it myself. You’re the same useless little prick you were in school.”
“Hey, fuck you. Do you want to fight me on this? I’ll send you to the fucking cleaners. I’ll have my cops breathing down your neck so hard you won’t be able to fart without them hearing it. You kill me now, and you’ll be a fucking cop killer. The commission will have your head. Put that away. We both know you’re bluffing. You never killed a man in your life.”
There’s a noise so loud I wince. My ears ring as I hear Ernesto firing a second time. Then there’s silence for a moment. It ends with a wet thud I know only too well. That’s a body hitting the floor.
“Killed a dog once,” Ernesto says. “Guess I just graduated.” A loud spitting sound. “The commission won’t give a shit because they won’t know I did it, you fucking moron.”
I hear a smack that I’m guessing is him kicking the side of the corpse. “Now I’ve got to clean up your mess.” Another kick. “Lucky for you, this place needs a new carpet.” A rustling sound and then a faint ringing.
“Yeah, hi. I need a cleanup at this location immediately. Dump it somewhere public and make it look like a drug bust went wrong. Yes, I know that costs extra compared to disposal. Fuck me, I don’t give a shit what it costs. I’m about to become the Don. Just get it done.”
57
Bex
* * *
“Why am I here exactly?”
Toby looks at me from the other side of the desk. His head’s hidden behind a model ship which he slides to the side as gingerly as you would move a newborn baby. “Glad you asked,” he says, picking up a tube of glue and making sure the nozzle’s screwed on tight. “Sorry about this. I forgot to move it before the hearing.”
“You made that?”
“Making. Not done yet. HMS Victory and all its rigging. Nightmare. Never should have started one this complicated.”
“So why not quit?”
“Because I like to finish what I started.”
“Even if you don’t enjoy it?”
“I’ll get to look at it when I’m done, and I won’t remember all this rigmarole. Get it? Rig-marole. Because it’s rigging?”
“I get it. I just don’t get why you’d do something you don’t enjoy.”
“I enjoy it most of the time. It’s just a tough bit. It’s becoming a long, drawn-out affair, a bit like my mom with the mailman.” He smiles. “Sorry. Not the most appropriate joke for a post-annulment conversation. You must be feeling weird about all this.”
“The annulment? Not really. It’s what Hunter wanted, isn’t it? Free to go sow his wild oats wherever he wants, right?”
“If you say so.” He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a cream file stuffed with papers. “But I didn’t ask you to join me here to discuss model boat making or my poor-quality attempts at humor.”
“Why did you want me to come back here?”
“Firstly, to confirm, the annulment has now gone through. I know the judge used a lot of legal terms, but it’s done. You are a single woman who was never married. How does that feel?”
“I’ll plead the fifth on that one.”
“Gotchya.” He opens the file, tapping the top sheet. “This is all the legal documentation relating to the boutique you now own.”
He rummages in the drawer again, bringing out a set of keys which he slides across the desk in my direction. “There you go. All yours.”
“Sorry, back up. What are you talking about?”