Mine (3 page)

I told him it was because he was hard up.

He told me he was definitely hard.

“Perv.”

“You would know.”

Most of our conversations degraded to name-calling, tickling, water fights, food fights, pillow fights, kissing, groping, rubbing, and then him held down and begging. It had been working seamlessly for two years.

The first thing I did was remove him from his circle and put him into mine. It wasn’t that my friends were paragons of virtue. They were not perfect. But they were loyal and trustworthy and dependable and true. They were also, it turned out, really possessive, just like I was. So when some guy put his hands on Landry in a club, by the time I got back from the bathroom, the guy had already been run off, humiliated, jeered at, and one time, because the guy wasn’t hearing the no, hit. The message was clear: Landry Carter was no longer available, and he would not be passing himself around like a party favor anymore. He belonged to me and me alone.

In the two years we had been together, the changes in the man were stunning. After six months, I helped him live out his dream of opening his own jewelry store, and in midtown Detroit, in the middle of a recession, he still did well. There was an online catalog and a website, and you could visit the showroom and order custom pieces once you got there. When people wondered why I was so beautifully accessorized, I always told them. My triple-wrap leather bracelets were always complimented, and he said the best thing he ever did was make me wear them. I saw so many people, and they all saw my bracelets and asked me where to get one. As far as I knew, I was the only runner who carried his boyfriend’s business card.

He was doing well. Business was booming, his jewelry was in several upscale boutiques downtown, and he had just hired a public relations firm to help him launch a new line geared to the department store crowd. I was very proud of him, and between my savings and his being on the cusp of greatness, we were poised to move, buy a house, buy other property, and start to see a change in our lifestyle from living paycheck to paycheck to having some extra cash in the bank. I had done my days of peanut butter and ramen noodles before I met him, but when we first moved in together, before he knew what he wanted to do, it had been both of us on my single feast or famine money cycle. But things were looking way up for us, so the timing, with his family suddenly appearing, made me wary.

“S
O
TELL
me,” Chris said, returning me to the present from my walk down memory lane. “How does it work?”

I was confused. Me and Landry? “What?”

“What you do for the bookie, how does that work?”

Bookie? Who even used that word anymore?

“I can tell you,” Landry offered, sitting up, leaning forward out of my hold but still pressed against me, his leg sliding over mine.

“Okay,” Chris agreed, and I could tell he was dying to get Landry to open up to him at all. And I understood; I was a slave to having the man’s attention myself. “Guys call Trev and ask, like, hey, what’s the line on whatever game, or gimme the line for half of the game or the over or the under, and then they place their bets. If they win, they get whatever they bet, but if they lose, they gotta pay what they bet plus the juice.”

“Juice?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s the money the house makes if you lose, it’s usually like 20 percent, but it could be more depending on the house. Trevan’s takes twenty.”

“Oh, okay.”

“But there’s all kinds of different bets,” Landry continued, fiddling with the black leather wrap bracelet on my left wrist, hematite and turquoise, before touching the hammered silver ring that made me look like I was married. “There’s teaser bets and parlay bets, but the more points you buy, the less your payout is.”

His eyes flicked to Chris to check if he was listening. He shouldn’t have worried.

“Let’s say,” he continued, “you have Green Bay and Indianapolis and the spread is ten points. Sometimes guys will say I want to teaser that bet by three points, so instead of the spread being ten points, it’s seven. But the more points you buy, the less your payout is.”

“Interesting,” Chris said, not caring in the least about my business but able to talk to his brother because of it. He looked over at me then. “So Trevan, where do you come in?”

“He’s the runner, like I said,” Landry answered for me. “Trev collects what’s owed and pays out winnings. On Monday and Tuesday he collects; on Wednesday he pays everybody.”

“So you’re popular on Wednesday.” Chris smiled at me.

“Pretty much, yeah.” I nodded.

“So what if guys don’t have the money to pay you? Do you break their legs?”

“No.” Landry grinned at him. “Trevan just cuts the guy off, and once the word’s out that you’re a welsher, you’re pretty much done, ya know?”

There was more to it than that, but my boyfriend did not need to know all the ins and outs of my business. I answered to the house, and if the guys that I went to collect from didn’t pay me, then the money had to come from somewhere. The house, or in this case, Adrian Eramo, didn’t care who paid me, he only cared that
he
got paid. Period.

“You’re not a cop now, are you?” Landry snapped suddenly, realizing everything he’d already said, his voice betraying him, the shiver in it. “You’re not here to hurt Trev.”

“No.” Chris’s voice nearly broke. “I’m here to get you to come home. That’s all I want. I’m just a college student, Lan, I’m completely nonthreatening, I assure you.”

Landry nodded, a quick shiver running through him as my phone rang. Normally I wouldn’t have even bothered with it, but the number was my boss, so I turned it to Landry so he could see it. He moved his leg from where it was between mine, and I stood up to answer it.

“Trev,” Landry said before I could walk away.

I looked at him but said nothing.

“Don’t be long.”

When I stroked my fingers through his hair, taking hold of a clump of it, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. I bent and kissed his forehead, letting him go before I walked toward the living-room window that looked out on the park behind the apartment building. I answered by the eighth ring.

“What the fuck?”

“Gabe?”

Heavy sigh on the other end. “Yeah, sorry,” he grumbled. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Home. Why, what’s up?”

He cleared his throat. “Did Ellis Kady place any bets with you last week?”

“No, I cut him off.”

Several ticks of silence went by. “Trevan, the man owns three nightclubs, a restaurant, and a car dealership. Why would you cut him off?”

He didn’t sound mad; he sounded more like he was fishing. Sometimes when I refused to take bets from people, Gabriel Pike called to find out why. He never forced me to go against my gut feeling, but he liked an explanation. If he felt I was being unreasonable, he would take the bet from the player himself. Most of the time, Gabe took my advice and let the client walk, but every now and then, he overruled me and the little voice in my head. 

“T?” he prompted.

“I cut him off because he didn’t pay me two weeks in a row.”

“But you weren’t short.”

“Have you ever known me to be?”

Heavy sigh. “No, Trev, you’re the best goddamn runner I’ve ever had.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear, but I carry my friends, not assholes like Ellis Kady who think they’re too fuckin’ good to pay me.”

“What does he owe you?”

“That’s between me and Ellis,” I told him. “I paid you, you paid Adrian—I’m square with the house, and that’s how I like it. Whatever else is my problem.”

“Normally I would agree, but a couple of his boys just did a number on Benji. The police found him in an alley, and he had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh shit,” I groaned. I liked Benji Matthews. He was a nice guy, sweet and even tempered. When our paths crossed, we always ended up eating together or having a cup of coffee before going our separate ways. “How bad was he hurt?”

“I dunno. Tony went to the hospital, and he says he’s a mess, so now me and Ira and Pete are going back to see Kady and figure out what the fuck is going on.”

“Just the three of you?”

“No.” His voice dropped low.

I understood. I needed to stop asking questions about what they were going to do. “How do you know it was Kady?”

“He called Adrian and told him that any runners of his he found on the street were dead.”

“That’s pretty fuckin’ clear.”

He grunted.

“Okay.” I took a breath.

“I’m sending Francesco to pick up your drop.”

“If he’s coming right now, I’ll run down and give it to him, but if not, I’ll just bring it by in a few hours.”

“You sure? I know you, you hate carrying.”

“I’ll call Connie when I’m ready, and he can ride with me.”

Deep chuckle from him.

“What?”

“Only you, Trev, I swear to God.”

“I’m missing something.”

“Jesus, T, Conrad Harris is a cold-blooded killer, but you’re on a first-name basis with the sociopath—more than first name, nickname, which is even worse.”

“He’s a good guy,” I defended my friend.

“He’s a goddamn hitman is what he is,” Gabe assured me.

“Never proven,” I said, and I was right, even though I knew as well as anyone what the man did for a living.

“He’s a contract killer, swear to God.”

“Says you.” Deny, deny, deny. Where Conrad was concerned, it was what I did. No one would ever catch me agreeing about what he was or wasn’t, especially on the phone. I didn’t care who was on the other end.

“Okay, T,” he acceded, patronizing me. “We’ll just pretend he ain’t scary or nothin’.”

“He’s not.” I sighed, because to me, he wasn’t. I could not speak for others.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted.

“Just… can we drop it?”

“Oh fuck yeah, let’s drop it. Tell me about Kady. How many weeks did you carry him?”

“Just two, and then I stopped taking his calls.”

“That’s probably when he called Benji.”

“I think he called Luis before that.” I yawned again, rubbing my eyes; they felt like they had sand in them.

“Does he owe Luis too?”

“I dunno, but you know him. Luis doesn’t let anybody chase their money. He’ll beat the shit outta you if you don’t pay up.”

“Yeah, I know, so I wonder… hold on.”

I stood there waiting while he turned our two-way call into a party line.

“Vargas, you there?”

Loud yawn. “Yeah, I’m here. What the fuck is going on? I just got in bed!”

At his best, Luis Vargas was an ass; tired and cranky just brought out more colorful and charming facets of his sparkling personality.

“Benji Matthews just got jumped by Ellis Kady and some of his guys. Talking to Trev,” Gabe sighed, “he says that Kady owes him money. Does he owe you money too?”

“Yeah, he owes me. I took his bets after Trevan cut him off. I figured the action was too large and that’s why the fairy didn’t want it.”

I loved being called a fairy just because I was gay. The fact that Vargas wouldn’t think of saying that shit to my face made me think that much less of him.

“Nice.”

“What? Just ’cause you and Adrian don’t give a fuck that he takes it up the ass don’t mean the rest of us are down with it.”

“Can we get to the point?”

“Fine, I took the bets from Kady, but last week when I went to collect, he says he doesn’t have the fifteen he owes me and that he ain’t gonna have it this week either.”

“And?”

“So I talked to him some and he basically told me that he needed me to carry him for another couple of weeks and then he’d have it.”

“What’d you say?”

“What the hell do you think I said? I told him to go fuck himself and to pay me my goddamn money.”

“Did he pay?”

“No, Benji paid me.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he said that he’d get it from Kady, and he gave me what Kady owed.”

“Oh shit.”

“I dunno what’s with your boy, Gabe, and when you tell me that Kady fucked up Benji’s shit, I gotta wonder what the hell’s with that, ya know?”

“Why didn’t you hire some muscle and go get your money from Kady before Benji paid you? It’s not like you to run scared.”

“Fuck you, I wasn’t scared,” Luis assured him. “I just don’t have the cash right now for enough guys.”

“How many guys did you think you needed?”

“At least five,” he grunted, “the way Kady’s fortified at his big club at Jericho; I wouldn’t wanna walk in there alone.”

Long pause. “Adrian can’t have people thinking they can fuck with his runners.”

“Nope.” Luis agreed.

“Does Kady have any backing?”

“You mean like muscle backing?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to come stay at the house?”

“We’ll see.”

“Should I ask Trevan?”

“Fuck no. He’s got Harris watchin’ his back and everybody knows it. Ain’t nobody gonna fuck with him. Even if he sees Trevan walking down the street, Kady ain’t stupid enough to fuck with him.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to you.”

Luis was gone a second later.

“Sorry about all the faggot crap, T.”

“Like I care,” I said, letting out a deep breath. I had never cared what Luis Vargas thought about me, and I certainly wasn’t going to start. “He’s a dick, he’s always been a dick, and he’ll always be a dick. Vargas can kiss my ass, but what I care about right now is Benji and the fact that if you add it all up, I think Kady owes us, like, two.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” He breathed out because he knew when I said two, I meant two hundred thousand.

“No, ’cause he owes me thirty, he owes Benji more than that, and he owes what Benji paid Luis for him. That’s bullshit that he doesn’t hafta pay.”

“Well, I think Adrian wants it, so just call Francesco for the next few days until you hear from me, all right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, so I’ll tell Francesco that you’ll be by to see him, when—around lunch or later?”

“Later. I gotta fuckin’ sleep.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to you.”

“Wait, which hospital is Benji at?”

“St. Vincent’s.”

“Okay.”