package Jase juggled as he rapped his knuckles against an apartment door one floor down from his own. “Murph! You in there? Hey, I brought dinner. Open up before I drop the damn thing on the carpet.”
“Hold your water, kid,” a gruff voice said, growing closer as his one-time mentor and long-time friend approached the other side of the door. “I ain’t as young as I useta be, y’know.”
“No shit?” he muttered as locks tumbled and the doorknob turned. “Can’t say as I remember you ever being young.”
“Cute,” Murphy said, opening the door and reaching out to relieve him of the six-pack of St. Pauli Girl he’d tucked under his elbow.
“Not trying to be cute,” he said honestly. “I don’t remember. I was, what? Fourteen when we met? I thought you were a hundred then.”
“I was fifty-four!”
“Which might as well be a hundred when you’re fourteen.”
Murphy laughed. “I suppose you got a point.” He shot a glance over his shoulder at the blue-and-white paper bundling their dinner as he led the way to the little dining table outside his almost equally small kitchen. “Spud’s fish and chips,” he said as he pulled a couple of longnecks out of the six-pack and set them on the table. “What’s the occasion?”
“That bogus committee you talked me into joining is no more.” And he refused to feel guilty about the disappointment he’d seen in the Babe’s big brown eyes when the vote hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped. “Figured that calls for a celebration.”
Murphy slowly straightened from putting the rest of the beer in the refrigerator. Turning his head, he pinned Jase in the crosshairs of his faded but still sharp blue eyes. “I know you weren’t hot to be on this thing in the first place. But how the hell’d you manage that?”
“By injecting a little reality into a harebrained scheme.” He nodded at the package he’d unwrapped. “I’ll tell you all about it, but right now come sit down. Let’s eat before this gets cold.”
They each grabbed a wad of napkins and dug into the fish, eating with their fingers. They dipped the battered fish into plastic containers of tartar sauce, scraped thick clam chowder out of tiny cardboard cups with round-bowled plastic spoons and dredged their fries through ketchup, washing it all down with beer.
Eventually there was nothing left except a couple of grease spots and a splash of garlic-infused vinegar in the bottom of their cardboard dishes. Murphy stacked them, tossed in the empty plastic condiment containers and, wadding up the wrapping paper, added it to the pile. He pushed his chair back from the table, patted his comfortable paunch and met Jase’s gaze. “Good dinner. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So tell me about this harebrained scheme.”
“Do you remember me talking about the Babe?”
“Sure. Rich girl who got you all hot and bothered a few months back.”
“She didn’t get me all—” He swallowed the lie. “Okay, maybe she did. But that’s old news.”
“So what’s the new news?”
“Turns out she was on the committee, too. And she damn near talked the rest of the people on it into rewarding the kids caught tagging.”
“How’s that?”
“She was all for letting them do a mural on the side of one of the businesses.”
“You’re kidding me. No making them clean up after their vandalism—just giving them something fun to do?”
“Well, no. She actually did propose making them clean up their mess first with paint they paid for out of their own pockets.”
Murph nodded. “Okay, good. That’s responsible. But—what?—they’ve been in and out of the system a hundred times already?”
“Uh, not exactly.” He shifted in his seat. Tipped his bottle up and drained the last sip of beer from it. Because he knew this was where self-righteousness got a little shaky. “It was their first run-in with the police.”
Murphy lowered his own bottle, which he’d been raising to his lips, and sat a little straighter in his seat. “Let me get this straight. The kids have never been in trouble. The Babe was going to have them clean up their mess with paint they’re responsible for purchasing. But she wanted to take it a step further and have them also paint a mural on the side of a building. So…what? She just tossed the idea out there on the table for someone else to implement?”
Crap. “No, she offered to supervise. She wants to ‘make a difference’ in their lives.”
The old man snorted. “Right. That’s likely to happen,” he said, deadpan. “Still, if she’s willing to do the work, why would the committee vote against the idea? It’s not like it’d be any skin offa their noses.”
Crapfuckhell. “I might have gotten a little carried away with my ‘tagging is the first step to crime’ talk. Could have maybe scared them off some.”
“For God’s sake, boy.” Murphy scratched his thinning iron-gray hair. “Why?”
Back straightening, he looked Murph in the eye. “You know damn well why. Once you start torquing the rules it’s a slippery slope. One day you’re rewarding kids for trashing people’s hard-earned businesses. Next thing you know you’re giving in to the temptation to just take that old-lady-bashing mugger around the corner and stick your service revolver to his temple to ‘help’ him cough up a confession.”
There was a moment’s silence in which his words clanged in his head like buckshot fired into a steel chamber—and he wished he could get the past few seconds back so he could cut his tongue out.
Then Murphy said dryly, “I’m gonna take a wild stab here and speculate we’re not still talking about a bunch of merchants deciding to vote down the Babe’s proposal.”
Burying his head in his hands, Jase groaned.
He felt Murph rub rough fingers over his hair.
“One of these days,” the old man said gruffly, “I’d like to see you give yourself a break and realize you’re not like your dad or grandpa or Joe.”
“That’s never going to happen…because I am.” Dropping his hands to the tabletop, he raised his head to look at the old man. “I’m a goddamn de Sanges male,
which is a lot like being a recovering alcoholic—I’m one act away from being just like the rest of the men in my family.”
“That’s bullshit, and you oughtta damn well know it by now. But, no—you’re too fucking stubborn to take your head outta your butt. You have never knocked over convenience stores. You have never kited checks or destroyed bars in a drunken brawl. And I’m guessing now is probably not a good time to tell you about this, but I’m going to anyways. I got a call from your brother today, looking for you.”
Everything inside him stilled. “Joe’s out on parole?”
“Looks like.”
“Shit.” Jase laughed without humor. Then, spreading his fingers against the faux wood, he lowered his head again and thunked it once, twice, three times against the tabletop. “I guess I’d better get in touch with him quick then, hadn’t I? Because God knows he won’t be out for long.”
Chapter Three
Holy shitskis, that “Be Careful What You Wish For” thing is no joke. Just when things were starting to settle down and I was finally getting that man out of my head…this!
“SHARON, YOU want to come take a look?” Poppy twisted around on her perch near the top of the stepladder to look for the coffee-shop owner.
The