His eyes were on me and there was something in them I couldn’t read, something familiar, even precious, something I remembered from a long time ago but hadn’t seen in so long, I didn’t remember where I saw it in the first place. Before I could figure it out, the look disappeared.
I nodded in the general direction of everyone. “Nice to meet you all,” I said then started to shove through but Vance caught my bicep and stopped me.
“Your place, six thirty,” he said, his eyes serious.
I just gave him a look. He released me and the boys and I walked away.
“What was that about?” Sniff stage-whispered to me.
“They got a date,” Roam answered, too quick for his own good (and mine).
“No shit? You got a date with Crowe? Holy f**k!” Sniff yelled.
I rolled my eyes. Now this would be all over the street in an hour.
“Keep your voice down, Sniff. And don’t say shit or f**k. Don’t you boys ever listen to me?”
“No,” Roam said and grinned at me.
For the first time that day the sky of my life brightened and I grinned back at him.
Just as the door closed behind me, I could swear I heard, “Now I’m thinking Law’s the shit.” This was said in an unfamiliar man’s voice so it had to be Mace who hadn’t spoken.
“You ain’t wrong about that, Sugar,” this was obviously Daisy.
I ignored their words, got the kids in the Camaro and we went to get burgers.
It wasn’t until after we were sitting eating burgers that I tasted my latte and, even cold, it was the best flipping thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
Chapter Five
Nick’s Third Degree
At six thirty when I was supposed to be nervously anticipating Vance’s arrival at my duplex, I was in Heavy’s garage, wearing silvery-gray sweatpants with two black stripes running up the sides and a white t-shirt with the arms cut off with Gold’s Gym on the front in black. I was jabbing a punching bag and sweating like a pig.
“Jab, Jules, f**kin’ jab!” Heavy shouted at me, sitting on a bunch of boxes stacked at the side of his garage, working through his second double pack of Ding Dongs. “You jab like a girl. Keep your leg back, aim for the kidneys. Jab!”
“I’m jabbing, Heavy!” I shouted through my panting then quit jabbing and started roundhouse punching the sides of the bag then I quit doing that too, hugged the bag and stared at Heavy. “How long do I have to do this?” I asked.
“You only been at it an hour,” Heavy said and then shoved an entire Ding Dong in his mouth.
I glared at him. “Don’t you think an hour is enough?” I asked. “I’m not exactly going to be boxing with drug dealers for a whole fifteen rounds.”
“Don’t do fifteen rounds anymore, the sissies, only do twelve,” Heavy informed me.
“Well, I won’t be going twelve rounds with them either.”
“You gotta be in shape. ‘Specially now that you’re goin’ up against the Nightingale Boys. Fuck, girl, you… are… loco.”
I used my teeth to yank at the strings of my boxing gloves then shoved one under the pit of an arm and tugged it off. “I’m not up against the Nightingale Boys,” I said.
Heavy shook his head. “Got a friend, he’s a cop, says Hank Nightingale and Eddie Chavez pulled up all sorts of shit on you yesterday. Searchin’ your name and findin’ it all over your kids’ records.”
So that was how Vance knew everything.
I found this annoying. The whole bedroom interrogation that morning was bullshit. Vance knew the answers to most of his questions before he’d even asked them. This meant his “making me talk” was just an excuse to kiss me.
I didn’t know what to do with that so I didn’t do anything with it. I’d have time to think about it maybe when I was eighty.