ALL GOOD SONS 10 & 11

 Chapter Ten

Dillon Bull was as quiet a kid as I’d ever met, but he wasn’t spineless like Tyler. His silence had a weight to it, laden with secrets to which I wasn’t privy and, until recently, didn’t wish to be. He wasn’t a frightening-looking boy – quite handsome, actually, in a doughy sort of way – but if you made it known that you were interested in what went on inside that titanium of skull of his, he would shoot you what I liked to call the Siberian Stare. The first time I found myself on the receiving end of that stare was an isolating experience.

The boys were wrestling in the backyard, having just watched the ‘real’ thing on TV and, not being one of those mothers who subscribed to the Everything Is Dangerous theory, I settled down into a chair with a good book and monitored the situation rather than break it up. Dwarfing even the next tallest boy by at least four inches, Dillon was the competitor they saved for last. He was the ring-in, the gladiator who ducked under the ropes unannounced just as the last challenger standing was about to tap out, and the villain of the piece would invariably be taken out cursing or crying like a baby, depending on their bio.

On this lovely, late Spring Saturday afternoon edition of Backyard Championship Wrestling, the battle royal was down to it’s final two fifteen-going-on-forty year old combatants when Pierre, second round loser turned all star commentator, jumped to his feet and threw his hands up in the air in exaltation.

‘I don’t believe it, ladies and gentlemen: it’s KID KABLOOEY!’

The explosive connotations to which such a name lent itself were pure fiction; a melodrama in which the huge but harmless village idiot character suddenly metamorphosed into a raging, fiery warrior when he was needed most. In this episode, Nash played the part of the butterfly about to be crushed under the wheel by Grey’s megalomaniac champ. Dillon stormed in as Nash was raising his hand in surrender, bowled Grey over, and clothes-lined him for good measure. The crowd cheered and, as always, the hero turned his back to leave before any laurels could be bestowed upon him but, following a script change which nobody thought to run through with its main player, he found himself taken down by the very man he’d just risked his neck to liberate. Nash pulled Dillon onto his back and wailed on him with all the flourish displayed by the costumed stuntmen all the boys worshipped.

The thought that Dillon wasn’t in on all this occurred to me when I looked up from my book and saw his face. I put down my book.

‘Guys, I think that’s enough…’

Nash raised his arms like I’d rung a bell, and brought his clasped hands down on his target.

‘Hey!’ I yelled, getting up. ‘I said that’s en…’

Dillon screamed. It wasn’t a deep, manly scream, or even the scratchy pubescent one that made most boys his age sound as though someone was playfully flicking their burgeoning Adam’s apple back and forth. It was the shrill timbre of a horrified soprano. He staggered over to one of my rose bushes and threw up. I knew from the jolting way he was retching that it wasn’t his stomach that was injured.

‘Grey! Go put some ice in a towel, now!’

I went to him, careful not to emasculate him any further by being too maternal.

‘Take a deep breath,’ I said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Grey came running back outside with the balled-up towel in hand and passed it on to him.

‘Let’s get you inside, so you can sit down for a while and rest that on it. We’ll get you to the emergency room if the pain gets any wor…’

Dillon whipped around. Whether or not the sudden movement caused him the agony it should have wasn’t immediately apparent. A tear that ran out of his right eye froze on his cheekbone like ice water, and I was forced into retreat with a glare of hard-forged steel that said “No chop shop is getting near these, thank you very fucking much.”

‘It’s okay, Mom,’ said Grey. ‘I’ve got this.’

He led the boy into the house, followed by Pierre, Tyler, and Ozzie. Nash stayed several paces further back, the gravity of the indignity he’d just forced upon one of his brethren just dawning on him. It didn’t seem to bother him much.

‘It was just a joke,’ he muttered.

Grey filled me in on the history behind what I assumed was just a natural, albeit unsettling, response to pain and humiliation.

‘He’s only got one ball, and it’s not even a whole ball,’ he said. ‘Nash and me are the only ones who know. We were hanging out with some girls at the baseball diamond and this girl he liked got rough with him.’

‘How rough?’ I found it difficult to imagine an adolescent girl strong enough to rob a boy of one and a half testicles with her bare hands.

Grey winced. ‘She hit him with a bat. She doesn’t hang out with us any more.’

‘Neither would I.’

‘We swore we’d keep it between us, so don’t say anything, okay?’

I put my arm around him. ‘Never.’

I sat at Daryl’s kitchen counter a week after the explosion, staring into my coffee, marveling at the varying degrees of loyalty shown by teenagers, depending on how directly a situation affected them. Grey had led the boys in a show of solidarity with Dillon by freezing out Nash for two weeks after the incident in the yard, but when the prospect of having his secret shame publicly aired was thrown at him, Dillon joined the other savages in pummeling my son half to death without a second thought. The motivation behind Dillon’s part in the betrayal wasn’t something that Tyler or any of the other co-conspirators filled me in on; my instincts, which had only ever steered me wrong when it came to choosing a potential life partner, assured me of it. He still lived with his mother in a house that was a ten minute drive from mine, something which the layperson would think I’d have used to my advantage much earlier on, but there was a reason he was third to last on my list. If punishment is your goal, you go after the ringleaders first – it catches them off guard and leaves the little guys weakened and exposed – but if it’s information you’re after, you move in the opposite direction.

‘The Queen Of Diamonds is here,’ Daryl whispered over my shoulder.

Daryl’s nickname for my mother never failed to make me laugh, mostly because it was almost completely devoid of any irony. It was a reference to a 1962 neo-noir thriller in which Angela Landsbury plays an icy political string-puller named Mrs Iselin, a right wing senator’s wife who programs her unwitting son into performing an assassination that will have her fool husband elected into the white house under emergency powers, where she can use him to usher America into a communist dictatorship. The device she uses to trigger her son is a playing card – the queen of diamonds. My mother’s stage managing of the first half of my life was not dissimilar to this, except that fame and fortune, not political domination, was her modus operandi, and she never had me kill anyone (to my knowledge).

Although I wouldn’t put it past her.

‘I trust you still remember how to use a phone? Or did the blast give you a head injury?’

‘I’m not up for this right now, Mother. Why don’t you come back at witching hour?’

I had a split second to register my mother’s diamond festooned fingers before my cheek burst into flames. It was the first time she had ever hit me, and boy did she make it count.

‘Lenore is hysterical! Your house is half blasted to Hell, and she has to hear about it on the news, without so much as a reassuring phone call from you. I had to pay someone at the hospital to tell me where you were. Did it not occur to you that she might think you were dead? Or was that the whole point?’

‘Mother…’

‘There’s the magic word! You ARE a mother - to TWO children, as you once so haughtily reminded me, so how about you forget what a screw up you are for just thirty seconds and let your daughter know you’re still with us?’

Mother whooshed past Daryl, only to return a few seconds later and throw an envelope on the counter.

‘I had this copied for you, on the off chance you were interested.’

She walked out, too steamed to acknowledge Daryl or bother to close the door behind her. I opened the envelope, took out the picture that was inside and held it up.

‘I thought she wasn’t supposed to get hitched for months,’ said Daryl.

Taking the picture out of my hands was easy, given the feather-light grip I had on it.

‘She looks beautiful, Vi; like a young Bianca Jagger. Not too many guests, though.’

There were, in fact, no guests at all.

‘No time to invite people if you rush it.’

Why DID she rush it, I wondered? I supposed it could’ve been to get back at me, look what I did, Mom; ignore me at your peril. A far more plausible explanation, one that I chose not to share with Daryl for several reasons, was that a life spent with someone who adored her would be happier and healthier than chasing the love of someone with whom she would only ever place second.

I took the picture from him and put it on the fridge.

‘I’ve gotta go congratulate the bride. Her cell phone number’s still the same, right?’

‘I think so.’

Instead of asking whether I wanted to partake in the conversation, Daryl stood there and waited. When I was still sitting at the counter five minutes later, he got the message. He went into is bedroom to take the call, but his half of the conversation was still fed to me through the air vent at the top of the wall.

‘Mom’s here with me…She’s okay…Yeah, she saw it…You looked gorgeous, Honey…Mom thought so, too…Yes, she did, she thought you looked like Bianca Jagger…How’s the hubby…Are you happy?’

That was a good question. I would’ve asked it myself, if I was any sort of a mother to her. I wrote Daryl a note, took my keys and my purse, and left.

Grey was starting to look a little older. That made sense – he wasn’t a teenager any more – but it wasn’t time that was aging him; it was lack of purpose. He was young, and healthy, and beautiful; he was supposed to be making trouble with his buddies, and watching midnight movies, and pleasantly wasting the first few years of his twenties doing a half a dozen other things. Instead, he was laying flat on his back, having food delivered to him through a tube, and allowing complete strangers to wipe his ass. Contrary to what some might think, an extended ‘beauty sleep,’ as one of the nurses called it, does nothing for the complexion. Grey’s proud cheekbones were almost horizontal, his lips were molding into his face like melted crayon, and the stunning eyes with which he’d undoubtedly hypnotized many a star-struck girl had turned to slits, swallowed up by puffy mounds of flesh that looked like alien creatures from one of those schlocky sci-fi flicks we used to watch on TNT.

Yes, my daughter needed me, but she was still alive in all the ways that counted.

Dillon was still alive when I finally began to close in on him five years later, but wouldn’t be for much longer. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the smoking habit he’d had since his schooldays had given him a death sentence.

Lynda Bull, a well-known green thumb whose stunning kitchen garden was once photographed for Home Horticulture and led to her becoming a columnist for the very same magazine, was rarely seen in public without her son tagging along. I pictured her pottering around, grafting fruit trees, turning the bounty into baked goods with which to spoil her son the way I used to spoil Grey. Mother and son as close as ever, still taking care of one another.

I wondered whether she ever thought about Grey and I. I doubted it. She had her baby, to Hell with anyone else’s.

While Dillon was plodding away at the job his mother scored for him at a local nursery, Lynda was busy cultivating the prize-winning rose garden that bordered her front yard. I didn’t know what or how much she knew about her darling boy’s role in what happened, but I figured I’d put enough distance between then and now to test her. I’d also, I thought, waited long enough for certain interested parties to think they’d scared me mute.

‘The pink tint on the yellow ones is gorgeous,’ I said, stopping at the mail box.

Lynda got up off her knees.

‘Viola!’ Her face took on a look of polite concern. ‘How’s your boy?’

‘Unchanged.’

‘Well, no turn at all is better than a turn for the worst.’

That was easy for her to say. Her son hadn’t changed since birth, and it had worked for him.

‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t look at Dillon and think that but for the grace of God…listen, why don’t you come sit on the porch and I’ll bring out some iced tea?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t impose…’

‘I insist. I grew the tea and the lemons myself.’

I sat in a wicker chair and looked out at the garden. Standard roses of every colour stood out elegantly against the emerald green lawn. One plant in particular caught my attention. It was difficult to find any flower in that shade of blue, much less a rose. It was not a colour a person could easily forget, especially if they’d seen it before. Given Grey’s popularity, I was surprised that only one person sent him flowers. I was even more surprised that they did it anonymously, and I was utterly floored when they continued sending them at the same time every year. There was no card with store-bought good wishes, no basket or ribbons or frippery – just roses wrapped in newspaper.

‘You caught me.’

Lynda stepped out onto the porch carrying a silver tray on which stood a carafe of iced tea and two glasses and set it down on the small table.

‘I wanted to deliver them personally. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to sit down with you and talk like this, but I wasn’t sure you’d relish my company. I know I probably wouldn’t, were I in your shoes.’

She poured the tea then sat down.

‘Dillon wasn’t there for Grey, and I raised him better than that.’

‘I don’t blame Dillon, or any of the boys. It was a scary situation; who’s to say it would’ve worked out any better if someone had stepped up?’

Me, that was who.

‘Grey always was a strong boy,’ Lynda said. ‘And handsome? I don’t think there was a girl within a twenty mile radius he couldn’t reel in. Dillon looked up to him so much. Pity he wasn’t nearly as blessed.’

‘I’ve always thought Dillon was a lovely looking boy.’

If unnerving weirdness turns you on.

‘That’s okay,’ she smiled, ‘my boy was never going to break too many hearts. He was more than happy to stand in Grey’s shadow. A wink or a nod was enough to keep him going for days.’

I sipped my tea and pretended that the true message behind this lovely sentiment was lost on me: My boy’s in the light now. Look at him shine.

‘How’s Lenore?’

That was a good question.

‘She married her high school sweetheart. They both went to college in England, and now she’s running a book store there.’

At least, she was the last time I’d heard.

‘Oxford, yes, I read all about it in the paper: first local students to be accepted there in twenty-five years. How impressive!’

‘Yes,’ I smiled.

I didn’t know Lenore made the paper.

‘So she married Eric, huh? Sweet boy. Such a hard worker. He did everything from mowing lawns to waiting tables. You have to respect a work ethic like that. It’s a rare thing these days.’

She took a long, leisurely sip of her tea. I got the sense she was building up to something.

She put the glass back down and smiled.

‘You have to wonder whether a quality like that is something you earn, or whether it’s just passed down. I mean, I’ve never formally met Eric’s parents, but they seem like decent folks, judging by the picture in the article. Then again, both of our exes were worthless bums, and look how our kids turned out. I guess it’s fifty per cent nature, fifty per cent nurture, huh?’

‘Guess so.’

‘Some might say kids are doomed to repeat the sins of their fathers, but I don’t know whether that’s true one hundred per cent of the time I mean, Dillon’s been taking care of me since he was twelve years old. He went out and got a part time job the day after Gene ran out. The last time his father contributed anything was when he almost lost us this place in a poker game. He’ll never abandon me…not for anyone.’

I stood up. ‘Well, that was the best iced tea I’ve had in years; you’ll have to give me the recipe some day.’

She got up, patted my arm, and smiled. ‘I will once I patent it.’

I walked down the steps, as naturally and as breezily as I could. I was almost at her front gate when she called to me.

‘Will we be seeing one another again?’

‘Definitely.’

I kept to the speed limit until the car rounded the corner, then I did ninety all the way home. Daryl was waiting for me when I got there. He had something in his hand.

‘I came to take you to lunch, like we planned, but I guess you had something better to do. Need I ask where you’ve been?’

‘Didn’t think rhetoric was your thing but, whatever.’

I walked up the steps, took out my keys, and opened the front door. Daryl stayed put on the porch.

‘Coming in?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘and you shouldn’t be, either.’

He handed me the object he’d been holding. It was a condolence card. It was made out to Lenore.

‘Suit yourself.’ I said, and went inside.

Daryl followed me, slamming the door behind him.

‘Why don’t you just stand buck naked in the yard with a target on your ass?’

‘Because red isn’t my colour.’

He grabbed my arm and turned me around.

‘This is serious, Vi! How much longer are you going to carry on with this thing?’

‘Until I’m done. Let go of my arm.’

‘Not until you see some fucking sense. Who are you really doing this for?’

‘For Grey!’

‘Really? Because last time I saw him, he was a bump on a log who didn’t have the capacity to fart, let alone appreciate revenge.’

I slapped him so hard that my arm reverberated.

‘Get out.’

Daryl left without a word. That was how it was between us – no apologies, no explanations. It didn’t matter who was right and who was wrong because these were notions best left to lovers and best friends, of which we were neither. What Daryl and I had was something that you couldn’t slap a label on. We had a great affection for one another that didn’t carry with it any baggage, so we could hop on or off the bus at any time. It had been that way between us since his brother had first brought me home to meet the family, only now it was beginning to feel as though the concertina doors had been welded shut, and I was being driven to a place I’d never even wanted to visit, let alone live.

I changed into my ratty jeans and my faded Welcome To My Nightmare shirt, pulled my hair back into a ponytail and drove out to the nursery. I stopped by the annuals and perennials sections first, filling my cart with nasturtiums and assorted other cheery selections before making my way to the tools, trying to look as though I barely knew a pitchfork from a shovel. I recognised Dillon’s swing-set frame from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for a trenching spade?’

‘Sure, they’re over…’ Dillon blinked. ‘Viola?’

I was glad he wasn’t formal with me like the other boys – just being in the same room with him wanted to make me throw up as it was.

‘Dillon! You grew! Who would’ve thought it was possible?’

He gave me a lopsided smile that younger women probably found adorable. It reminded me of a stoned baby with wind.

‘What are you planting?’

‘I was on my way down town and I passed by your mother’s place, and I stopped to admire that gorgeous rose garden of hers. I’ve seen it before, but it seemed to speak to me today. I just need a project, I guess.’

He listened patiently as I told him my grand, non-existent plans for a hippie garden dedicated to Grey, in a decidedly non-hippie neighbourhood, then gave me a tour of the nursery, picking out everything I needed along the way.

‘You’re going to want this,’ he said, taking down two large bags of forty-dollar fertiliser.

‘What’s so good about that? Wouldn’t the cheap stuff do?’

‘The more organic matter you have in a plant food, the better your plants will turn out. Nothing’s more organic than blood and bones.’

‘Is this the stuff they use to make bombs?’

Dillon shrugged. ‘I suppose they could…don’t know why they’d bother though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Plain old cow manure would work better. It’s the methane gas in the manure that makes a bomb explode.’

He said all of this without missing a single beat, like someone with absolutely nothing to hide, (at least, about my house exploding). I prodded no more on the subject.

‘You know, I could use some help putting this little oasis together; what are you doing tomorrow?’

‘Uh, I think I made plans with my Mom.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s cool.’

I let a moment or two of silence pass between us, so as to lend the necessary weight to my next sentence.

‘Does Nash still live in The Valley? I might look him up. He was a strong guy.’

Dillon’s features hardened. That tortured, steely little boy was still in there.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think you know.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Not to me.’

‘What do you want me to tell you?’

‘The truth.’

‘How much do you know?’

‘I know you were jealous of him. I know you helped them gang up on him. I know you hated him. What I want to know is why.’

How I wanted to pick up my new trenching spade and smack away that smile.

‘You think I hated him?’

‘People don’t generally beat the living shit out of someone they love.’

‘I loved him like a brother.’

‘Please.’

He took my arm. It was like being caressed by a reptile.

‘It’s true. He had everything I wanted, and he never appreciated it.’

I pulled away from him.

‘Like what?’

‘A beautiful girlfriend, friends who worshipped him, a mother who loved him.’

I glossed over half of this revelation to get to the meat of it.

‘Your mother adores you.’

‘Only because she needs me.’

I thought back to my conversation with Lynda Bull.

‘He’d never abandon me…not for anyone.’

‘What made you think Grey didn’t appreciate you?’

‘I was his bodyguard, that was all.’

‘He defended you! To EVERYONE!’

Dillon’s one shot at love burned brightly then burned out over the course of a few months in tenth grade. The girl’s name was Regina Hinkley. She was a transfer student from the city and, by all accounts, was uncommonly beautiful and confident; confident, at least, until she left a party on her father’s arm at the end of first semester with a displaced cornea and was never seen again. No charges were laid, but the court of public opinion - the jurors of which were several hundred manipulable teenagers and their concerned parents – found Dillon guilty, and it was only Grey’s impassioned school yard testimony that saved him from a lynch mob.

‘It was too late by then! For years, the only time a woman would come near me was when I PAID her to! He knew…’

He turned his back on me.

‘Knew what?’ I asked. ‘Knew who did it?’

‘You have to go now,’ he muttered.

‘Was that the reason…’

He whirled on me.

‘GET OUT!’

This outburst attracted the attention of several customers and the nursery owner, who was just as shocked as I was that the grunt he’d hired to lug gargantuan bags of plant food and wrangle sharpened gardening implements was capable of such animation.

‘Hey, what’s happening here?’

‘Nothing, Mr Swayne.’

‘Really? ‘Cause to me, it looks like you’re harassing my customers.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, it…’

‘I was looking at seed packets and he saw me put my hand in my pocket. You’re very lucky to have someone like him working for you.’

Mr Swayne looked like he couldn’t decide who was crazier – the man/mountain who screamed like a girl, or the idiot rushing to congratulate him for falsely accusing her of stealing seventy cents worth of daisy seeds.

‘Thank you for your understanding, ma’am,’ Mr Swayne said, ‘I do hope no offense was caused.’

‘None whatsoever. In fact, I was just about to ask this gentleman if he’d mind delivering my purchases, for a fee, of course.’

Mr Swayne, red faced either from shock or gratitude, I wasn’t sure which, turned to Dillon again.

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a bit, would you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Great!’ I said, clapping my hands together. ‘I’m at 242 Cassandra Street. It’s a ranch with a cobblestone chimney. It’s the only house in the street, you can’t miss it.’

I left the nursery with a smile on my face, wondering what the hell had possessed me. I’d known going in that there was a chance I was going to piss Dillon off, and that, given what Regina Hinkley had looked like when she left town, (according to the second-hand reports I’d received at the time), I had taken a massive risk, public place or no. I wasn’t convinced Dillon was completely innocent, only that he hadn’t been alone in rearranging the girl’s face. I was likewise skeptical that a floaty eye was the only injury she received that night – a father didn’t go to the lengths of dragging his daughter out of state for a floaty eye. The thing on which I was reasonably clear was that Grey knew exactly how many perpetrators were guilty of debasing young Regina, and that he had a good reason for keeping it to himself. I thought Nash was the reason.

All of the boys, Grey included, were afraid of Nash, and even a kid as chivalrous as Grey knew he was no match for him. I’m not afraid to admit that I felt more than a little disappointed in my son at that moment, and perhaps it was because of this that I didn’t realise I was being followed until my pursuer rammed her Dodge truck into the side of my car and ran me into the tiny section of horse paddock that had escaped the evil clutches of developers.

Chapter 11

Joy Sinclair waited for her three bodyguards to exit the truck before she calmly stepped out and came over to me. The bantom-weight who had been sitting next to her lifted the hood of the dodge and, along with one of the guys who had been sitting in back, proceeded to fuss over the engine and look busy. The other passenger, a behemoth who if I were to hazard a guess would have checked in at about seven feet tall and five hundred or so pounds, joined Joy.

‘I’d like us to have a little chat, girl to girl,’ Joy smiled.

She nodded at the wire fence keeping in the horses, and the behemoth lifted a section of it, allowing the three of us to enter the paddock. Joy took my arm, the behemoth took Joy’s, and we strolled into the middle of the field toward the horses as though we were about to go riding. When we were at a far enough distance from the road, we stopped.

‘I know you ordered the hit on my boy, and I understand why. A young, handsome boy like yours should be tear-assing around town making trouble and sucking face, not drooling his days away in a root cellar, especially not over a stolen motorcycle. One mother to another, I understand the need for revenge. My boy turned your boy into a vegetable, and he knew going into this life that there are consequences for things like that. That’s why I was willing to let the whole thing go.’

She put an arm around me.

‘Then a friend of mine told me you’d been talking to those kids that were there that night, and that one was dead and another was taking his meals through a straw. Naturally, that got me wondering, so I sent my friend here to pay the second kid a visit and, well, I don’t have to tell you what he said.’

She nodded at the behemoth, and he stood where he was while Joy took me for another stroll, her arm linked with mine.

‘I’ve always thought us mama’s should stick together. With that in mind, I’d like to make you an offer, and I hope you’ll take it in the spirit it’s given.’

‘Okay.’

What else was there to say?

‘I know there are two names left on your list. If you’ll help me get what I need out of them, I won’t put you down like a rabid dog. What do you say?’

‘One of them’s coming over later, making a delivery.’

‘And what time are you expecting him?’

‘Around four.’

‘See you at three. Oh, and tell Daryl I said thanks.’

I did ninety all the way home, traffic police not so much as a blip on my radar. As I’d expected, Daryl was waiting for me. I slammed the car door behind me and flew at him.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘You were in way over your head.’

‘So you got me involved with a biker mama?’

Daryl held me out at arms length.

‘She was plenty involved already, Vi. Joy’s someone you want to make a friend of in a situation like this, believe me.’

I took a step back, gestured that I’d calmed down. He let me go.

‘She’s going to kill them, isn’t she?’

‘I’d say so.’

‘How do I know she won’t kill me?’

‘Because she agreed to let me come along.’

‘Are there any other little secrets you’d like to let me in on?’

‘Just that I love you.’

‘Save that for later…if we get there.’

The Swayne’s delivery van pulled in to my driveway at three forty-five, and when Dillon stayed where he was for several minutes afterward, I hoped he had spotted Joy’s car, which was parked three or four car lengths down the street. Then he got out, clipboard in hand, and I realized he’d just been marking purchases off his delivery sheet. The punishment he warranted was less than Nash or Ozzie, given his level of involvement; he didn’t deserve this.

He opened up the back of the van and brought out a box of clay pots.

‘Where should I put these?’

‘I’ll just open up the garage.’

I pulled up the garage door. Dillon saw the Dodge, and the neckless dude standing next to it, and turned to run. Daryl came up behind him and pulled his arms behind his back.

‘Sorry, pal.’

Joy waited until Daryl and the neckless dude drove away in the Dodge with Dillon between them before strolling over to me with the behemoth at her side.

‘Take the flower express and stash it in a ditch somewhere would you, Honey? Us ladies are going to have a mother’s club meeting.’

Joy followed me down the hall to the kitchen, looking around, smiling approvingly.

‘This is a nice place. You sure do love your retro.’

I assumed she was referring to my imitation Eames dining setting and shrugged.

‘I’m a seventies child.’

‘Far as I’m concerned, that’s an era they never improved on.’

‘How do you take your tea?’

‘Could I trouble you for a strong black instead? I’m more of a hook it to my veins caffeine junky than a tea fancier.’

‘Sure.’

I fixed us both a cup of the special brew Daryl insisted I keep in stock for whenever he came over. Joy took one sip, licked her lips, then took another, closing her eyes and savouring it.

‘Mmm…I’m guessing this ain’t Nescafe?’

‘It’s a Brazilian blend, infused with coconut oil. Daryl won’t drink anything else.’

‘Don’t blame him; this is the good shit!’

She took another couple of sips, then put down the cup.

‘Here’s how things are going to play out. The boys are going to work on this kid for a while, tenderize him, if you will, then you and I are going to ask him a few questions. I’m doing you a favor here because Daryl reached out but I need you to acknowledge something: whatever road we go down, I’m in the driver’s seat, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Joy took my hand and shook it.

‘Wonderful. Now how about you take me on a tour of your lovely home before we take off?’

We pulled up outside a warehouse two hours later. Joy parked in front of the garage door, got out and walked toward the office. She turned to me when I didn’t follow.

‘There are no carcasses hanging from the ceiling, animal or otherwise…pinkie swear.’

The fact that we were nowhere near the meatpacking district gave me no comfort whatsoever, but I followed her inside. We walked down a long, darkened hallway, and stopped outside the second door on our left. It was as quiet as a morgue, with a hint of a death-like smell to match. Joy made a series of special knocks on the door, in a pattern I imagined was familiar to whomever was on the other side of it. The door opened, and the rooster from earlier greeted Joy with a respectful nod. The hint of smell we had followed down the hall came wafting out of the room, but it bore no resemblance to decomposition or decay. It was the smell of a tannery.

The room was roughly the size of a large closet, and the first thing I saw after Joy closed us in was Dillon. He was tied to a chair, wearing nothing but his boxers, and sporting a dozen close-range burns.

‘What’ve you been doing to him?’

Joy didn’t lose her composure.

‘My keys are still in the ignition, sweetheart.’

The behemoth was in the same state of undress as Dillon, but for a pair of impenetrable looking leather gloves. Joy patted him on the back.

‘Thanks for warming him up for me, Honey. Stand by.’

The behemoth put his blowtorch on a chair and joined the rooster and the neckless dude. Joy took a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed the sweat and blood away from Dillon’s face.

‘I imagine you’re pretty sore right now, in more ways than one, so let’s get this over with as quickly as possible. Why did you target Little Bobby?’

‘Nash had priors, and he knew he wouldn’t go to juvie if we got caught, so he scoped out the crowd at this biker bar and picked the smallest guy. He said the cops would believe us over a biker because bikers were animals.’ Dillon looked up at the behemoth. ‘No offence.’

‘Randy’s not offended, are you Randy?’

Randy looked from Dillon to Joy, shook his head.

‘There, you see? Now tell us why you all took after Viola’s boy. What makes a guy turn on one of his best buddies?’

Dillon looked at all the guys, took a choppy breath, and clammed up good. Joy knelt down before him and put a hand on his knee.

‘Would you feel better if we cut down on the muscle in here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay then.’

Joy stood up, clapped her hands.

‘Randy, Daryl, Dave, why don’t you boys go on out to the break room and have a couple of beers? I’ll call you back in if I need you.’

Daryl and I looked at one another. Joy laughed.

‘Would you two relax please? We have a deal, remember?’

Daryl followed the other two out, but not before he reassured me.

‘Worse comes to worse, I’ll kill everyone in this room to get to you, you know that, right?’

‘Right.’

He kissed me on the head and left. The rooster shut the door.

‘Now,’ said Joy, ‘you were saying?’

Dillon looked at me. I wasn’t sure why, seeing as he’d pretty much filled me in back at the nursery as to his and the other boy’s motives.

‘It’s okay, Dillon.’

‘We did things…bad things, to girls. A lot of girls. Grey was…Grey was going to rat.’

‘So you all decided to shut him up.’ Joy shook her head. ‘See, that’s the difference between girls and boys; if girls have beef, they get it out in the open, scream, bitch, swear, maybe freeze someone out, but you guys have to strut around and turn everything into a cock fight. If you’d stop thinking with your balls, you wouldn’t risk losing ‘em.’

Joy pulled her gun out of her pocket, pointed it at Dillon, lowered her aim, and fired. A red stain appeared on the front of Dillon’s white shorts like ink in blotting paper. Dillon screamed.

‘That won’t do you any good, angel; this room’s sound proofed. You could scream the Star Spangled Banner into a megaphone and not a syllable of it would be carried outside.’

Dillon looked at the gun, which was still trained on his undercarriage, and clapped his hands over his mouth.

‘Good boy,’ said Joy. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not gonna kill you today. Roy here’s going to drop you a block from the hospital, so you can get what’s left of your basement checked out, and you’re going to tell the wonderful staff there that you were carjacked on your way home from Viola’s place. Two big, ugly guys worked you over and knocked you out and you woke up on the side of the road. When the cops investigate, they’ll find your boss’s van all beat up to hell and that should be that. Long as you don’t mention our names, you’ll never hear from us again.’

Joy stepped forward and prodded Dillon’s injury.

‘You won’t mention our names, will you?’

She stepped back again, smiled.

‘Now, if you’ll just give us your friend Nash’s address, we’ll all be on our way.’

Daryl and I were driven back to my place - in separate vehicles. I rode with Joy.

‘What does this guy do for a living?’

‘He’s a bouncer at The Front Page.’

‘Oh yeah, I know the place. That’s where all the junior social climbers hang out, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’d close same time as all the other bars, what with the liquor laws and everything. I’ll get one of the boys to go down there and watch him, let us know when he’s on his way home. I think we should get to him early, just in case. I’ll pick you up as soon as I hear. Say, around five?’

I nodded. It wouldn’t have mattered what time she decided on; I couldn’t have slept if I tried. I opened the car door as soon as we pulled up at my place.

‘I’ll see you then,’ said Joy, reaching out and touching my arm, ‘and remember: we’re women, we don’t fuck each other over.’