Page 100 of Lake
“Yeah,” Sketch grunted and there was a look on his face like he’d been gut-punched.
“It seems like they move around. Hit up a place where there ain’t a lot of people hanging out. Snatch up one then take off. The next time, it’s a different place. Here.” he pulled out a sheet of notebook paper from his back pocket that looked like it had seen better days and handed it to Sketch. “I don’t know if that’s all of them, just the ones I’ve heard about.”
I leaned over to glance at the paper. It looked like a list of streets and a few numbers that I couldn’t figure out.
“You’ve been looking into this?” Sketch asked.
“Yeah,” the guy said defensively. “I might not be smart enough to figure it out but that don’t mean I ain’t gonna try.”
“Thanks,” Sketch said as he pocketed the paper and did the hand thing with the guy again.
“You want a slice before you leave? Might do you good to remember how shitty it tastes.”
Sketch let out a small laugh under his breath.
“Nah, I’m good, man. Keep it real.”
Then we were leaving.
I felt like we had something now. It may not have been much but it was a place to start. Maybe Cable could make something of the streets and come up with a pattern or a way to string them all together somehow.
“You good?” I asked because I just couldn’t hold back anymore.
“Yeah,” Sketch said in a short tone. “Just need a beer and some bitches.”
I saw it for what it was and left it alone.
I knew it wasn’t always easy looking back at your past. It was even harder to dive right in and submerge yourself in it.
So I decided to let him do his thing and shake it off the way he thought was best. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep an eye out and let him know I was there if he needed someone to talk to.
Once we made it back to the clubhouse I noticed it was almost one in the morning. I followed Sketch to the stairs in the back.
“Hey,” I said, stopping him before we climbed to the second floor.
“What?” he asked, his tone strangely soft and almost resigned. Like he knew what was coming. Like he’d been waiting all night for me to ask him things about the past that he clearly didn’t want to talk about.
“You passed right by the bitches,” I jokingly pointed out with a wide smile. I made sure no one was around because I wasn’t all that thrilled about using the term ‘bitches’ but I knew it would make him smile.
Which it did, his posture going from deflated to cocky and puffed up in a second.
“Don’t worry, they know I’m coming back for them. Got that Sketch scent in their nose the moment I walked in the door and them bitches are hooked. They’ll be waitin’ around.”
I shook my head but laughed the short jog up to the second floor where Iron’s office and apartment were. The room where we held Church was also up there but I knew we’d find Iron in one of the first two.
He wasn’t in his office which led me to think that he was either pacing his living room floor or sitting on his couch drinking whiskey. Or tequila, depending on how long he’d just been waiting around for us to get back.
And maybe I wasn’t surprised he was doing a little bit of both.
As I pushed open the door after knocking, I found him barefoot, standing in the middle of the room with a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“Find out anything?” he asked right away though his tone was mild.
I looked at Sketch and nodded, letting him take the floor because he’d done all the work on this one. And he knew what was going on a little more than I did, given the fact that he probably knew those locations on the paper and maybe even what the random numbers meant.
I stood there, my mind spinning as Sketch went over the night’s events. I was all over the place, thinking about what I’d seen and the information we’d gotten. I was trying to put all the pieces in place while doing my best to not think about how Sketch lived that life not that long ago. And how there were still millions of people living that way right now.
Not that I ever wished I had more in life, but it made me really appreciate what I did have. Somehow being thankful and making sure I was there for everyone around me didn’t seem like enough, but I wasn’t sure what more I could do. It was something that I would have to put in a box and think about later because right now there was shit that needed to be handled.
