Page 39 of Whiskey Shivers

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

Hex…

“She’ll be alright,” La Croix intoned as we mounted our bikes at the back of my house. It was all pavement back here, and I’d thought some on busting some of it up to have a patch of green back here. It was a little too sterile for my tastes, but the outside of this place was the last thing on my mind to making the inside habitable.

“Oh, yeah, I know,” I declared. “Cornelius expecting our asses?” I asked.

La Croix shook his head.

“Well, this ought to be fun,” I muttered.

We rode out to our sleazeball lawyer’s place, and as predicted, it was a riot – for us at least.

“Aw c’mon now, fellas!” Bryan Cornelius looked none too happy to see us standin’ on his front porch. “My house? Really?” he demanded, stepping back and ushering us inside quickly. He ducked his head out his front door and looked around. Ducking back in, he shut it firmly on the outside world.

“Now just what in the hell do you want on a Sunday?” he asked, turning around to face us.

“Relax,” La Croix grated.

“You’re on the side of the angels this time, buddy.” I said and he looked up at me through his thick glasses, setting his jaw to the side as though he was thinkin’, deciding to believe us or not.

Finally, he let out a sigh and said, “Uh-huh, what is it this time? Hopefully it ain’t gon’ lead to any more of my payin’ customer’s suicides.”

He was talkin’ about the city councilman from last year – La Croix’s girl’s best friend’s daddy. He’d been a monster, sellin’ his little girl out to the highest bidder until she’d gone on her own fucking program and turned full-on high-classed hooker. She’d flaunted the fact that she was just the whore that her daddy’d made her and had turned into a liability for the cocksucker. He’d had her killed, stuffed in a damn suitcase and dumped in the Atchafalaya Basin.

He didn’t count on anybody carin’ about her, but Alina? Alina never gave up on her friend. It was a dangerous game La Croix’s girl found herself in, dropped in the middle of a damn chess board, only holdin’ checkers pieces.

The fools pullin’ the strings hadn’t counted on our boy’s obsession with the little redhead back at my place, and we’d wrought some good ol’ fashioned street justice and had, by default, cleaned up some of the political garbage patch of this city.

“Not sorry,” La Croix said with an impassive look, and I shot him one behind the lawyer’s back, cautioning him to fuckin’ behave.

“Not if that crazy bastard that hurt that teacher is your client,” I said flatly to get us on the subject we’d come for.

Cornelius gave a low whistle and jerked his head for us to follow him deeper into the house.

“Can’t say he is, and even if he was? I sure wouldn’t take that case. Sounds like you got beef with ol’ boy. What’s he done?”

“That teacher’s his ol’ lady,” La Croix said deeply, and I scowled at him again. That was a bigger leap than I was willin’ to admit to just yet. I mean, I wanted Cor something fierce but what if she wasn’t ready? I worried about that, about makin’ a move too soon or whatever. Which is the only reason I hadn’t yet, the ache in my balls griping about it somethin’ fierce.

“Well, now, ain’t that somethin’ – the beauty and the biker.” He looked me up and down.

I demanded, “Now how would you know what she looks like?”

“Ain’t you turned on the news any?” he asked and I grunted.

“Can’t say as I have. I’ve been spendin’ my evenings at the hospital and purposely avoiding the news for her sake once I learned she was all over it.”Caught plenty of fuckin’ Jeopardy, though,I thought to myself with some fondness.

“So, what you boys want with me fer?” he asked, going around the desk in his den and sitting behind it, leaning way back in his seat with his hands behind his head like he didn’t have a care in the world.

La Croix and I traded a smirk. The newly budding sweat stains in the pits of his royal-blue casual-Sunday polo were diming the lawyer out. He may appear cool as a cucumber, but he wasn’t stupid. It was the “not stupid” part which is why we kept him on our payroll. He’d done right by one of our members back in Ruthless’s days as president, and ol’ Ruthless had something on him at one point. Now, La Croix and I didn’t have a clue what that somethin’ was, but we were better at bluffin’ and intimidation. Ol’ Bryan didn’t know that we didn’t know. So, we kept the lawyer on a tight leash that we loosened up on, earning ourselves more an’ more goodwill with money and smaller asks like this one until the day we needed a big, more ‘n slightly less-than-legal favor. Then we’d see about cashin’ in and just how flexible Cornelius was within the confines of the law.

“You got connections,” La Croix said.

“Just wanna know they ain’t got ‘im in a mental ward and what jail he’s in, that’s all,” I said.

“For now,” La Croix added.

“Hell boys, Google is your friend,” the lawyer said, and he sat up and started clacking at the keys of his laptop.

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