Bax narrowed his eyes. Gave his brother a hard stare. “I’m sorry it couldn’t wait until I got to the shop, Mr. Kline.” Waited for the waitress to serve coffee. “What do I need to fix for him now?”
Russell snorted a protest.
“Shut up, Russell.” Bax and Mr. Kline said it at the same time.
Russell stared at the wall. Slouched lower.
“Your idiot brother went and got all... entrepreneurial.” Mr. Kline waved off menus. “Managed to sell some — property — that already had a buyer.”
Bax remained silent. Raced through Mr. Kline’s lines of business to assess what property Mr. Kline might be talking about. “Is it property we can get more of ?”
“It is not.”
That ruled out cars and parts, some drugs, and girls. It left knock-off Japanese whiskey and—
“All them FNs,” Russell said.
Mr. Kline’s backhand across Russell’s face flashed so fast Bax might have missed it if not for the split that opened in the middle of his brother’s lower lip.
“Russell,” Bax said, “you keep your own counsel for the rest of this conversation.” He pushed his napkin across the table. Motioned for Russell to use it to stop the bleeding. “Mr. Kline—”
“I know you thought you’d work off Russell’s debt in the next two, three years.”
“Is this fixable?” Or just more debt?
“I sold that property to the originally interested party.”
“The gentlemen from San Leon.”
“Exactly.” Mr. Kline paused while the waitress refilled his coffee. “And your brother somehow managed to secure a commitment to buy from the — how did you say it? The gentlemen from Tyler.”
Bax covered his face with his hands. Cursed silently into his palms. Decades more debt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kline.” Lifetimes. “I... well, I’m just very sorry.”
“Now, Bax, you don’t need to apologize.” Mr. Kline moved his hands like he was giving a benediction. “I know young Russell here is just a half-brother. So I can assume he acquired his extraordinary stupidity from his father, not yours.”
Bax kicked Russell under the table to prevent his protest. “Yes, sir, Mr. Kline.”
“Is this fixable, you ask.” Mr. Kline wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. “All the ways I can think to fix this involve throwing your brother to one or the other of the two motorcycle gangs currently waging war over which will control Texas.”
Russell’s face melted from sullen fear to absolute terror.
Bax kicked him again. “Let me think on it for a bit, Mr. Kline, if you will.”
“You can understand why I’d like to find a more successful resolution.” Mr. Kline twisted the big nugget-looking ring that had opened Russell’s lip. “Can’t you, Bax.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But our time is short. Thanks to young Russell’s commitment, now both parties expect delivery within two days.”
“Two days, Mr. Kline.”
Bax’s boss nodded with his whole body. He pulled a long wallet from inside his jacket, opened it, and fingered through the bills. He tugged out a fifty. “That Miss Venetta is quite a catch, Bax.” Folded it under his saucer. “You take good care of her.”
Bax hustled his brother out of the diner as soon as Mr. Kline’s Lexus turned at the end of the block.
“Russell, how you find this much trouble to get into?”
Russell threw a dismissive hand toward the sky. “Man, get off my shit. I just—”
“Your shit?” Bax dope-slapped Russell. “I’m carrying that Wells deal you oughta got dead for, and you talk at me about your shit? You tell Mr. Kline the woman I’m seein’, and you talk at me about your shit? How many times I got to tell you ’bout impulse control?” Bax didn’t flinch as Russell reared back to retaliate for the dope slap. “You need to think before you swing on a man.”
Russell sprawled himself on the smoker’s bench, his ridiculous shoes pointed at Bax. “The Cossacks—”
“Shut up.” Bax swiveled his head. “You stupider than I gave you credit for, you start name-checking the guys gonna peel your skin off.”
“They reached out to me.” Russell admired the rings on his left hand. “They. Reached out. To me.”
“Why you think they did that, Russell? ’Cause you the brains of this operation?”
Russell puffed out his chest.
“Or ’cause you the likeliest to fuck up the deal the Bandidos already done for what both of ’em want?”
Russell’s face blanked. His head tilted.
“Jesus, Russell.” Bax rubbed his palms across his face. “Go back to the shop. I got to think. You just... just—”
“Gimme your keys, then.”
Bax shook his head. “Call you a Lyft. Or hoof it. Just sit in my office. Don’t touch nothin’. Or do nothin’. Watch some SportsCenter or some shit like that.”
“But—”
“Don’t you do nothin’ or say nothin’ till I get there.”
Venetta’s one arched eyebrow told Bax about all he needed to know. He showed her his palms as he straddled his regular counter stool.
“You told me you was going straight after your bit.”
“I am.”
“Well, I know who that was you was talking to.” Venetta raised her other brow. “And people going straight don’t spend a lot of time with Mr. Reamer Kline.”
“I’m — that was my kid brother. With us.”
“The one you did the bit for.”
Bax had told Venetta most of the truth about his stretch downstate. He hadn’t done what he pleaded to, but he’d pleaded to it to keep his brother out of the system. “Russell fell in with a crew belonged to one of Mr. Kline’s lieutenants while I was doing his time. And he... he ended up owing Mr. Kline some.”
Venetta turned her back to him. She started wiping the little spring-loaded pitchers of syrup. “I’m still listening.”
“Mr. Kline, he got to me the day I landed at the halfway house. Told me I could pay Russell’s debt if I fix — if I fixed up one of his businesses.”
“Why you work so hard for Russell?”
Bax hadn’t told her any of the truth about that. Not really. Just that doing Russell’s bit had been the right thing for both of them because he’d done some stuff he hadn’t been caught for, that he should’ve gone away for. “Russell, you know, he came up without a dad. He ain’t had nobody to show him how to be a man. And he’s my only family now.”
Venetta let him keep looking at her back.
“Since our mom passed.”
“I don’t want no Mr. Reamer Kline in my diner.”
“I don’t want that neither.” Bax thought carefully about his next move. Moves. Thought that what he really needed was time to think about motorcycle gangs and what they wanted with the shipping container that filled a not-too-noticeable hole in the salvage yard he ran for Mr. Kline. “Can I finish my breakfast here?”
“I saved it for you.” Venetta turned and slid his plate across the counter. “But it gone cold.”
In the diner’s parking lot, the cold half of his eggs riding heavy and low in his belly, Bax opened the Kia’s tailgate and lifted the floor panel covering the spare tire. He pushed the sidewall of the tire until it gapped away from the wheel, reached inside the tire, and fished around until he grasped his most recent burner. Flipped it open and tapped at the tiny keypad: Hudson. U got any friends in DC.
Bax bundled the phone among his newspaper and other trash from his car and stuffed all of that in the stinking, oozing can at the bus stop.
The lady cop had pulled him over between the diner and the salvage yard. Berberian had never responded to a text so fast. The DC ask must have lit a fire under someone important. Bax thought about how he might leverage that as he triple-checked that he’d deactivated all the sounds and shakers on the burner the lady cop had dropped in his pocket.