Chapter 4
CEDAR
AUSTIN
Sprout knocked on the trailer door, but didn’t bother to wait for me to say, “Come in.” His head brushed the doorframe of the derelict RV, and his legs stuck out into the walkway as he curled into the tiny booth where I nursed a beer.
The roll of papers in his hand almost knocked the bottle over.
“What’s up?” I got up to grab a fresh one for him out of the six-pack I snagged from the club bar.
I set it down in front of him, with a warning. “It might be warm. I think the refrigerator is fucked in this thing.”
“I’ll buy you one tomorrow, take a look at this and tell me what you think.” He unrolled the plans for a modern modular home with loft ceilings and a blocky, compact footprint.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The builder asks four large for that.”
“As in four-hundred thousand, without a lot?”
“Yeah. I think it’s a scam. You’d have to use fucking imported cypress or some shit to justify that.”
I’d say. The whole place was less than fifteen-hundred square feet. I double-checked the plans and revised my estimate. It was barely over twelve hundred. “Two-twenty-five tops. That’s with real marble tile.”
Sprout smashed the papers, crumpling them. “I knew it.”
“Are you undercutting somebody?”
His eyes met mine. “Damn straight I am. Poppy doesn’t deserve to get shafted like this.” He smoothed out the wrinkles. “How do you think we could modify this enough so we don’t get sued for ripping off the design?”
I glanced at the designer and understood immediately why the price was what it was. “Are you planning on cedar?”
“Where it counts. She doesn’t need the whole thing built from it.”
I scratched my head. “Is this happening or just speculation?” I’d seen her house. It was cute, old, worn from years of being Pinner’s dumping ground, but still a decent house.
“It’s her dream home. She keeps buying plans and comparing her estimates with what we can do. I have to tell her every time it’s beyond her budget. Then she down-sizes and her dream gets smaller. It fucking sucks.” He took a long swig of the beer in front of him.
“Not to be an asshole or anything, but aren’t you fucking loaded?”
Sprout stuck a middle finger in the air. “That’s my wife’s money.”
I shut my trap and tried to figure out how in the hell my best friend, fuck up that he was, managed to snag an heiress. “Well, if she kicks you out, you can come live here…” There’s no way he’d get a single night’s sleep on the thing they called a bed here. I waited for my joke to sink in.
He kicked my boot. “Fucker. I’m the comedian around here, not you.” Then his smile turned devious. I braced for impact. “Unless you like being the little spoon.” He winked theatrically.
I laughed. It felt good to be swapping insults with him. “Hold out your hand.”
Sprout did as I asked. I made a show of measuring the length between his fingertips and thumb then curved the distance into circle. “It might fit around my dick when you reach around.”
He threw his bottle cap at me. “Motherfucker. I walked right into that. Damn it.”
“What ‘she like?”
“My wife?”
“No, what does Poppy like?” I tapped the wrinkled plans.
“Mid-century modern meets tropical bungalow. Lots of wood, lots of green, lots of space. She insists on two bedrooms. One for her, and one for the charity case.”
His phrasing caught my attention. “Wolf doesn’t like her sister either. Why is that?”
“She’s a user just like her mom.”
“Drugs?”
Sprout pished with a scowl. “Not just drugs. She’s the type of girl who finds the biggest loser to suck dry, and then dumps him for another loser. Bad news.”
“I overheard her mom is Jewel?”
Sprout nodded. “Club keeps that bitch around as a favor to ol’ Pinner. That way she isn’t hooking on the streets and the guys she takes home are ours.”
Pieces of information I’d heard in snatches and whispers fell into place. “Makes sense. He goes in, can’t watch his little girl, sics the club on her mother. Everything stays cool.”
“Yup. Except the girl is taking after her mom too goddamn much.” Sprout was uncharacteristically grumpy and getting to the tipping point where his slow anger ignited. A good friend would bring the heat back down, lighten the mood. But a great friend would help him hide the bodies.
“Anything I can do about it?”
He pushed the pause button on whatever dark movie played in his head. “Help me plan a house?”
“I can do that.”
“I need intel. Where she wants her office, what kind of cabinet colors she likes, marble or tile, that sort of thing.”
My beer tasted flat. “You’re asking me to pump her for information?”
“Yeah.”
Which meant spending time with her. That had already proven dangerous. “I don’t know man.”
“Don’t be such a pussy. You’re good at talking to the ladies, or are you out of practice?” He made a funny face at me and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Shut up. I’ll do it.” How and where I would was up for grabs.
Perhaps at the site? I could take my lunches in the trailer on days she was there.
Sprout would be there as chaperone in case I got over my head.
And maybe if the weather stayed nice, I could sit outside with her.
No harm, full transparency, lots of nosy people watching, piece of cake.
I could do that. “Can you get me a new shower too? There’s mildew in there I can’t scrape off.
” I thumbed the combo toilet-shower that barely took up five square feet of floor space. “At least, I hope it’s mildew.”
He leaned over to peer at the tiny space. “That’s disgusting. What else you want? Some chocolates? Candles?”
“I just want to not be living in someone else’s filth, is that too much to ask?”
He looked around, seeing the place for what it was for the first time. “Why don’t you ask Jackson for a room upstairs?”
“You know how he is about that. He’ll point me at one of the hooker’s rooms and say have at it. I can’t do that shit. They’d take one look at my dick, and I’d never sleep at all.”
“That wouldn’t have bothered you before.”
“I grew up.”
“Fuck you. I don’t wanna hear that shit. Come up to the lake house. We got five bedrooms.”
As much as I wanted to take him up on the offer, it might strain our friendship too much. “I’m good here for a while.”
He stood up and picked up a greasy spatula that was semi-stuck to the counter.
It peeled free with a sickly squeak and Sprout used it to poke at the hole by the window.
Bits of moldy fiberglass and corroded metal fell from the now bigger hole.
“Now you aren’t. Get your shit. It’s time you see how the big dogs roll. ”
Five miles and one duffel bag later I gaped at the hand carved double doors to Sprout’s domain. “This is teak, and if I had to guess, over a hundred years old. What the fuck man?”
His wife, Danielle, heard us. “They’re nineteenth century, from Marwari, India. Opium traders built lavish mansions there to show off. Grandfather’s mistress brought them here to show off. Now they’re mine.”
He’d warned me she was cute, but I wasn’t expecting practically a clone of Poppy in size and infectious smile but built with pale skin and almost wheat blonde hair. I held out a hand. “I’m Smoke.”
“Yeah, babe, this is my bestie from the cradle to the grave. Ain’t that right?” I nodded in agreement. Ride or die, forever and a day more.
She studied me. “I remember you. And your brother.” Her voice turned decidedly sour.
“Yeah… let’s not talk about that bastard, babe. Smoke’s going to crash here for a while.”
“Really?” She didn’t sound enthused. I’ll give her credit, she tried to plaster on a smile. “That’s great.” Her tone spoke an entirely different story.
“You got a groundskeeper house or anything? I don’t want to impose.”
“I wrecked the RV he was staying in. Poked a hole in the wall. It’s going to be worthless in the winter. Please?” Sprout stage-whispered his sins to his wife. She rolled her eyes but bumped his hip with hers.
“How about the small bedroom under the stairs? It’s got its own bathroom.” She swallowed.
“Sounds good. He won’t hear us banging away all night long there. And he leaves early for work on weekdays, so he won’t bother you in your she-cave.”
“It’s a studio, not a cave.” For the first time since we’d arrived, her smile was genuine. And I should be damned to hell and back, but it was as pretty as Poppy’s. Sprout was a lucky guy. I envied him for a minute. Which meant one thing, change the fucking subject.
“How many thousand square feet is this place?” I studied the modernist stairs.
They curved in a graceful arc of clean wooden lines, forming a perfect circle down to the bottom level.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the banister was all one piece of wood, the joints were flawless. “Who made this?”
“I know, right? Fucking showoff. I’ve only found two seams.”
Well, that wouldn’t fly. It had to have at least five. I studied the grain pattern. “One.”
“That’s my guy. See honey? He’s legit. Best damn woodworker I know.”
“You men and that staircase. At least you’re not sliding down it like that guy from Hagerstown.”
That was another change. Hagerstown used to be a feeder chapter, not a full-fledged Destroyers club. It would take some getting used to seeing old faces and new colors on their backs.
“Boots is harmless.”
Danielle gave him a glare that could peel paint. “He tried to blow up the fire pit.”
“How was I supposed to know that was a blasting cap?” Sprout broke off the conversation with Danielle to warn me, “Parties get a little crazy around here.”
No shit they would. I wandered into a coke dealer’s wet dream. White couches, abstract art, sculpture… And the view.
Damn.
The sun was long past set but the moon was full.
A thousand smells hit me as I stood on the back deck.
It spanned the entire width of the house and was at least fifteen feet deep.
I leaned on the railing and inhaled. Water, leaves, smoke from wood fires, meadow grass, and a million subtle textures of nature and the season hit me all at once. “I could die here.”
Sprout took a spot next to me. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“Have you ever seen that many stars?” Their multitude spread from horizon to horizon. Although, in the east, the lights from Harrisburg muddied the sky.
“It’s like you’ve never seen them before. Come on, man. Snap out of it.” He slapped my arm.
I shook my head. “No. I haven’t. And if I had? I’d forgotten. I don’t remember this.” Only with Sprout could I be so brutally honest. “They took that from me.” He took it from me.
“You’re going to make me give you a hug, ain’t ya?”
“Naw. Just let me look for a bit.” Just in case.
“I got a boat house down there. Picked up a sweet Malibu tow boat last Spring. Maybe if the weather stays nice, we’ll do some wake boarding this weekend. You down?”
“I’ll break my fucking neck.”
“I’ll teach ya. It’ll be fun.”
“Famous last words,” I quipped.
He laughed. Then he pointed out the property boundaries. “Sold that little spur to Poppy a year ago. That’s where she wants to build.”
“Does it ever flood?”
“Naw, the reservoir flows out the other end. We’re good here. If anything goes south, we’d be sitting on a house on a steep hill instead of a lake.”
The natural lay of the land confirmed his description. “I don’t remember the lake being this big.”
“That’s because Danielle’s bitch of a grandmother closed the beach and renovated the dam. We had to go almost a quarter mile south. Over there.” He pointed, and I finally recognized the low bluffs we used to dive from as teenagers.
“I do remember that. Does your mom still live on the bend of river down there?”
“Fuck yeah. We don’t party there as much now because…fucking-A.” He held out his hands and spun slowly in a large circle showing off the house, the dock, the lake, and for almost as far as you could see, he and his wife owned this.
“Man, I envy you. And, you deserve this.” All the shit he and his family went through. No one deserved it more.
“One year. Then we cut you in as full partner. That’s the deal. Part of this, it’s yours.”
Unspoken was the rest of the deal. Stay clean.
Stay out of trouble and do good work for the club.
While I had earned my cut, I wasn’t there when this launched.
I had the same stipulations any prospect had on the money.
A minimum of one year eating their shit, living like a pauper to be a king someday. If I didn’t screw up.
I wouldn’t. Not because I wanted the money, but because Sprout believed in me. I’d do it without the promise of a share. But I’d be an idiot to turn this down. Worse of one to fuck it up.