Page 71 of Bourbon & Blood

I fuckin’hatedlawyers.

Good for nothin’ most the damn time.

“Now, I don’t know about you,” Hex said, pulling out the printout from the security camera. “But that there don’t look nothin’ like Mr. Daryl Winters from up there in Shreveport. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

Cornelius looked over the image and I swear, he turned a little green around the gills, pullin’ his collar away from his neck. He tried to recover but one sideways glance from Hex told me he’d seen it too.

“Well, what do you want me to say, boys? That certainly isn’t Mr. Winters, now, is it?”

“So, who is he?” I asked. “And don’t fuckin’ lie to us.”

“Well, fellas… I wish I could help you, but that may or may not be breeching attorney-client privilege. I simply cannot do that – you understand.”

“I don’t think you quite understand the position you’re in here, Mr. Cornelius,” Hex said. “You either tell us what we want to know, or you’re just sittin’ there puttin’ a target on your back. You feel me, son?”

Bryan stilled in his chair, his watery blue eyes losing their sparkle.

“I don’t thinkyouunderstand, boys,” he told us. “I tell you, and I’m dead either way.”

I shook my head. “Motherfucker in that photo already signed his death warrant the moment he touched her.”

“Well now, ain’t that interesting,” Bryan declared. “Who knew the girl in the photo had friends in such low places?”

“Oh, she don’t. A friend o’ hers does and paid us pretty fuckin’ handsome to find out what happened to that girl in the photo,” Hex said. “An’ that’s just what we aim to do.”

“Tell me this,” Cornelius said, steepling his fingers in front of him. “You mean to deliver that man’s head on a proverbial plate, to, ah, your client?” he asked, and the wheels were turning in his head.

“Metaphorically speaking,” Hex said with a wink. “We just lookin’ to put a name to a face is all. We ain’t vigilantes now, that would be illegal.”

Cornelius laughed outright at that.

“All we need is a name, and at least one of your problems disappears,” I said evenly. I knew I was treading a dangerous path.

“You boys are bein’ awfully candid,” he said, eyeing me.

Both Hex and I just stared at him, lettin’ the bottomless pits we had inside show out our eyes.

“I give you a name, you keep me out of it an’ we free an’ clear?” he asked.

“Until we need your services for somethin’.” Cornelius raised his eyebrows an’ Hex held up his hand to stave off whatever the lawyer was gonna say. “An then we’ll pay you fair an’ proper for your services. You help us, an’ we’ll help you. No favors now, but you’ll be at the top o’ our list for lawyers to call an’ you know the kind o’ trouble our boys are apt to get into.”

“Five-thousand-dollar retainer, right here, right now,” the lawyer said after a moment of judicious silence.

I pulled my billfold outta my cut and started counting. I only kept around half that on me at any given time. I happened to have around twenty-seven hundred on me right now. I slapped down twenty-five hundred of it and said, “Twenty-five hundred now, the restafteryou give us what we came for.”

He leaned forward and picked up the stack of hundreds, counting them out. Hex gave an almost imperceptible nod when Cornelius wasn’t lookin’ – as in he had the rest and he’d spot me.

“Alright, then,” Cornelius said. “The man who asked me to ask the lackey to book the room was none other ‘n Kenny Wells, Bashaw’s right-hand man an’ campaign manager. As for the man in the photo?” He gave a gallic shrug. “He goes by a lot of names, has a pretty high body count, too, from what I understand. He’s a professional, ex-military type. I guarantee, if he’s in the picture, the girl ain’t.”

Fuck.

“You know any of his aliases?” Hex demanded.

“Jacob Landry is one of ‘em, but I’m tellin’ you – I don’t know his real name. I mean it about you boys lookin’ out for my ass in trade for this information. I ain’t fixin’ to die young.”

“This conversation never happened as far as we concerned,” Hex declared, pulling out his billfold and greasin’ the lawyer’s palm.

“Well now, consider me retained,” he said. “Y’all stay outta trouble now. An’ if you can’t do that? At least don’t get caught.”

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