Chapter 22 Tex
Sandy's Deli is a cinder block building with a hand-painted sign and the best Cuban sandwich in Bay County. It's two blocks from the police station, which means it's full of cops at lunch, which means it's a place where a conversation between a bar owner and a police officer doesn't draw attention.
Mickey is already there when I walk in. He's at a booth in the back, out of uniform, wearing jeans and a polo shirt that makes him look like a high school basketball coach instead of a cop.
He's got a sweet tea in front of him and he's watching the door.
When he sees me, his face grows serious.
Mickey and I have been friends since we were fourteen. He can read me perfectly.
I slide into the booth across from him. A waitress comes. I order a Cuban sandwich and a water. I'm not hungry but I need something to do with my hands.
"You look like hell," Mickey says.
"Thank you. I've been working on that."
"Seriously, you look like you haven't slept in a week. And your shirt is buttoned wrong."
I look down. It's not buttoned wrong.
"Made you look," he says, grinning. "Now I know you're really messed up because you never fall for that. You just trust the shirt and go. What's going on, Tex?"
I lean back in the booth and look at him.
Mickey Weaver. My best friend since middle school.
Openly gay since we were seventeen, which in Panama City was not the easy road.
He took his lumps and he took them standing up.
He became a cop anyway because Mickey has never once in his life let someone else decide what he's allowed to be.
I trust him with my life and now I'm about to trust him with Stormy's.
"I'm here to talk to my best friend," I say.
"Not to a cop. I need that to be clear. This conversation is off the record.
I'm not asking you to do anything official.
I'm not putting you in a position where you have to act on a story you hear.
I'm talking to Mickey, not Officer Weaver. Can you do that?"
He studies me for a long moment. Then he picks up his sweet tea and takes a sip and sets it down.
"I'm Mickey right now," he says. "Go ahead.
Before you start, let me ask you. Is this about Stormy?
Because if it's about Stormy, I want you to know that I've been waiting for you to come talk to me for weeks.
I've been very patient. Sheila calls me every other day to give me updates I didn't ask for.
She's like a one-woman intelligence agency.
I know more about your love life than I know about my own, which admittedly isn't hard because my love life could fit on an index card with room left over for a grocery list."
"Yes and no," I say. "I need you to talk me out of killing someone."
He takes another sip of tea. "Well, that's not what I was expecting. I had twenty bucks on 'I need legal advice about a motorcycle' and ten bucks on 'Stormy and I are moving too fast.' Murder wasn't on my bingo card. But okay. Let's hear it."
"Hypothetically speaking," I begin, "let's say, there's a kid.
Young man, early twenties, been on the streets since he was fifteen.
No family, no support, nobody looking out for him.
Hypothetically, this kid meets a man. A man in Alabama who runs a legitimate business.
Salvage yard. Cars, bikes, parts. A man who's a deacon at a Baptist church.
Sponsors the little league team. Goes to Sunday services. The kind of man people trust."
The waitress brings my sandwich. I don't touch it.
"Hypothetically, this man finds the kid behind a gas station on a cold night and offers him a hot meal.
Takes him to a Waffle House. Buys him eggs and pancakes and sits across from him and talks about a job and a room.
Tells him no strings attached. The kid has nothing.
No money, no ID, no one to call. He goes with the man.
Moves in. Works hard. The man tells him he's valuable.
Tells him he's smart. Treats him well for about two weeks. "
Mickey's expression tightens. He knows where this is going. He's a cop. He's heard this story before. Details change, but the story is always the same.
"Then the lock on the door stops mattering because the man has a key.
And the man comes into the kid's room at night and sits on his bed.
He puts his hand on him and explains the situation.
This room or the gas station. This bed or the ground.
The kid says no the first time. The man doesn't force it.
He's patient. He comes back. The kid does the math and stops saying no. "
I stop and take a breath. My hands are flat on the table and I'm pressing them down hard enough that my knuckles are white.
"Hypothetically," I continue, "this goes on for years.
The man uses the kid whenever and however he wants.
It isn't long before the hitting starts.
Ribs, back, stomach, sides. Never the face.
Smart about it. The kid tries to leave three times.
First time, the man finds him in less than a day.
Fifteen miles down the highway. Beats him so bad he can't walk.
Second time, the kid gets on a bus to Tallahassee.
Makes it to a shelter. One night. The man is in the parking lot the next morning.
The kid has no idea how he was found. The beating puts him in bed for three days, pissing blood. "
Mickey's face has gone very still. The cop face. The one that processes information without showing what it's doing to him underneath.
"The third time," I say, "the kid overhears the man offering him to a friend. They've both been drinking. Like lending someone a tool. The kid takes the man's motorcycle and runs. Rides south. Ends up at a bar on a beach during a hurricane. Hypothetically, of course."
Silence. The deli noise fills the space around us. Forks on plates, the TV above the counter, someone laughing at the register.
"So, hypothetically," Mickey says carefully, "this kid. How old was he when he met this man?"
"Twenty-one."
Mickey blows out a long breath. He rubs his hand over his face. "That matters," he says. "It sucks, but it matters. If he was a minor when it started with this man, we're talking about clear-cut criminal charges. Statutory rape. No gray area. But twenty-one is a legal adult."
"He was a homeless kid with nothing. No options, no family, no support system. The man targeted him specifically because of that."
"I hear you. And morally, you're right. But legally, an adult who stays in a living situation, even a terrible one, even an abusive one, that gets classified differently.
It's domestic abuse. It's assault. It's potentially sexual assault if it can be proven that consent was coerced.
But proving coercion in a situation where two adults lived together for four years is.
.." He shakes his head. "It's hard, Tex.
It's really hard. Is there evidence? Hospital records? Police records? Anything?"
"No, there's no evidence," I say. "Nobody saw the bruises. Nobody saw anything. The kid never went to a hospital because the man told him nobody would believe him."
"And this man has good standing in the community?"
"Apparently so. He's a deacon at the First Baptist Church. Business owner. Little league sponsor. Firm handshake. The whole package."
"It's the kid's word against his."
"Yeah."
"And hypothetically, if charges were filed, this man's attorney would argue that it was a consensual domestic relationship between two adult men that ended badly.
One partner left and took property on his way out.
The attorney might even try to flip it and paint the kid as the offender. Theft of a motor vehicle is a felony."
The fury rises fast. I feel it pushing against the walls I've built around it, pressing outward, looking for a way out.
This man hurt Stormy for four years. Beat him.
Used him. Sexually assaulted him. Starved him.
Kept him like a dog on a leash. Terrified him to the point that it took his voice away.
And the system that's supposed to protect people is going to look at it and shrug because Stormy was twenty-one instead of seventeen and never went to a hospital and lived in the man's house for years.
"So, he gets away with it," I say.
Mickey shakes his head. "I didn't say that. I said the legal path is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Especially without physical evidence, without medical records, without witnesses."
"He's probably doing it to someone else right now," I say. "Or he will be soon. That's what men like this do. They don't stop. They find the next one. The streets are full of young people needing help."
"Believe me, I know all about it."
"And you're telling me there's nothing that can be done to this man."
Mickey leans forward. "Tex. Look at me."
I look at him.
"I'm talking to you as your best friend right now.
Whatever you're thinking about doing to this man, don't. I know what's in your head.
I can see it on your face. You want to drive to Alabama and put your hands on him and I understand that impulse more than you know.
But if you do that, you go to prison. And if you go to prison, who takes care of the kid?
If you're locked up, who protects him then if this man comes for him? "
That wakes me up fast. He's right. If I kill Ron Jackson, which I could do, which I am physically and emotionally capable of doing, Stormy loses me. Stormy loses the bar, the home, the life we're building. Everything I've worked to give him gets taken away because I'm sitting in a cell in Alabama.
I can't do that to him. He's lost enough. I need to be smarter about this.