Page 14 of Deacon

Tito was nineteen and loaded trucks for anybody who paid cash. Two winters back, the club had covered his mother’s electric bill when it got to the point of shutoff notices, and Tito had never forgotten it. Word at the garage was he’d been picking up shifts at a building out on Route 10. The ice house.

I found him Tuesday night at the roadhouse on the edge of town, alone at the end of the bar, nursing a Bud and watching the door like a kid who’d started understanding what he’d gotten into. When I sat down next to him, he nearly fell off his stool.

“Relax,” I said. “I’m buying.”

It took two beers and most of an hour. I asked after his mother. We argued about the Cowboys’ quarterback. He told me about a girl who worked the register at the gas station, the one he hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask out. People tell you things when they’ve forgotten they’re being asked. By the third beer, Tito was telling me about the ice house without noticing he’d started.

Crates in, crates out, three nights a week. Men from Deming who didn’t give names. And a young guy who did all the talking.

“He’s the one who deals with the old man,” Tito said. “Laine. They met out there in the spring, when they were setting up. I was unloading.”

“They talk business?”

“Some.” Tito picked at the label on his bottle. “Then the young guy put an envelope on the hood of Laine’s car. Pictures. I saw a couple when he fanned them out.” He swallowed. “The bakery. The lady who runs it, unlocking the door. Her at the post office. Her car.”

My hand was flat on the bar. I kept it there.

“What did Laine do?”

“Looked at every one.” Tito shrugged, miserable. “Put them back in the envelope, handed it back. Then they shook hands.”

The jukebox was playing some song about some lovestruck guy. I’d hate that song for the rest of my life.

“They’ve been watching her since spring?”

“On and off. Just so he knows they can.” He glanced at me, then away. “But last week they got real interested. Somebody sat on your clubhouse the night she went in there. The young guy was pissed. Said Laine’s girl was talking to bikers now.”

The road the prospect had called clear. I cursed under my breath.

I paid for Tito’s beers, and his next three, and I told him if anybody ever asked, we’d talked about football.

Then I sat in the lot on my bike with my hands shaking on the grips.

Harry fucking Laine had looked at pictures of his own daughter. He’d understood exactly what they meant, and he’d shaken hands and fucking accepted it.

His office was four minutes away. I knew where he kept his car and what time he locked up. I could be at his door before he’d finished his evening drink. I sat there and pictured it, the whole thing, start to finish, in more detail than a sane man should.

Then I started the bike and rode the other way. Walking into Harry Laine’s office tonight would feel good for about a minute, and after that it’d put a target on her the size of Main Street.

Church was Wednesday afternoon. Full table this time.

I laid it out the way I’d lay out the club’s books. Rudy and the lot in Deming. Tito and the envelope. The car no one saw behind Moreno’s the night she came in. I kept my voice level, forcing the calm over the anger the whole way through. My jaw ached with the effort after.

Preacher heard it without interrupting. When I was done, he sat back.

“So the cartel’s using her as the leash.”

“It seems that way,” I said. “Laine knows it too. He’s taking the money and looking the other way anyway.”

Gage looked down the table at me. “She’s straight, then.”

“She was always straight.”

He nodded once. From Gage, that was an apology.

“And now they know she’s been here,” Smoke said. “Which means they know she’s been talking.”

“Which means she’s stopped being insurance and started being a problem,” Gage said.