RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,90
academy, work odd jobs or in the stores along the main street to get by. It’d be fucking easy to replace Patterson. I could have someone else here, grateful of the job, inside half a fucking hour and the grumpy old bastard knows it. Like I said, though. The tumbledown, broken, worn patina of the place was a selling point when I decided to buy the bar, and Patterson’s curmudgeonly snark was a part of that, too.
“Forty bucks should do it,” he says flatly.
I pull a hundred dollar bill out of my wallet and flick it across the bar at him. “I want a shot of whiskey in front of me in the next thirty seconds, asshole. And I swear to god, if you try and pour that lighter fluid from the rail for me again, I will end your sorry existence.”
He pockets the hundred instead of putting it into the till, which I say nothing about because, at this stage in the proceedings, I find his open belligerence entertaining more than anything. He steps up onto the wooden box he keeps behind the counter and takes down the bottle of Johnny Blue from the highest shelf Cosgrove’s has. Instead of pouring me a fifty mil pour in a shot glass, Patterson flips over a rocks glass and free-pours four fingers of the burnt golden liquid into it, smiling sarcastically. And yes, the man has perfected the art of the sarcastic smile. He’s one of only a few people I’ve ever seen accomplish the task.
I lift the glass to my mouth, eyeing the one hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of whiskey he just so artlessly dumped into it, and I smile my most savage smile. “You really are a fucker aren’t you, Pat?” The whiskey leaves a trail of fire all the way down my esophagus, but it’s a smooth burn. One that glows rather than bites. I manfully swallow down the rest of the whiskey, polishing the lot off in two mouthfuls, and then slam the glass down on the woodwork.
“Having a hard time up there on the mountain?” the bartender asks, without the faintest hint of sincerity in his voice. “They run out of fois gras? Has the champagne stopped flowing out of the faucets?”
“Fuck you, man.”
“I can imagine how difficult it must get for you poor kids up there, having to brush your own teeth and wipe your own asses. Must be pure torture. They really oughta hire some extra serfs to cater to our little princeling’s more intimate needs.”
“If you don’t quit with the vitriol, I’ll lock you in the beer cellar again.”
That shuts him up. ‘Cause he knows I’ll do it. I’ve done it before. I think Patterson enjoys our verbal (and occasionally physical) sparring almost as much as I do. He doesn’t like it when I kick his rotund ass down the stairs that lead into the basement and I lock him down there for the afternoon, though. He flashes teeth. “Where are those friends of yours? The English toff and the addict.”
“Hah! What makes you think Pax is an addict?”
“He looks like that guy out of that movie with the Scottish junkies.”
“I don’t think you can accuse someone of being a drug addict because they have a shaved head and they bear a passing resemblance to a young Ewan McGregor.”
He grunts, clearly of a different mind. “You want more?” He thrusts the Johnny Walker at me.
“It’s the middle of the afternoon, man. Despite what you might think of me, I’m not a degenerate.” Laughable. The lie is just so fucking laughable that even I grin like a piece of shit when Patterson holds his belly and roars. The things he’s seen me do. The states he’s seen me in. Jesus. “I have a question for you, Pat,” I say, leaning forward so that the edge of the bar digs into my ribs. “You’re a married man, aren’t you?”
If Pat had any eyebrows, they’d be up around his receding hairline right now. “Yeaahhhh?”
“That big lady with the mustache? The one who cleans the toilets? She’s your actual wife?”
His eyes, already so set back into his face, practically disappear as he glowers at me. “Are you looking for a smack boy?”
“No, no! No offense meant.”
“Oh, well, in that case, none taken!” There he goes with that sarcasm again. He’s a fucking pro.
“I just mean…how long have you been married to the lovely Mrs. Patterson,” I ask, changing tack.