Page 36 of Brother In Arms

“Poison, I’d bet my fuckin’ life on it. What’d your sources say about Renaldo?”

“Now that was interesting, turns out he did owe some local loan shark some money, but not enough to warrant a beat down that fuckin’ bad. Bein’ a jockey, it stood to reason he’d still played the ponies from time to time.”

“So the local players were legit just trying to get their money?”

“I think it was just a good excuse to cause a little chaos,” Dray said.

“Any rate, we ain’t gonna have any more problems from the local criminal element,” Dragon said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

Dray snorted and smirked, “They called us fallin’ all over themselves to apologize for overstepping.”

“Yeah, I know they saw my ink, didn’t think it made that much of a difference, though.”

“Oh you bet your ass it did,” Dragon said.

“They give up their backer?”

“Yep,” Dragon said, pulling a cigarette out of this silver case etched with his namesake etched on it. If I had to guess it was another Dani Broussard original. It matched that silver dragon ponytail holder he had a little too well to be anything else.

“The brother?” I hazarded.

“You guessed it,” Dray said.

“Where’s that leave us?” I asked.

“Probably nowhere good,” Dray muttered darkly.

“We’ve dealt with this kind of thing before, been a couple a years but it didn’t end well for the guy.”

“Oh yeah, who was that?”

“Sunshine’s ex-douchebag, but somehow I don’t think we can employ the same tactic here.” Dray said.

“Similar, to be sure, but not same,” Dragon agreed.

“I don’t know the full scope on that one to agree or disagree,” I told them. Dragon looked back over his shoulder into the house and grunted, “Later.”

“How much of this you plan on telling Bailey?” I asked quietly but didn’t get an answer because she was backing out the screen door with a loaded tray of lemonade this time.

“Here we go,” she said and filled four glasses from the big glass pitcher on the tray. She sat down across from Dragon, between me and Dray and sighed out harshly.

“Well, sweetheart, you ain’t gonna like this, but I think It’s time our man Rush here took up some space on your couch,” Dragon took a swallow of the offered lemonade and Bailey looked from Dragon to me.

“I don’t know about that,” she said shifting uncomfortably and I couldn’t say I disagreed. I mean, I wanted her, sure, who wouldn’t? But, I wanted to do things right – in a way that was a little more familiar to her. The whole pick her up on a Friday or Saturday night for a date kind of thing. Didn’t look like that was gonna be in the cards, though, and if it’s one thing I did well, it was adapt to survive. I could adapt to this even easier.

“Here, I can get to and deal with something faster than if I’m at the club,” I said with a shrug.

Bailey’s phone started buzzing across the table where she’d put it after pulling it out of her back pocket when she’d gotten to sit down. She picked it up and swiped across the screen with a “Sorry, have to take this.”

“Hello?” she said into it, and immediately an angry voice basically started screaming at her out of the earpiece. She was too far away from me to make anything out except a whole bunch of Charlie Brown’s teacher; “Wa whah wah wa, wa, wa?”

Dragon, Dray, and I all exchanged a worried look, the ‘what now?’ etched into all of our faces.

“I understand, Mr. Fairchild and no, nothing is wrong with any of the horses in the client stables. No, sir… it was only my own horse, Boaz. Yes, thank you, sir. It’s very hard, I loved him very much. No sir, Two Drops in a Bucket is fine.”

“I hate that horse,” I said out of the side of my mouth quietly to Dray. “We like to call him Two Men Shitting in a Bucket.”

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