Page 92 of Cognac Secrets

The club had finally been released as a crime scene. We’d swept it, and removed all the planted listening devices and shit that law enforcement had hidden around the place. They really honestly sucked. We found everything inside an hour. Then LaCroix sent for some underworld geek squad motherfucker who’d gone through with all kinds of devices and confirmed it.

I went into the club with Collier and Hex right behind me and checked myself out in one of the full-length mirrors in the bathroom.

I didn’t appear to have a single drop on me, but I still had both Col and Hex look me over.

“Nah, you’re good, man,” Col affirmed for like the third time and we all three slid onto a bar stool. The windows boarded up behind us and reinforced with Kevlar vests stapled to the thick plywood on this side.

We were as safe as we were gonna be in the bar until we could get those windows properly fixed or bricked over. We hadn’t come to a vote on that yet. Col reached down a bottle of cognac and a glass and slid them to me. He slid another glass and a bottle of Jack to Hex and then came around with a glass for himself and a jar of shine.

“Well, here’s to another fucked-up adventure in criminal enterprising,” Hex declared and raised his glass. Col and I clicked ours against his and all three of us downed the contents of our glasses like they were shots, setting the glasses to the bartop and having a chuckle.

“Great minds,” Col said ruefully.

I sighed.

It’d been a lot of years since I’d had a woman to go back to with a mind on fire like this. I asked the boys…

“Man, how do you guys do it?”

“Do what?” Hex asked.

“Just go back to Cor or Jessie-Lou like we didn’t just do what we did?” I asked.

Both of them just looked at me and shrugged.

“I just leave it back in that field,” Col said. “No sense on having a guilty conscience when what we served out there was justice. Pigs sure as fuck weren’t gonna get it for us.”

I nodded slowly, my eyes drifting to the wall down at the end of the bar and the eight by ten framed mugshot of Louie hanging above the floating shelf, his urn a sleek black powder coated thing with silver accents at the raised rim.

“No, they were not,” I agreed, and poured another measure of liquid into my glass. Hex and Col followed suit.

“To Louie,” I said raising my glass. “ForLouie.”

“For Louie,” the two of them echoed and we downed our glasses in one hard swallow.

“I don’t want this to be the rest of my life,” Hex said with a sigh. “I feel like I’m getting too old for this shit.”

I snorted and said, “Right there with you, brother.”

Collier turned back to us from where he’d been staring at Louie and he sighed.

“I didn’t particularly care one way or another if this kept up as my life. Be honest, I kind of expected it to be forever, kinda, you know? Then I met Jessie-Lou. Her and her boy… and even though I think I could keep doing this for me, I have to admit, I don’t want this for them. They make me want to slow down, calm down, and really be a part of and enjoy life.”

“Sometimes we can’t see doin’ shit for ourselves or treating ourselves kind like,” Hex said with a shrug. “Sometimes it takes having someone else in our lives doing it to remind us that we should.”

We sat with that a minute and nodded.

“You’re wise beyond your years, brother,” Col said.

“Nah,” Hex shook his head. “Just something my grand pappy instilled in me.”

“Yeah. Good man,” Col drawled.

“One of the best,” Hex agreed, and I felt like kind of a third wheel to this conversation.

“To my pa-paw,” Hex said, and we all drank to that, but for me it was just what you did when someone made a toast to their dead grandpa.

We sat and drank in silence for a while. A silence and a camaraderie that was profound.

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