We prospected together, Ray said. "Nineteen eighty-six. He was funny back then. Could do books in his head faster than a calculator. For eleven years he kept this club solvent through winters that should have killed us." Ray's voice didn't waver, but something in his face did. "Then Mason found the second ledger. Two years of skimming — dues, charity money, even the funeral fund. We gave him a choice: leave or be left. He chose to stand there while we cut his patch off. I'll never forget his face. Not angry. Surprised. Like the rules were supposed to be for other people."
And now he's at Tri-State, Cole said, "with a forklift and a grudge and access to every parts shipment in the county."
Which is why, Ray said, "Earl Boudreaux is going to give him the biggest order of his career, and Victor Larkin is going to talk himself straight onto this little recorder. Men like Larkin can't stand nobody knowing how clever they were. Watch."
Jack sat in the corner with the legal pad, because somebody had to take notes and he had the best handwriting. "What do I do?"
Nothing, Cole said. "You sit there and you don't say a word and you write down everything he says, word for word."
And if he asks who's listening?
He won't, Ray said. "Men like Larkin never ask who's listening. That's the whole problem with men like Larkin."
They did it Friday morning at ten, when the Tri-State warehouse office would be staffed and Larkin would be at his desk. Ray dialed from the shop's landline — no caller ID games, nothing cute, just a straight call — and put it on speaker. Cole set the little recorder beside the phone and pressed the red button. Jack uncapped his pen.
Tri-State Parts Distribution, Larkin speaking.
Ray leaned back in his chair and became somebody else. His voice went warmer, rounder, with the faintest suggestion of somewhere south of here. "Mornin'! This here's Earl Boudreaux, out of — well, let's just say east of here a ways. I run a restoration shop, mostly vintage iron, and I'm lookin' to place a sizable order direct. Fellow at Delaney's said you folks are the source for them fuel line kits."
A pause. Jack could hear the shift in Larkin's breathing — the small, hungry inhale of a man smelling money.
Fuel line kits, Larkin said. "Sure. What kind of volume are we talking, Earl?"
Two hundred to start. Maybe more quarterly, we do a lot of rebuilds. Cash on delivery, I don't like paper trails — no offense, just how I was raised.
None taken. Larkin's voice had gone smooth as oil. "Two hundred kits, I can do that. I can do that today. Let me just — Marcus! Marcus, get in here!"
There was a clatter, a distant voice. Ray winked at Cole.
My forklift man, Larkin said, coming back to the phone. "Marcus, bay four — pull two hundred of the fuel line kits, the regular run, and stage 'em on the dock. Move it."
While Larkin was distracted, Cole slipped out the office door. Jack watched through the office window as Cole crossed the street to his truck, lifted a pair of binoculars from the glove box, and settled in to watch the Tri-State loading dock across the way. A minute later a forklift emerged with a nervous-looking man driving it — Marcus Webb, thirty-something, cap pulled low — and began stacking cases on the dock while Larkin stood over him, pointing, arms crossed, the supervisor in his element.
Jack could see it even from across the street: the way Marcus flinched when Larkin raised his voice, the way he hurried, the way he kept glancing toward the office windows like a man who expected to be blamed for weather. There was a whole story in that forklift driver's shoulders, Jack thought. Fear had a posture. His father had taught him that too — you could read a building by its smoke, and you could read a man by the way he carried his shift.
Cole lowered the binoculars long enough to work his phone, photographing the pallet, the case markings, the lot numbers stenciled on the shrink-wrap. Then he raised the binoculars again and kept watching, patient as stone, while inside the office Larkin sold two hundred kits to a man who didn't exist.
Now then, Earl, Larkin said into the phone. "Two hundred kits, staged and ready. You want to talk price?"
Before that, Ray said, still Earl, still warm, "a friend told me to ask about — well, he said you folks had some history with the Iron Wolves. Said there might be bad blood. I don't want no trouble with my supply chain, you understand."
The silence on the line was three seconds long. Jack counted. Then Larkin laughed — a short, ugly bark.
Bad blood, Larkin said. "That's one way to put it."
How would you put it?
I'd put it this way, Earl. Larkin's voice dropped, got confidential, got mean. "Nine years. Nine years I've been waiting. They took my patch — you understand what that means? You take a man's patch, you take his name, you take everything he ever was. So yeah. There's history. And let's just say payback's been a long time coming."
Jack's pen didn't stop moving. Payback. Nine years.
Payback for what, exactly? Ray asked, mild as milk.
For all of it. The disrespect. The — they think they're kings over there, with their little shop and their little rides. Well. Let's just say some people are about to learn what happens when you cut a man loose and forget about him.
Earl chuckled appreciatively. "Sounds like you got a plan, friend."
I got more than a plan. I got — Larkin caught himself, barely. "I got product. Two hundred kits, best price in the county. When do you want delivery?"
They haggled for another two minutes — Ray was good at this, Jack had to admit, drawing it out, letting Larkin feel like the smartest man in the conversation — and then Ray said he'd call back Monday to arrange the wire transfer, and hung up.