Rough Men (9 page)

“W
hat the fuck did you just say?” Jason said.
The color hadn’t quite drained from his face, but all the deadly ease in it had disappeared. “The
fuck
?”

“Will?” It was Isaac, beside him. Will hadn’t thought about him in what felt like an hour. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Jason sat back in his stool, and Will grabbed a folding chair leaning against the wall, unfolded it, and sat. Isaac, looking confused, finally decided to do the same.

“I said that my son Alex could just as easily be your blood as mine.”

“Explain. And if you’re fucking with me, this is going to be a lot worse. I can take getting fucked with a little, but not like that and definitely not from you, not ever.”

“You used to go around with Patty Edwards, right?”

“Yeah, before I got sent up. I fucked her here and there, never my squeeze, but a sidepiece.”

“Yeah, I used to go around with her too. As far as I know, though, we were it. Fire and ice, or something like it—she wanted the guy who seemed like he might make it out of the life and the dude who would kick in the door. I used to think I was running a scam on her, being with her and then other chicks when she wasn’t around.”

“So did I,” said Jason, “but she had her own shit going on too, huh?”

“Exactly. She was running her own little show, but like I said, we were it.”

“And Patty’s your son’s mother,” Jason said. “How come I didn’t know that?”

“You were in the can, and when you got out, she was gone.”

Jason nodded, taking it in. “And when I got out, you had a kid you were raising. I guess I did know that, not that I gave a shit. By then you were dead to me, and lucky you weren’t dead to you too.” He shook his head. “Patty’s kid. Fuck me running.”

“Why is this a surprise to me too?” Isaac asked, but Will ignored his brother.

“Yep, Patty was his deadbeat mom. She skipped town three days after having him, and I never heard from her again.”

“She got beat to death in a truck stop parking lot,” Jason said. “Working as a lot lizard ended up not agreeing with her.”

“How long ago?” Will asked. “How could I not know about this?”

“That’s ancient history, buddy. She died at least ten years ago, crapped out at least one other kid, as far as I know. I got to admit, that part didn’t interest me too much. Didn’t make much of a splash, though, at least not here. In South Dakota, she was what most people referred to as number fifteen—as in, the fifteenth hooker to get skull-fucked by some asshole blowing through town. Last I checked, they still hadn’t caught the guy.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I don’t figure they’re looking at him for it, but I’ll pass the word along—if I happen across the right people, of course.” Jason made a cigarette appear from a pack on the bottom shelf of his cart and lit it with a match he ignited on the bottom of an engineer boot. “So, anyways, let’s hear the rest of it.”

“Patty came to my mom, dropped off the kid in her lap, and skipped town. I was out drinking, wondering what the fuck was ever going to happen with my shitty life. When I came home—boom—time to play house.”

“And I was sitting in stir.”

“Exactly. Patty told my mother the story about the kid either being yours or mine too. My mom’s the only one besides me—well,
us
now, I suppose—that ever knew the truth.”

“Do you have a picture?”

Will took his phone from his pocket—slowly, so as not to alarm Jason—and turned it on. He went to the pictures app and found one of a smiling Alex from nearly ten years ago, dressed in a baseball uniform. Will gave the picture a look, wondering not for the last time just what in the hell had gone wrong with his boy, and handed the phone to Jason.

“Cute little fucker. Takes after his mother. To be honest, I don’t see a bit of either one us on his mug.”

“Yeah, I never did, either. I’ve lost more than one night thinking about it, though. He was a tough kid to raise, I can tell you. Damn near put my wife in the loony bin. Between my drinking and his wild streak, she’s had some hard times.”

“Hard times make hard people. So how did your son get hooked up with such a rotten bunch? My memory is a little fuzzy when it comes to the details of the robbery, but I do know a bunch of people got toe tags over it.”

“Yes. Alex killed one of them. I never thought he had that in him. I know I never did.”

Jason shrugged. “Well, maybe an apple don’t have to be close to a tree to still fall off a branch.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the kid had my blood, could explain a lot about his mean streak. I was never much of one to listen to reason, and I’ve done some things in my time when I was forced to.”

The two of them were quiet for a long minute, staring off at nothing.

Will pulled out of it first. “Will you help us find out who did this?”

Jason scowled at him, then sank back down into himself again. When he came out of it this time, he was nodding. “Yeah.
I know I’m going to regret it, but I’ll help. Just keep in mind, the answers you get may not be the answers you want. Chances are this is going to end with us up popping a couple of hopheads, likely won’t be much different than shooting a rabid pooch. What’s your phone number?”

Will told him, and Jason punched it into his phone.

“Listen, if I have any news worth sharing, I’m going to call you from a burner cell phone, a throwaway. I’ll tell you we need to meet, and we’re going to get together at Founder’s Brewery that same day, at nine p.m. Don’t ask me what I found or anything else. If I call you from the tattoo shop phone—ends in five-zero-nine-two—that means I either found nothing or opened a wormhole too deep for us to do anything about. That sound all right with you?”

“Sounds fine. Thanks.”

“I’m not going to say it’s no problem, but I’m glad you got a hold of me. Whether that kid was my blood or not doesn’t matter. I’ll do this for Patty.”

I
saac’s hands were white on the wheel of the Camry.
The weather had to be a part of it—blowing snow was turning into a full-on blizzard, and the visibility was extremely low. Still, the Camry handled in a sure-footed way as they meandered onto the highway, where traffic was chugging along at a brisk thirty miles per hour.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Isaac asked. “Did anyone know besides Mom?”

“No. I was never going to tell you, because it didn’t matter to me. He was my son, whether he was my blood or not. That’s why I never did a paternity test, and that’s why I still wouldn’t do one now. I don’t need blood to tell me about family or about being a father to a little boy that has nothing. I was just a kid when Patty left him with us, and he made me grow up a lot. Not to say I wasn’t still a fuckup, but I was less of one.” He looked away. “I guess less wasn’t good enough for Alex,” he said to the passenger-side window.

“Do you really believe that if Jason is his blood father, that maybe that’s why Alex took the thing to the next level?” Isaac asked. “Or do you think it’s just some bizarre coincidence?”

Will shrugged.

Isaac nodded to himself, working it over in his head. “I guess I’ve never believed in genetics like that—that it would make someone more likely to commit murder or other violent crimes. But this might be changing my mind a little bit. Are you sure you don’t want to get a paternity test?”

“Listen. I just know that someone killed my son, and I want to know why. The rest of the testing, the blood relations, genetics—none of it matters to me. I never would have told Jason about this when Alex was alive and never would have after he was dead unless I had too. I think I made the right decision.”

“What if Jason finds—fuck!” A big-assed pickup had fishtailed around them. “These roads suck, and that guy is doing like fifty!” Isaac shook his head, then settled down and went back to what he’d started. “So what if Jason finds out who did this, gets an address or something?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and I keep coming back to the same thing. If I find out who killed my son and it wasn’t for a damn good reason, I’m going to kill him. It would just need doing. If the cops can’t catch these guys, they’ll do it again, and someone else will get hurt.”

Will felt Isaac looking at him, but kept his eyes straight ahead.

“That’s pretty heavy, Will. I want to say I’ll see this through with you, but I’m not sure that I can. I mean, I have a life too. A wife. And my priors are old, but when they can show a history of criminal behavior, and you’ve got shit on your record, that’s not good.”

“You can do what you want. I asked you to come along so I had backup with Jason, but if you don’t feel like seeing this through is right for you, I understand. It would be a lot to ask, especially of a brother who I basically ignore and who basically ignores me.” Will grinned. “It’s a lot to ask of anybody.”

“Shit,” said Isaac, “we still have to get groceries.”

The storm had gotten worse in the time they’d spent in the store. With the parking lot’s slush and ice gumming its wheels, the cart was reduced to a very awkward sleigh. When they finally reached
the car, they threw the groceries into the trunk, any care over the condition of bread or eggs beaten out of them by a desperate desire to escape the deluge of heavy, wet snow.

Trunk loaded, cart placed in the corral, they dove inside, and Isaac began to slowly steer them from the parking lot. The ringing of Will’s phone broke the brothers’ concentrated silence, and Will saw that it was Alison.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “We’re on our way. Come up with something else you need us to get?”

“No. How are the roads?” Alison’s voice was muffled, riddled with static.

“Really bad.”

“Well, don’t hurry home, but get here. The news just said the mall was closed. That means that’s its officially graduated to really fucking nasty out.”

“I believe it. This is like twenty eleven all over again.”

“Don’t even say that, mister. That was horrible. We’ve got enough on our plate without a full-blown blizzard.”

“Yeah well, I think that’s what we’ve got. I’m going to let you go. We’ll see you soon. Only, probably not too soon.”

“Tell your brother to drive safe.”

“No need, he is.”

“Tell him from me.”

Will hung up the phone. “She says not to kill us.”

“Check.”

The wind was moving the snow fast enough that they could see drifts appearing out of nowhere, using a tree or the side of a building to take root and form into massive piles.

“You doing OK?” Will asked.

“I’m still driving.”

“I mean with everything else.”

“No, Will, not really. Sorry for that, but I’m being honest.”

“I said I’d understand if you didn’t want to go on from here.”

He gave his head a shake. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you signing on with Jason. That fucker—he should have been tried for rape in that last B and E when he got busted, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“And what happened there?”

“He never got charged with it.”

“You’re missing the point. The girl refused to testify, and there wasn’t enough evidence beyond what she told the police initially. It never occurred to you that he might have threatened her family?”