Chapter 6 #2
Wilden continued. “You make everybody else pay while you do nothing but sit on your fat ass and steal, cheat, lie, and terrorize old men and women. You really didn’t think your partner would stick around, did you?”
He stopped in his motion of backing up, then asked, “What do you know about my partner?”
“You haven’t been looking for him?”
“Yeah, I have been looking for him, but he’s not around. Where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is, but I can guarantee he won’t be anywhere that you can get him. You know what he’s like. He’s a loser who likes to make other people pay.”
The stranger swallowed several times, looked around, and asked, “Have you seen him?”
“Not recently, no.” Wilden wasn’t even sure who he was, but Wilden knew exactly what his father was like and what his father’s cronies would be like. “However, if you’re looking for Hookman, you are out of luck. He’s dead.”
The other man wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and nodded. “I heard,” he muttered. “I don’t know how the hell that happened.”
“He was shot on the street … in broad daylight,” Vivian interjected. “It’s almost as if other people might have been looking for him too.”
The stranger’s eyes widened. “What the hell? That’s got nothing to do with me.”
Wilden snorted. “If they shot John, they were obviously fed up and pissed off about something he did,” Wilden suggested. “So, odds are, you’re probably next.”
The stranger made a weird half-yelping sound and took another step backward.
Wilden nodded. “Yeah, somebody knows your tricks. They probably want all the information on your scams, plus the money you gathered up until now.” Wilden shrugged. “Good luck trying to keep any of that, especially now that the cops know what’s going on too.”
The stranger almost relaxed at that, confirming that they had someone on the inside. Still, Wilden wouldn’t let him relax completely. “Not just local cops,” he added, and the stranger stiffened again. “Now you’ll tell me how the local cops are all bad.”
“Not all of them,” the stranger muttered, “but just enough.”
“Just enough,” Wilden repeated, with a lazy smile. “But not in this case because already too many people know, too many problems have popped up.” Wilden had hit a nerve and continued. “So, even if anybody was getting away with shit, they won’t be now.”
The stranger glared at him. “You don’t know anything.”
“I do know people,” Wilden clarified, “and I do understand, when things go bad, what people like you will do. So your partner will get rid of you in no time, just like he got rid of Hookman.”
The stranger stared at Wilden, his gaze darting back and forth. “Does anybody know what happened to him?” he asked cautiously. “I mean, he wasn’t a bad man.”
Vivian snorted at that. “Really? Is that your take on him?”
The stranger frowned at her and asked, “What do you even know about it?”
“I had to get a court order, … a restraining order, to keep him away from me,” she explained. “The man was a damn psycho.”
“He was a little bit enthusiastic, shall we say,” the stranger conceded, with a slight nod. “And, yeah, he did say that he was a little bit crazy over some old hag.” He looked at her intently and added, “Don’t know what the draw was.”
She laughed. “Glad to hear that. So, I won’t have to worry about you picking up his bullshit then, will I?”
He stared at her. “Hell no,” he muttered. “That ain’t my deal.”
Wilden interjected, “Maybe not, but it’s your friend’s deal, and you were part of his other deals, so it’s all part and parcel of the same thing. So, if you got a place to run to, you should check that out sooner rather than later.”
He shot him a look. “I ain’t running no place.”
“And yet the cops think you’ve already left town.”
He just shrugged at that and didn’t say anything.
Wilden could guess what that meant. “Meaning that the cop in question doesn’t want to think that you are part of the same mess. He’s still thinking that it’s just poor you, huh?”
He gave him a half-loopy look.
“Probably family, right?” Vivian suggested, trying to mess with his temper, which it would. “They seem to be the ones who end up hurting the most.”
And again, his expression said it all.
“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding at him. “You probably lied, told him it was some big deal, how you were just out for a lark and got caught up in the wrong thing.”
He glared at her. “And what if I did?”
“It was a lie, and you were up to your ass in it,” she replied, “and you think it will all blow over, but it won’t.”
He stared at her, his gaze threatening. “Who the hell are you that you would even know any of this?”
She groaned. “If you only knew the shit that everybody has gone through because of you and your shitty cronies.” She shook her head, trying hard to control her flaring temper. “The fact that you went after poor Jackson is complete BS.”
“Poor Jackson’s not poor at all. He’s got more money than you can shake a stick at,” he declared. “There’s no reason he shouldn’t be sharing it with us.”
“There is a reason,” she declared. “For one, he doesn’t have to.
For two, it doesn’t matter who the hell you are.
Taking it by force is bullshit, and, for three, it doesn’t matter how much he has because it’s his, not yours.
He damn-well earned that money, and you don’t have any right to it.
” She glared at him. “You don’t get to steal because somebody else has more than you. ”
He just glared at her but didn’t seem to want to engage, which Wilden found interesting.
“And I suppose you’re looking for a payout now, aren’t you?” Wilden asked, staring at him. “It’s hard to run out of town when you don’t have any money, and maybe your buddy took off, but maybe he didn’t. For all we know, you popped him one so you didn’t have to share the money with him.”
He looked at him in shock. “I would never shoot him. Jesus Christ, what the hell are you thinking?”
“Somebody popped Hookman, and, if it wasn’t you, maybe it was your buddy.”
He didn’t say anything at first, and then he shrugged. “And maybe it was,” he muttered. “He was pretty pissed when Hookman wouldn’t let him rough up Jackson.”
“And why was he roughing him up?”
“That damn old fool wouldn’t hand over the money.”
“What money?” Wilden asked, with a scoff. “He’s an old man on a veteran’s pension.”
“According to Hookman, there was a lot of money. He said that these old people, especially the ones with VA benefits, get a crap load of money every month, and it was up to them to redistribute it properly.”
She stared at him. “Redistribute it? Did you go to war? Did you end up fighting like Jackson did? What sacrifice did you make for your country?”
“I’m not an idiot,” he spat. “Look at him. He came home in a wheelchair. Anybody who went into the military is an absolute idiot. It’s not like the military gave a shit what happens to you. Fighting for your country for what? Nobody cares. That’s just ridiculous,” he declared, with a sneer.
He looked from one to the other. “Oh, and you probably drank from that same Kool-Aid, didn’t you?
” he asked Wilden, with a laugh. “Yeah, Hookman’s son was the same.
John called him all kinds of names, but, at the end of the day, he couldn’t quite bring himself to hurt his poor old mother.
John told me how his son would tear a strip off him for that.
But the rest of it? … John didn’t give a shit. ”
Wilden listened to him. “I don’t think he gave a shit about his mother. I think he was probably just trying to keep you guys away from the money he had stashed that you didn’t know about.”
The stranger stared at him, wild-eyed, a growing fury evident in his facial expression. “Hookman had money?”
“That’s the rumor on the streets,” Wilden replied.
“Doesn’t mean that it was his, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean he was gonna share it with you guys.
” As the stranger blinked several times, Wilden realized that his father’s cronies had no idea.
He smiled. “You thought he needed the money just like you, huh? Nah, losers like him always stack the deck in their favor,” he shared.
“You might have thought that he was right there with you, but that wasn’t happening. ”
The stranger frowned. “But somebody popped him, and, if somebody popped him, they must have thought they had a good reason,” he said, his tone indifferent. “If I could get what I needed out of him, then I was good to go. But Hookman wasn’t really good to go. He thought everybody owed him.”
Wilden added, “That is exactly who he was. But why are you still in town when you know that kidnapping and assault and theft charges are coming your way?”
He took another look at Widen. “You know an awful lot, don’t you?”
“I do, and those charges and more are definitely coming your way. I’ve already talked to Jackson, and he spent a good span of time with the police today.”
The stranger frowned. “I don’t know for sure he’s alive, since you have his dog. If he was alive, no way you would have that mutt of his.”
“Ya think?” Wilden prodded, with a smirk. “Maybe you should consider that I’m the one who found him last night and carried him out of here.”
The stranger’s eyes widened, and he took another step back.
Wilden nodded, loving the look of fear on his face.
“Yeah, maybe you should run a little bit after all. The cops are after you too, at least those you haven’t lied to or who aren’t bad cops.
They’re gonna have a grand old time when they find out you chumped them with the stories you’ve been telling. ”
He glared at them. “They ain’t finding out shit. I’m not gonna be in town long enough.”
“You keep saying that, but yet you’re still here,” Vivian added. “You’re still here, causing all kinds of trouble, looking for a payout, but all you really are is some pathetic loser who never grew up enough to hold a job and actually work.”
“Who the hell are you anyway?” he asked her, with a sneer. “You don’t know shit.”