Page 70 of Fish in a Barrel
“Yeah, well, I admit I haven’t been hurrying much on that car because my sister’s been driving it, see? It’s better than her car—her car’s this shitty Chrysler minivan, brown, you’ve seen it—”
“I’m driving it!” Henry had left the shitty brown minivan at Jackson’s when he drove to the office with Galen that morning, because that lucky bastard had managed to figure out a way to live without a car of his own.
“Oh! Yeah. Sorry. I forgot—I was doing a lot of musical cars there, bro. I forgot which one you ended up with. But see? So she was driving around your CR-V to, uh, test drive it for a day before we gave it back to you, right?”
“Sure.” Translation: My sister has been driving your CR-V around for the last three weeks while I shined light up your sphincter because it’s a better car than the Town & Country and I love her more.
“So, uh, anyway, she was rear-ended. It’s no big deal, but she called me up hysterical because she’s in Arden Hills—you know, that swank country club place, right?—and the guy who hit her, he took one look at her, saw that she was brown, and told her to pay for the damage herself. And she’s got his license plate, but she don’t want to call the cops unless the car’s hers, and the guy was an asshole and—”
Jackson took a deep breath and tried to sort out the conundrum. He got it. He did. The guy who hit her deserved to be hit with a lawsuit and a hit-and-run charge and a two-hundred-pound dead fish. “So what do you want me to do?” he asked.
There was a deafening silence on the other end of the line.
“Oh my God, seriously?”
“Sell your car to my sister for a dollar and postdate the receipt. I swear to God, Jackson, I’ll fix that Town & Country until it gives up the ghost, and then I’ll find you another car and fix it up sweet and fix that one for free too. Please? Jackson, my sister thinks I can do anything, but I can’t go chasing down some white country-club asshole and tell him to pay insurance on a car that’s not hers!”
At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Jackson stood stiffly to his feet. “Text me the address, Joey. I’ve got to go put on some fucking shoes.”
He opened the door and ushered K-Ski in, saying, “Make yourself comfortable, Sean. You too, Billy. Turns out I’ve got to do a thing for a friend in Arden Hills. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Sean shoved a giant sugar-cookie Frappuccino into his hand, glowering, and Jackson let out a sigh. “Oh God. I’m such a bad person. I want this so bad.”
Sean whispered, “Cookies, Jackson. You promised!”
“Top cupboard on the right, behind the rice flour,” Jackson whispered back. “Can you reach that—”
“I’m right here,” Billy interposed, and Jackson grimaced at him.
Sean Kryzynski was five eightish, young, blond, blue-eyed, and slender—pretty in an American-boy way. Billy was a few inches shorter with long, silky black hair, shoulders as wide as Jackson’s refrigerator, and the smoldering dark-eyed beauty of a young Spanish don. Of all the kids Jackson had met who had roomed in the flophouse, Billy was the one who spoke the least and seemed to have the most painful secrets. He was also the most self-contained. Jackson had been frankly surprised when Billy volunteered for nursing duty, although he’d been less so when he realized that another one of his and Henry’s rescues had been healing in the other half of Billy’s room, and the guy he shared the room with was on twenty-four-seven nursing duty himself. Still, Billy needed a place to stay, Sean needed help doing everyday things until his punctured lung healed, and he thought they should get along fine.
He’d been unprepared for Billy’s diligence and damned pit-bull-like determination to keep Sean Kryzynski healthy, or the baffled way Sean reacted to being managed by a surly porn model who seemed almost terrifyingly competent at his job.
The more Jackson had been around the two of them, seen their body language, the soft looks one would give the other when the other wasn’t looking, the more he thought he may have set something in motion that had far-reaching consequences.
He was hoping that’d be for the best, actually. He sort of liked it when people found their others. It made him feel better, surer, even happier about having found his.
But he was also unsure of what to do about an upset Billy who didn’t want Sean to eat sweets. He was pretty much on Sean’s side for this one.
“Just to keep me company while I drink my coffee?” he said, giving what he hoped was a winning smile.
Billy regarded him with narrowed eyes. “That thing in your hand is an abomination, and I have the feeling your boyfriend would not approve.”
Jackson turned his smile up a watt. “Well, Ellery doesn’t have to knowallthe things I drink—one sugar cookie frap isn’t going to kill me, right?”
Sean was suddenly glaring at him. “Don’t you have a heart condition?”
“I’m allowed coffee!” Jackson protested. “Do you want to see my file? I just….” He groaned. “Wheatgrass, Sean. He’s putting lawn clippingsin my coffee.”
“Yeah.” He turned to Billy. “All things in moderation, right?”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Sure. How’d you know to drive to Arden Hills?”
“Well,Iwas going to drive there and let you guys chill here until I got back.”
They glanced at each other. “But that would be sort of dumb,” K-Ski said, giving a tight smile. “Because that’s where our crime scene is, and I’m telling you, you’re going to want to see for yourself.”
Jackson’s smile grew at the same time it relaxed. “Allthe cookies,” he said, meaning it. “You getallthe cookies.”
