“The other one,” Knox instructs me, and I get right to it.
“Wait! No!” Chet pleads, but Knox and I ignore him.
I sigh. “You should’ve given us a name.”
After we work together, taping his broken hand back to the chair and releasing the other, Knox doesn’t even start with a question. He aims for Chet’s thumb.
“WAIT!” Chet screeches.
Knox pauses. “You got something to say, tough guy?”
Knox and I both pause as Chet gives us the name of the last person we expected. His voice is scratchy. “Alienist.”
“Say that again,” I grit out through clenched teeth, losing my patience.
“The Alienist,” Chet repeats.
I roll my eyes. “His real name, dip shit.”
“I-I don’t know.”
Blowing out a sigh through loose lips, I stare at the ceiling and rest my hands on the back of my neck.
Chet truly doesn’t know anything, or he’s not willing to turn into a rat. Either way, he’s useless to us now.
Knox is the first to fragment the silence. “Say, Griff, how many hands does a man need to rub one out?”
“One.”
Knox’s eyes fill with an ice that I can only describe as spine-chilling. When he speaks, the room fills with a terror so thick that even the hair on my arms raises in alarm.
“I don’t think he even deserves that.” Knox uses the hammer to shatter all the bones in Chet’s hand.
Screams, once again, decorate the desolate room.
Slow country swaysaround the room, flowing from the jukebox against the far wall. The lighting in here is dismal, but that’s by design. If people can’t tell what time of day it is, they stay longer, like Benny here. But then again, Benny is always here. He doesn’t care what time it is. Besides, he has his uses.
The Wandering Raven is a town staple. People don’t like to admit they come here, but everyone does. We’re the only place in Mystic River with dart boards and pool tables. The neon beer signs, license plates, and band posters on the walls add to the aesthetic. We have a few booths, some high-top tables, and stools along the bar. The wood floor is scuffed from years of use, and the bartop probably needs a polish. But I’m proud of it.
This bar has been in my family for generations. I’ve helped reupholster the booths more than a few times and grew up sweeping and mopping the floors. When Knox and I took over, we replaced the billiards and purchased new stools. We couldn’t change the place too much because then it wouldn’t feel the same. We didn’t want to get rid of Pops’s mark on the place.
Pops, our grandfather, treated us well and raised us right. Despite the town motto of “the sins of the father are visited upon the children,” we turned out okay. All our business dealings may not exactly be legal, but it is what it is.
Our mom left when we were young, and our father, Amos, never got over it. After she packed up, he spiraled his drunk ass all the way to prison. Right before Amos was sentenced, our older brother, Trey, turned eighteen, joined the military, and never looked back. We haven’t heard from him since.
Knox and I were left without a home because the bank seized it, and we were placed in the foster care system. Pops fought like hell to get custody. When we got to go home with him, I slept like a baby. And thankfully, he’s not a drunk or an ass.
Well…
He was an ass to some. He died of lung cancer over a decade ago.
But Amos left his own special mark here. It’s ugly and no one will ever forget it. When your father is convicted of killing the daughter of the local psychiatric hospital administrator, people tend to hold onto that and deem you a murderer as well.
I guess they’d be right about that now. They weren’t back then, though.
I sling a rag over my shoulder and rest my elbows on the dinged wood of the bartop. “What’ll it be, partner?” I ask in my best cheesy southern accent like I’m a bartender in an old western movie.
“I’m drinking whiskey, you dumb shit. Always whiskey.” Benny’s head remains low and keeps his hand on his old-fashioned glass as he answers my question. He’s always cantankerous. I can’t blame him. I’m about five seconds away from joining him.
