Add in those incredibly well-seasoned eggs that he’d made... Rio was going to have to sit down and reassess his longstanding fear and loathing of English teachers.
He transferred the box and the pile of towels and washcloths—all worn and threadbare, perfect for mopping up things that stained, like blood—to within Jon’s reach, atop the toilet. CK’s old towels, Jorge had called them. “CK’s a… very quiet dog?”
“Dead,” Jon said with a flash of real pain on his face. “Two years, now.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what dogs do, right?”
“Eventually. After delivering tons of love and joy, so it’s always worth it. Check your teeth,” Rio told the man, who was way too focused on examining his injured eye. “Nothing broken or cracked?”
Jon met his gaze in the mirror. “My teeth are fine. It’s the inside of my lip that’s a mess.”
Rio nodded. Judging from the finely aged quality of the blood on his face, and the blossoming assortment of colors around his eye, Jon had had a bit of time after his beating to sit and stew—and run his tongue over all of his teeth, checking to make sure everything was still in the right place. “Good. Now check your head. Any tender spots? I’m thinking you got a right jab to the mouth and a left hook to the eye. Any other blows to your head?”
“No,” Jon immediately said, but then back-pedaled. “Not that I... I don’t... um, really remember...?”
And yet his first response had been so absolute. Hmmm. “You asking me or telling me?”
“It’s all, um, yeah... It’s, um, a blur.” Jon turned away from both the mirror and Rio.
“Fuck, man, you’re a shitty liar,” Rio said.
Jon bristled. “I think maybe I blacked out. Someone must’ve spiked my drink.”
“That’s the story you’re going with?” Rio asked. “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning. Someone spiked your drink where exactly? At shortly after 1300 hours—one PM—on a Thursday afternoon?”
Jon deflated, closing his eyes, head down, his arms braced against the sink top. “Please just leave me alone.”
“Look, maybe I can help,” Rio said quietly. “Why don’t you give it a go—the truth. Tell me what really happened.”
Jon just shook his head, his eyes still closed.
“Okay,” Rio said. “I’ll guess, then. You had another encounter with whoever it was sent your flannel-wearing ‘friend’ down to San Juan Capistrano, to allegedly ask you the whereabouts of the nearest Ralph’s.”
Jon looked sharply up at that. Jesus, he really was a terrible liar. And he knew it, too, so he gave up. “They’re not my friends. None of them are.” He took one of CK’s old washcloths from the pile.
“Friend was in air quotes,” Rio reassured him. “And I’m guessing this time—whoever he is—he sent some... minions. Yeah, I’ll go with minions, whose job it was to punctuate his sternly worded talking points with their fists and feet. How’m I doing so far? That sound about right?”
Jon shot him another deadly look, then turned on the water with a vicious twist of the faucet and wet the cloth.
Rio waited until he turned the water back off again. “How much do you owe this non-friend?” Because, come on, it was practically written in thick black Sharpie on Jon’s grimy forehead.
“Too much.” Jon winced as he dabbed ineffectively at his face. But then he shook his head, cursing—clearly at himself—before he met Rio’s eyes and confessed. “Seventy thousand.”
“Fuck!” Rio couldn’t hold that in. “Sorry! But... fuck!” This was no Whoopsie, I went to rehab and stiffed my dealer out of a hundred bucks, which has grown to one K because interest rates at Mofos-R-Us are literally criminally insane. Also? Jon’s non-friend, whoever he was, had one hell of a reach—from San Diego all the way north to wine country. Not just fuck. Holy fuck.
Jon was grimly silent as he now ineffectively dabbed at his battered mouth.
“So you were dealing.” Rio made it a statement instead of a question, because how else had Jon racked up that kind of debt.
“No!” Jon was livid at the idea. His how dare you outrage would’ve been funny if it wasn’t seventy thousand dollars that he needed to come up with, no doubt fast.
“How much time did they give you?” Rio asked.
But Jon was still stuck back in I am not a drug dealer, quadruple-exclamation-points-for-emphasis mode. “I was doing Frank Miller a favor, dropping off a package. That’s all it was. I had no idea—”
“Yeah, no,” Rio stopped him right there. “I don’t believe that. I mean, do you hear yourself? I’m pretty sure you don’t believe that either. You knew. What did Frank give you in exchange for this favor, and yeah, I heard that, too. Euphemisms, all over the fucking place. The real question is What did Frank pay you for this job you did for him?”
