Chapter 12
“Fuck. I was not expecting that,” Statler swore, moving fast to retrieve a towel from the kitchen. Retuning, he squatted to mop up the beer, mumbling under his breath. “I need to call my guys.”
Julian understood that impulse. When shit hit the fan, he always wanted a team by his side. Now that he was a civilian? His brothers had his back.
“Do it. I think we need to figure out some safeguards if shit goes sideways,” Julian concurred.
Statler tossed the soggy towel aside, pulled the phone from his pocket and hit one button before his device, too, got launched onto his chair.
He paced.
What…?
“Uh, Statler?” Julian attempted. “Aren’t you going to call your crew?”
Statler looked up and blinked. He’d clearly been spiraling, deep into his own head. “Oh. I did. We have an emergency alert. They’ll all be here within ten minutes.”
Handy.
“You need to show me how to do that,” Julian said. “I like the idea of having all my brothers on a one-button summons.”
Statler nodded, but Julian could see he was distracted once again, and those lessons would have to wait.
There was one thing Julian could do while he stood by. He got up, retrieved the wet towel off the coffee table where it had landed, and brought it to the kitchen to get another. While doing so, he stopped momentarily to take in the beauty of the space.
It was amazing.
Whereas the living room was all about comfort, the kitchen was all about glitz and efficiency.
He noted the shiny, state-of-the-art appliances, the multi-burner, big-name gas range.
He ogled the high-end countertops, which were made with some kind of natural, iridescent stone that sparkled with brilliant blue veins. It was all…stunning.
He wanted to open each cabinet and see what secrets were inside, but stopped himself from snooping because… Yeah. With Tex’s help, he’d already snooped enough. And it wouldn’t endear him to anyone.
He grabbed a roll of paper towels and a bottle of cleaner from beside the two basin graphite sink, and headed back to the living room.
Statler still paced, so Julian bent and cleaned up the balance of the spill.
By the time he was finished and disposing of the wet paper towels in a nearby wastebasket, two men were walking in the door.
“What’s up Stat?” A big, rough looking guy with a severely scarred face asked. “And who the hell is this?”
Statler broke out of his stupor.
“Fuck, guys,” he cursed just as three more men and one woman burst in from the front porch. “I forgot to warn you. This is Julian. The guy Pet’s been seeing. He came to…introduce himself, but he also had some disturbing intel to impart.”
“Yeah?” A man with strawberry blond hair looked less than impressed. “Something regarding Petula?”
“Regarding me and Petula,” Statler returned, but didn’t mince words. “Our brother Jefferson is out of jail.”
Everyone blinked.
The woman in the group spoke up. “You’ve, uh, kind of been expecting that, though, right? For any number of years. Because he was incarcerated as a minor. You never figured he’d be in for life.”
“I didn’t,” Statler agreed. “But I also thought I’d know about it when he got out.”
“Nobody contacted you?” she asked.
“No,” Statler answered gruffly. “But now that it’s happened, I’m not surprised. It’s…kind of my fault.”
All eyes were on Statler to explain.
He clenched his jaw. “You all know—except maybe you, Julian—that when I was in the service, Petula and I went by Bothwin, the last name of our adoptive parents.”
There were terse nods all around, with Julian saying, “I knew.”
“When I separated from the Army and Pet and I got our first apartment, we still had that name, even after everything that had happened. It pissed me off. We were trying to find our feet again; to become our own little family, so logistics being what they were, that bit of business had to wait.”
Again, everyone dipped their heads grimly in the affirmative.
Julian wasn’t completely in the know, but eventually he’d figure out all the details that had everyone looking like they could spit nails.
“Well, just before we bought this house, we made it legal. We changed our name to Bothswait, and that’s where I screwed up. I might have let us go off the radar without notifying anyone.”
The redheaded one who’d taken exception to Julian a bit more than the others, spoke up.
“But, a simple search by anyone competent with a computer would have found you. Your social security numbers never changed. All they’d had to do was cross-reference with the Social Security Administration, and they would have found you. ”
“If I might interject?” Julian held up a hand.
“Go ahead,” Statler allowed.
“Not to fault anyone, but we’re talking about state run agencies. Social Services and the mostly, independently run penal system. It’s not like any of those underpaid civil servants would have spent much time trying to locate someone who’d dropped off their contact list.”
One of the men groaned. “Fuck. He’s right, Stat. Those people don’t get paid enough to do anything outside their job descriptions. Hunting down relatives who clearly don’t want to be found isn’t exactly something they’d pursue.”
“It makes sense, and I should have known better,” Statler agreed. His shoulders went rigid, and Julian knew he was about to fill them in on the rest.
“I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it, though,” he offered up with a scowl. “Jefferson has been out for eight months. Then…” His voice choked up as he sank into his recliner and cradled his head in his hands.
Julian watched for the group’s reaction as Statler spilled the balance.
“…then five weeks ago he stopped showing up for his parole meetings and disappeared off the radar.”
The faces all around Julian, hardened into granite; all but the redhead, who clearly wasn’t accepting Julian’s intelligence so easily.
He turned to confront Julian. “And exactly how do you know all this?”
Julian wasn’t sure how this would sound, but he had to explain. “My, uh, family has this friend…”
The redhead scoffed immediately. “Right. A friend who knows somebody, who knows somebody else, yadda, yadda, yadda. That doesn’t make the information, true, buddy.”
Julian didn’t know what else to say as he ran a hand frustratedly back through his hair. He tried to clarify. “I understand if you don’t trust me. But if you knew Tex—”
“Tex?” The man’s eyes grew wide as he repeated the name. Dazedly, he shook his head. “Holy shit. Do you mean the Tex?”
Halleluiah. Now they were getting somewhere.
Thank god Tex’s name was legend in all branches of the armed services.
“Yeah. That’s the one,” Julian assured him and everyone else, all of whose mouths were hanging open.
“No fucking way. You know him?” The skeptic moved forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Sherbert, by the way.”
Of course he was. That strawberry-blond hair…
“But they call me Sherb.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Julian said as everyone else approached and introduced themselves.
Julian was pretty sure he could keep the names straight. Pipes, Tonka, Blue, Dizzy, and Hazard.
Once the introductions had been made, Julian continued. “Yeah. Tex is a good friend of my older brothers’, and he’s become an honorary member of our family. He, along with his wife and kids.”
“So cool,” the scarred one replied.
They all grabbed chairs, snapped them open as they’d obviously done hundreds of times, and turned to face Julian. “Okay then. Tell us everything you know,” Sherbert ordered.
Julian repeated exactly what Tex had said, exactly what he’d told Statler, and once he was done, everyone looked grim.
“We’ll have to put security around Petti, and she’s not going to like it,” Statler huffed. “Are all of you ready to take shifts?”
“Of course.” No one opted out, which said a lot for the cohesiveness of the crew.
Julian also made an offer. “If you want, I can get my brothers in on it, too. Since someone did a deep-dive on me,” he glanced at Sherb, whose lips twitched upward in acknowledgement, “you know that two of them are cops, and the rest of us have long credentials with the military.”
“We’ll keep the offer in mind,” Statler told him, but this time with more warmth.
Julian, now that he’d been given some consideration, couldn’t keep his next caveat from being heard.
“I think, and Tex concurs, that you might be looking at this a little sideways.” He addressed Statler with all seriousness.
“I don’t know what your relationship was with your brother, but it seems to me that since Petula was only six when shit went down, Jefferson wouldn’t have had a beef with her. You, on the other hand…”
“He has a point,” Blue agreed. “Not to bring up a sore subject or anything, but how, exactly, did you and your brother get along?”
“It’s…complicated,” Statler sighed. “Jefferson was different. The nerd of the family.”
Julian caught Sherb’s eyeroll. Clearly there was a time when that man had been painted with the same brush.
“Me, on the other hand?” Statler went on.
“I was already a known sports prodigy at fourteen. As an incoming freshman in high school, I qualified right away for the varsity baseball, football, and basketball teams.” He blew out another breath.
“By the time I was sixteen, I’d won several all-star awards, was captain for all my teams, and was already being looked at by a bunch of division one colleges.
My parents were…over the moon, to say the least.”
He didn’t seem comfortable recalling his kudos.
“Looking back,” he told everyone, “as I did a lot following my parents’ deaths, I realized that while they were doting on me, they were kind of…indifferent to Petula, and completely ignoring Jefferson; a kid who excelled in academics way more than I ever could.”
“And how did Petula deal with that?” Dizzy asked.
Statler shook his head. “She wasn’t affected by any of it. She was still very young, a surprise baby that my parents fluffed off. Don’t get me wrong. They weren’t mean to her or anything, they just weren’t the nurturing type.”
“Were you aware that your brother wasn’t taking things well?” the large man Julian remembered as Tonka queried.
“I wish I could say I was,” Statler groaned, “but I was pretty self-absorbed at that point. You know the saying, ‘girls wanted me, and guys wanted to be me’. Jefferson wasn’t really on my radar at all, except when he did dick stuff to me at home.”
“Dick stuff, meaning what?” Blue asked.
“You know, things I put down to kid pranks at the time. Peas in my baseball glove. Itching powder in my jock strap.”
“Did you ever beat him up for any of it?” Pipes asked.
“Hell no,” Statler defended. “That wasn’t who I was. I might have been puffed up with my own ego, but I wasn’t violent. My answer to what I thought were innocent antics, was to freeze him out. Truthfully? Before he…did what he did, I probably only spoke to him directly, two or three times a week.”
Julian could tell that made Statler feel guilty. He couldn’t imagine. Julian and his brothers were all so tight.
Julian butt in once more. “So, to pose my question again, if your brother was to come after one of you, would it be you or Petula?”
“You mean me, Petula?” a female voice asked from the door.
They all turned to see a flustered Petula.
“And what is he doing here?” She pointed right at Julian.
Damn. This wasn’t how he had pictured this particular meet-and-greet playing out.