The text shows as delivered. Not read. The screen stays on delivered and doesn’t change.
I take the elevator back down. Tex is behind the bar with a bourbon and his arms crossed. His face is doing the rare serious Tex face, the one that says I know more than I’m going to volunteer.
“Benji’s gone,” I say. “His bag is gone. Frankie is gone. He took the plant, Tex.”
“Well.” Tex sets the bourbon down. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I was standing right here when your cop buddies walked in tonight. I was standing right here when Benji walked over. And I was standing right here when he turned around, wiped his eyes and his face fell apart for about two seconds before he put it back together.”
My hands tighten on the armrests.
“What did you say about him, Mickey? When the sergeant walked up. What did you say about Benji?”
I don’t answer.
“What did you say?” he asks again. “I know you did something wrong. And now he’s gone.”
“I introduced him and said he was helping out with the party.”
Tex nods slowly. “Helping out with the party,” he says. “The man who drove four hours every day to visit you in the hospital. For fuck’s sake, Mickey.”
“Tex, wait.”
“Did you think that you were going to keep him locked up in the back room? That he was going to fly up here every two weeks and be your boyfriend upstairs and your party planner downstairs and never notice the difference?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. Those bikers were right there, Tex. Ten feet away. I didn’t know a single one of them and the sergeant was standing right between me and them and if I said boyfriend, Benji would’ve—”
“Would’ve what? Been himself? Smiled at you? Touched your arm in front of strangers?”
“Yes! And every one of those bikers would’ve seen it. And I’m in this chair. I can’t get between him and a fist, Tex. I can’t stand up. The last time someone in this bar decided Benji was a problem, I lost my legs. So yeah, I made him small because small is harder to target.”
Tex is quiet for a long time, then lets out a long sigh. “I hear you,” he says. “I hear what you’re saying and I know you believe it. But damn Mickey — I was standing right here when you said those words to the sergeant. And I watched Benji’s face. I watched it break and I watched him fix it in two seconds flat. I watched him go right back to working the party like nothing happened. That’s what I saw from behind this bar tonight. You’re not protecting him. You’re erasing him. And those aren’t the same thing. They feel the same to you because the instinct comes from the same place. But they didn’t feel the same to him. And the thing you’re so afraid of — someone hurting him — you just did it yourself.”
“I need to find him,” I say.
“Where would he go?”
“I don’t know. He’s got the rental car. He could be anywhere by now.”
I try his phone again. Voicemail. The text still shows delivered, not read.
“He’s not answering or reading his texts,” I say.
“Can you blame him?”
“No, I can’t.”
I reach into the pocket on the side of my chair where I keep my phone, my wallet and the small things that matter.My fingers find a card. Dog-eared, soft from weeks in the same spot.
Dante’s business card. The one he put on my hospital table in Tallahassee, when he leaned in and whispered “call me if Benji gets in trouble.”
Benji isn’t the one in trouble.
I am.
It’s after midnight. I dial the number anyway. The phone rings three times.
