Fav Passage

The guy stood in the middle of the raised computer floor with his arms crossed. If he carried a gun, I would have feared for my life. Maybe he didn’t appreciate the bank bringing in an outsider to fix his security issue. My best guess.

The angry guy gave up and returned to his cubby long before we finished. I was happy to have the suit coat on. It was freezing in there. My ears burned like they’d been torched, my fingers were numb, and my nose ran like an open tap by the time Augie let me out of there. Four hours, plugging in thumb drives, waiting for the little light to stop flickering. This Floridian had never been so cold in his life.

Had to have been sixty degrees in there. Arctic.

Fav Passage

“Go away, okay?” I said to the drunk.

Maybe that wasn’t the most assertive I could have been.

I returned from my jaunt to Neverland on the floor, spread eagle.

Fav Passage

Not that the band sucked. I just don’t do the night scene. Cigarette smoke burns my sinuses. And I’m as boring as my mom. My music tastes are actually mellower than hers. She often wears an old Metallica tee on the weekends working in her yard. Must be a hundred years old. The tee, not my mom.

Fav Passage

Logan turned back to Norman. “And you figured your bosses, who you feared might kill you for turning state’s evidence, wouldn’t kill you for stealing from them?”

“No one likes snitches,” he said.

I snorted. Had this dork from Mayberry thought this through? I know I’m not bright, but geesh.

“Yeah,” Denny said. “But they reward thieves.”

“I figured it was my best chance.”

“You are an idiot,” Augie mumbled.

Thank you.

Norman scrunched up his face. “That’s terse.”

“But accurate,” Denny offered.

“Are you really blind?” Norman asked, his eyes checking out her sectional cane sitting on the dining table.

“Are you really stupid?” she shot back.

He turned red. I thought Augie was socially awkward. Norman made dweebs look slick.

“You really shot Roger three times?” I asked.

“It was an accident. I swear.”

No way I was going to believe Michael believed that one. I have one partner getting shot at, and another getting shot. I’ve been in the hospital twice since meeting the Muellers three months ago. I might want to re-think this partnership.

Wait. Now I'm just being redundant.

Favorite Passage

Jon was getting his first insight into what it was like to be a little brother. His second was when Michael led him into a hip-looking store, the kind Jon had always avoided. Michael went to the shelves with the expensive jeans, something else Jon had always avoided. Making eight bucks an hour, he didn’t buy denim that cost more than wool-blend dress slacks.

“What size?”

It had been so many years since he had bought a pair of khakis for work, he couldn’t even remember.

“I dunno.”

Michael made a noise of disgust, and shook his head. “You’re a trip.” Michael stared at his midsection a moment, long enough for Jon to feel peculiarly uncomfortable, not that he thought it possible Michael leaned east and west. But it wasn’t right for the man to—Jon didn’t want to put a word to his thoughts.

“Thirty-inch waist sound about right?”

Jon shrugged his shoulders. Michael pulled a pair of jeans off a stack and shoved them at him. Jon looked down at the price.

“Fifty-eight bucks? Are you crazy?”

“Oh hell. You don’t work for Erik anymore. You earned twenty-five thousand this morning. You can afford them.”

“Fifty-eight bucks?”

Michael grabbed another pair from the next stack, handed them to him and pointed toward the changing room, furling his eyes in an expression daring him to argue.

Jon shook his head and walked away muttering. “Fifty-eight bucks. A house payment. Work out the wazoo to do on the Mustang. No job. No health insurance. God I’ve got to get health insurance.”

“Shut up,” Michael called after him.

Favorite Passage

“Did he really, freaking say I prattle like a girl?”

“I think he did,” Roger said, nodding like a bobble head.

“He wants to die a horrible death, doesn’t he?” Michael asked, jerking his thumb toward the back seat.

“I think he just said what I was thinking,” Roger answered.

“Take a right.”

Michael turned. “Now where, your Excellency?”

“He’s at the skate bowl,” Jon said, following the second-half of the image that nearly emptied his bladder.

“You thought he was in the projects. Now you think he’s skating. You mind explaining that? Are the spirits speaking to you? Why the hell am I even talking to you? You talk to imaginary friends. A half-wit and a no-wit. Roger, why am I talking to this guy?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe ’cause you prattle like a girl? You got nothing better to do on a Saturday morning? You like amusing half-wits? Am I close? Just tell me if I’m warm.”