Chapter 4 Regular Human Things #3
“Yeah,” Sonny said. “Just ’cause you’re out of the business doesn’t mean some business won’t come your way.
” He and Jai turned back to the car, this time to raise the crumpled hood with a screech, and Ace gestured with his chin for Eric to follow him to the shade in front of the auto bay and the cashier’s stand so they could stand a sec and talk.
“Them cookies for us?” he asked pleasantly as they got near the shelf for the cashier’s stand.
“If you like,” Eric told him, pleased for the easy segue. “I, uhm, found myself throwing in far too many sweets.”
Ace chuckled, and so did Ernie, from behind the Plexiglas of the stand.
“You were using shopping for cover so you could pretend you weren’t the one who took out the guy with the gun,” Ace chortled, removing two of the fudge-covered coconut cookies with careful, albeit grease-stained, fingers.
“Well, yes,” Eric said, pleased that somebody got that. Usually he found himself sleeping with other people in the trade so he didn’t have to explain things like that to them. It was nice to have people who followed his way of thinking and wouldn’t kill him before they thought about why not.
“We appreciate the thought,” Ernie said, taking a cookie through the cashier’s slot. “We also really appreciate you didn’t kill anybody your first day out.”
Eric shot him a wounded look. “Even during my most productive times, I still spaced out my business by at least two months.”
“Research or rest?” Ace asked curiously.
“Both,” Eric told him with a sigh. “I… I was very picky about my clientele. I almost took out a perfectly nice softball coach because somebody had it out for him because he didn’t draft her to the team.
Took three weeks of observation and detective work to figure out that it was somebody holding a grudge and not a sleazy raping fuckhead.
After that I made sure to put in at least four weeks of background work, in case somebody tried that shit again. ”
“Hunh,” Ace said, sounding surprised. “What’d you do to the girl?”
“Well, it wasn’t really her fault,” Eric admitted. “Her mother was the one who hired me. I, uhm, reported her to the police for buying grades.”
Ace cocked his head. “You mean for college?”
Eric nodded. “When I realized what was up, I cornered the girl, and she told me everything—including the buying-the-test thing. So I reported her mom for that. She spent a couple of years in jail, her daughter got to figure out her own shit for a half a second, and both of them kept me out of it.”
“And you learned a valuable lesson about research,” Ace said, nodding. “Before it was too late.”
Eric sobered, and because he knew who he was talking to, because he’d seen what Ace would do to keep his family safe when killing didn’t come easy, he felt compelled to tell the truth.
“I-I never took lives lightly,” he said haltingly. “It was never a game. It was something I… accidentally discovered I was good at.” He swallowed. “And as you know, some people—men especially—very much need killing. I felt as though I was doing a service.”
“And then?” Ace asked.
“You know,” Eric said softly, “a real act of service shouldn’t gouge such a hunk out of your soul. I realized that soon I’d have no soul left.”
Ace nodded. “Well, I think today you earned a little corner of it back,” he said. “And we’re grateful you didn’t leave a trail that could lead back here.”
Eric ate another cookie glumly, wondering if he was going to have to be sick at some point, given all the egregious things he’d eaten that day.
“I did, though,” he said unhappily. “I led that policeman right to you.”
Ace nodded. “You did. But he also gave us your vehicle, so maybe we got some hope in that direction. Don’t fret until Ernie sees trouble. You see trouble, Ernie?”
And then Ernie stared at Ace, his eyes big, fathomless, as deep as infinity pools, and Ace gasped. For a moment the two of them stared at each other, locked in some sort of electric, sexless, touchless embrace, and then Ernie fell backward in his cubicle, and Ace swore.
“Jai!” he shouted. “Come get Ernie! He saw something big, and it’s best I don’t touch him none!”
The large man appeared, summoned like a genie, and he charged into the small booth to pick Ernie up like a damsel in distress.
“I take him to the house, da?”
“Yeah,” Ace agreed. “Me and Sonny’ll take care of that minivan.”
“Who will tend the window?” Jai asked.
Ace looked at Eric. “How much shit you got melting in Jai’s car?”
“Some ice cream and some frozen food,” he said.
“Give Jai your keys—once he gets Ernie settled, he’ll stash it in our freezer. We need someone at the window, and guess what, buddy?”
“I’m it,” he said, and suddenly, Ernie’s little tête-à-tête over donuts made perfect sense. There was no “I owe you.”
There was just “We do for each other.”
Those little bits of his soul he felt like he’d bought with those cans of olives fell in place like jigsaw puzzle pieces that had been shaken out of the lid of the box.
He handed Jai his keys, and while the giant ambled off, bearing a full-grown person in his arms liked anybody else would carry a cake box, he positioned himself behind the bench in the cubicle.
He spent the next few hours answering the phone, dealing with customers—there were three incoming, two outgoing, and one of the outgoing was getting quite ugly about the cost of things.
“Is that what you people do?” the owner of the sports car that had almost been driven dry screamed in Ace’s face. “Just lay here in wait, like predators, hoping some poor motorist is going to need you and you can bleed them dead?”
Ace’s face went flat, like a snake’s, and he cocked his head sideways. At his belt, he kept a sheathed knife, one of the giant serrated folding types that had been, to Eric’s trained eyes, oiled and sharpened and loved.
Ace pulled that out and flipped it open with a click, causing the middle-aged man with the thinning hair to gasp and take a step back.
Then, as Ace proceeded to trim his cuticles very carefully, he gazed at the customer and said, using a voice that Eric had never heard before, “Sir, if we were going to bleed you dead, you’d be looking at your blood on the ground.”
The customer let out a shaky breath with a little “whooo” at the end of it.
“Now, you may not be able to afford the repairs you signed for. You did sign for them, remember?”
Eric fished the customer’s invoice from the pile of paperwork Ernie had laid out neatly on the counter, and held out the work order.
“Yes,” Kevin J. Walters all but moaned. “I did. But I didn’t expect it to really come to―”
“Sonny,” Ace said, with that affectless voice, “please tell this man how much we care about what he expects?”
And then, while Ace carefully folded his highly illegal knife and replaced it in the sheath at his belt, Sonny Daye launched into one of the most beautiful tirades Eric had ever heard.
“Mister, you took that piece of machinery and magic and you ran it dry in the fucking desert. I sweartachrist, every time I meet one of you people, I expect God to strike you down and boil your brain in your skull for being fucking morons, but most morons are at least grateful they can drive their fucking vehicle home. Not you, though. You come into my place, and you sign a goddamned work order and then pitch a fit like this? Better men than you are currently rotting out in the fucking desert, you fucking moron, but not you—you’re here giving me grief for working my ass off for two days, like I don’t got shit I’d rather do than smell your putrid fucking automobile?
My dog took a crap on a dead scorpion this morning, and I care more about that dead scorpion covered in dog shit than I care about your fucking opinion, asshole, and another thing? Stop jerking off in your car!”
“I’ll….” The man swallowed back a sob, and tears were tracking down his florid face, while Eric stared at the slight foxy-faced young man who had kissed Ace like a tender lover, crooned to Eric’s special-needs kittens like they were his beloved children, and had just eviscerated a complete stranger with his vicious knife blade of a tongue, and was stalking to Kevin J.
Walters’s red BMW Z4 with a wrench in his hand and some intent in his stride.
“Don’t hurt it!” Kevin J. Walters cried out. “I’ll… I’ll pay. I’ll add a tip. Just… don’t hurt my car. Jesus, I just want to get the hell out of here. I’ll never bother you again. I’ll never drive to Vegas again. I swear to Christ, you’ll never even remember my name!”
There was a surprise splatting sound then, and Ace’s expression actually changed.
“Sonny, leave off his car a minute. Our friend here wet his pants in the dirt outside the cashier stand.”
Sonny turned to stare at the man. “I’m going to go get a shovel,” he said, “and if you don’t pitch that puddle of piss out into the desert, I’m going to beat you to death with the shovel, do you understand?”
“Yessir,” Walters wept. “I understand. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll―”
“Whatever,” Sonny said, looking like his stomach hurt. “Ace, could you get him the shovel? I’ve got to work on another fuckin’ car or he’s gonna tread on my last fuckin’ nerve.”
“I hear ya, Sonny,” Ace said. He already had the shovel in his hand.
It took Walters ten minutes to clean his own mess, still wearing his soiled slacks and squelching in $500 leather shoes.
By the time he’d finished, paid—and yes, he added about $1000 as a tip—and driven off, sobbing, it was nearly six o’clock, and the desert was starting to close on itself, a chill setting in the air.
Eric filed the work orders and the receipts in a little folder marked with both before locking the cash, first in a lockbox, then in a safe under the floorboards of the cashier’s cubicle that Ace opened for him.
There were several weapons in the cubicle, one of which looked like a personal military-grade sidearm with a shaky S etched into the leather.
Well, Eric had been stepping warily around the little man since that outburst—he could see why maybe locking Sonny’s arms away underground would be a good idea. His tongue alone was dangerous as it was.
“You want to come inside and eat?” Ace asked. “I’m not sure what Sonny had planned for dinner, but—”
“I’ve got food,” Eric heard himself saying. “I could… well, I was going to make bruschetta.”
Ace, the man with the hard eyes and the giant knife, suddenly looked as enchanted as a little kid. “Like with olive oil and vegetables and special cheese?”
Eric nodded. “Yes. Uhm… would you all like some?”
Ace grinned. “Son, if you knew how good that sounded—but let me talk to Sonny. I’ll make it like a treat so he doesn’t feel like his cooking ain’t good enough.”
“I could show him how to do it,” Eric said hopefully, and that grin—oh God. It was so unfair to do to a person who had been forced to kill his last lover for an unforgivable betrayal. It wasn’t even the sex appeal, although dear God! It was the offer of camaraderie, of kin.
“That’ll sound even better,” Ace said. “Alrighty, then. Let me go chat with our chickens, and you hang out here and wait for that cop. He’s supposed to show up soon. Give you two a chance to talk.”
Which, Eric surmised, meant give him a chance to lie. But that was okay too—Eric was rather amazing at it by now.