“Everyone was yelling about it,” Clay said. He spread his hands and shrugged. “C’mon, Ez. I hear Buchanan’s dead and I’m going to wait until I have all the facts before I give you the heads-up? Besides, hewasdead, and TJdidrun. At that point, you weren’t asking any questions either.”
For a second, Ezra looked like he was going to lunge over the table. Instead, he clenched his jaw and stepped back. He jabbed a finger in Clay’s direction.
“I should have listened,” he said. “Everyone always said you were a fuckup, that everything you touched turned to shit, but I’d not hear it, would I? Every time you screwed up I was there for you. I backed you up. Every time. And what thehellhas it got me, Clay? This is mylife.Fisher could come for mykids.”
Clay tensed. He didn’tmove. It was just a slow, smooth clench of muscle that moved across his shoulders and down his arms. Even under the circumstances, it made Grade swallow and shift with sudden, uncomfortable awareness, but he shoved that away for later.
“I know what I owe you,” Clay said. His voice was still easy, smooth despite the tight edge. “You don’t have to throw it in my face. I ain’t going to forget it. But don’t you forget what you owe me, Ez. How many times did I take the fall to keep your rep nice and clean?”
They stared at each other.
Ezra looked down first. He rubbed his bandaged arm self-consciously. “It’s my kids, Clay,” he said. “They weren’t meant to be part of this. This was never supposed to come home to them.”
That was so breathtakingly self-serving that Grade almost said something. He didn’t take jobs that involved kids—it cut into his profits, but he figured it saved on therapist bills—but there had always been plenty there to take. Maybe there’d been a time when it was enough to declare family off-limits, but Grade doubted it.
It probably wasn’t the time to remind Ezra that Grade wasn’t that likable, though. So he bit his tongue on that.
“So, TJ could have been telling the truth,” Grade said. “Or what hethoughtwas the truth. Someone told him that Clay wanted him to go into the restroom—”
“And he just went,” Clay muttered. He slouched down in the chair, legs stretched out in front of him, and crossed his arms. “I need to try that the next time I wanna get laid. But all right. All right. So someone tells him to do that, and then they tell me that Buchanan is dead. Which would put them in the frame as the killer.”
“Yeah,” Grade said. “Or possibly, you did do it.”
Clay grunted. “At this point,” he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, “if I’d done it, I’d fess up just to stop having to think about it. Did TJ tell you anything after I got out of the car?”
“That he thought you might be gay—”
“Can’t get anything past TJ,” Ezra cracked. The joke hung uncomfortably, half friendly jibe and half awkward peace offering. After a tense moment, Clay accepted both with a wry shrug before he scooted the chair around to face Grade. “That it?”
Grade shrugged. “That I couldn’t trust you.”
“Just in fucking love with the obvious, that TJ,” Clay said dryly. “So rather than having to track down TJ, now we have to find him and our saboteur?”
Close. But no cigar.
Grade held up two fingers. “Two saboteurs,” he said. “At least. Someone told TJ to go to the restroom, someone told you he’d shot Buchanan, and someone told TJ to run because you’d pin this on him. Two could pull that off, maybe, not one.”
Clay sighed and screwed his face up. He rubbed one finger along the bridge of his nose up to his eyebrows. “This whole crime thing was supposed to be simpler than Iraq,” he grumbled. Ridiculous as it was, he sounded genuinely put out. “At least there I knew whose fingers to break for info.”
That served as a chill reminder to Grade that he wasn’t part of the deal here. His position might have improved, but he was still functionally their scapegoat. That was good. It wasn’t something he should forget. Fear was a good motivator. At least, it had never let Grade down yet.
He cleared his throat. “Do you have security cameras in the bar?”
Ezra padded over to the cabinet, opened the doors, and pulled out a bottle of tequila. The worm floated in an inch of cloudy liquor at the base of the container. Ezra twisted off the cap and took a shot straight from the bottle. His face screwed up at the taste, and then he grabbed two glasses off the shelf.
“I don’t exactly run the sort of business where you want a record of your dealings,” he said as he sloshed tequila over his knuckles and into both tumblers. He passed one to Clay and kept the other, his fingers loosely cupped under the heavy base. The worm floated on the greasy film on top of the liquor. “Most people that drink in the Slap feel the same way.”
Grade sighed. That would have made things easier. Not to mention tidier.
“That leaves the next best thing,” he said. “The barman. He’ll have had eyes on the bar all night. If anyone saw something, it’d be him.”
There was a pause as they both thought that through. Ezra tossed back the tequila—worm and all—in one gulp. This time his nerves didn’t bother to alert him as it hit his tongue.
He set the glass down and reached into his pocket for his phone.
“I can go get him,” Clay said.
Ezra swiped his thumb over the screen and lifted it to his ear. The dull sound of the ringtone buzzed softly in the air.
