Page 37 of Dirty Cops Next Door

I nodded and waited.

“I haven’t had a decent minestrone since I came to this hell hole. My mother, oh, how my mother would cry to see the garbage we eat down here!”

I’d never actually met Avery, so this was the first time I realized he wasn’t from the south. Not being overly familiar with northern accents, I could only tell that the man was a northerner. He could be from the Bronx or Boston, I just knew the accent wasn’t local. That could explain some things. I guess he came down here, hoping to make it rich, which he did, and maybe to avoid some heat up north. Where did that leave me?

“Uh, Mr. Winslow, I’m not Italian so I don’t know how I would be at making minestrone, but I do make a nice country soup.” I didn’t realize I was going to say anything until I did.

“Who the fuck is that?” Avery shouted, turning away from the window just as I stepped into the doorway.

He wasn’t an ugly man, but he didn’t look healthy. Dark circles hollowed out his eyes and his skin was sallow from alcohol and drug abuse. He also had my brother by the neck, his forearm crushing Eric’s throat, making me want to stamp Avery’s face into a bloody mess.

“I’m that boy’s sister. He’s all I have left.” I pointed at Eric with my chin, I didn’t make any other move. I didn’t want to spook the man with the gun in his hand.

“I knew he lived with his sister, but that was it. What happened then?” He sounded genuinely curious, which I found odd coming from a man holding a gun to my brother’s head. I would humor him, I decided.

I didn’t talk about my parents’ deaths very often, it was just too painful, too ridiculous. I usually left it at ‘they died in an accident’ because it saved explaining. This time, I was hoping that going through it again would end with Eric being released.

“Our parents were the adventurous kind. Mom more than Dad. Mom was a journalist. She’d stared down warlords, drug dealers, and murderers. Dad talked her into taking some time off, called it early retirement, and they bought a motor home.” I paused, remembering the call I’d answered from the police. “It was all stupid really. Just plain stupid.”

Eric hung his head, and I heard a sniffle from him. It was the first real sign of emotion he’d shown since I had found my way through the door frame.

“Mom couldn’t say no to any kind of danger, she lived for it sometimes, even more than Eric and me.”

“She sounds like my kind of lady.” Avery had the gall to waggle his eyebrows at me and I wanted to punch him in the face.

“Well, she ended up getting both her and my father killed. They bought an RV, decided to travel out to the Grand Canyon. Eric and I stayed home, neither of us wanted to spend that much time cooped up together back then. Mom talked Dad into parking at the top of a mountain somewhere out in Colorado. It should have been romantic, quiet, peaceful. It probably would have been if Mom hadn’t decided to, ahem, get romantic with Dad before he’d properly braced the wheels. They apparently set the RV rolling and, oh God, they… they rolled down the mountain, onto the highway, and straight into a logging truck.”

I hung my own head then, the memory horrific.

“I don’t... huh... I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. Jeez, what a way to go.” I could hear the laughter in his voice and though I couldn’t blame him I still wanted to shoot him.

“It was a stupid way to go. A very stupid way. It left Eric and me alone, and right now, that’s what you’re going to do to your own son if you keep up this foolishness.”

He watched me, his lips still twitching. This man was a cold-blooded killer, he’d almost killed Grant, yet here he was trying to be polite in front of a lady.

“Now, Ms. Toni.” A hint of southern drawl had crept into his voice as he spoke and I couldn’t decide if it was a defensive tactic or condescension. “Now, you know they’ll put me away for a long time, maybe for good, for what I did today.”

“Yes, they might, Mr. Avery. Your son doesn’t deserve to see you die in a hail of bullets or see his friend die either. He might even die himself if you carry on this path.”

“They wouldn’t shoot Mark, would they?”

“You never know what might happen in the heat of the moment.”

“That’s true, that’s true. I need to think about this.” He sank onto the gaudy electric blue sofa he’d pulled Eric over to and waved Eric to sit beside him.

Eric looked utterly terrified but relieved to be away from the gun. He perched on the very edge of the sofa, as far away as he could get from that gun.

“I reckon you’re right, then, Ms. Toni. I’m the world’s biggest asshole, I know that, but you just, you have a way with words, you know? A bit like your mom, maybe?” He gave me a mischievous smile, one I knew he hoped was conspiratorial, but the length of my friendliness ended at the point of that gun. The minute it disappeared was the minute I’d spit in the man’s face.

“I suppose I am a bit like her. I know what it means to take care of a child though, to always be there for that child. The child you have at gunpoint now. He’s all I have left in the world, you see.”

“I suppose that means we can’t be friends, right?” He looked sad for a moment.

I stared at him in disbelief. Friends? He wasn’t serious, right? How did a person become so unhinged?

“If you let him go, maybe we can talk about it.”

He was going to reply but the world exploded with a bright flash and a loud bang instead.