“These days, when I’m faced with a decision, I do the right thing,” Corey said. “It’s not all about me any more. At the end of the day, I have responsibilities to other people that I have to keep in mind.”
“Of course you do, that’s cool.” Leon fidgeted with his sunglasses. “It’s all good, I like to hear this from you, stepping up to the plate for the family and the business, comme il faut, my man, you make me proud.”
Corey pushed out a breath from the bottom of his lungs. “Listen, I don’t know why you’ve been following me and my wife, and I don’t know how long you have, and to be frank, I don’t care-because it all ends here. I looked you up online, Leon. I think you know damn well what I found.”
“What’s that?” Leon fished in his pocket and withdrew the cigarette lighter. He flicked the striker wheel and brought the flame to a fresh cigarette. Taking a slow drag, he left the lighter lying in plain sight on the table next to the beer mug. “Share the fruits of your research, good buddy.”
Corey cracked a knuckle. Prying his gaze away from the lighter was like escaping the gravity pull of a black hole.
“Turn yourself in peacefully,” Corey said softly. “Please.”
“Why should I?” Leon tapped ashes into a tray. “Believe it or not, I like how I’m living. I’m here in the ATL maxing and relaxing with my best partner from back in the day, having a cold brew. My life’s all biscuits and gravy.”
“Be serious.”
“I am serious. I’m a celebrity, don’t you know, this pretty mug has been cycling all over the glass teat. Hey, want my John Hancock?”
Leon pulled a square beverage napkin toward him, removed an ink pen from his pocket, and did a loopy scrawl of his signature. He slid the napkin across the table to Corey.
“Give that to the wifey.” Leon winked.
“Listen.” Corey crumbled the napkin in his fist. “You’re putting me and my family in a very dangerous situation. I’m trying to help you.”
Leon sneered. “Wrong, wrong, wrong, you’re trying to help yourself, and in my informed opinion, you don’t need any more help, Mr. Husband-Father-Hot Shit Entrepreneur. Matter of fact, it looks as if you ought to be doing like Mother Teresa and lending a helping hand to the less fortunate who remember you from way back when, when your only ride was a rusty little Huffy dirt bike and your dear old grandma dribbled water in the milk so you could eat Frosted Flakes till the first of the month.”
Leon picked up the lighter again and thumbed the wheel. He balanced the palm of his hand on the flame’s edge, savage eyes lacerating Corey as the heat singed his flesh. It was a morbid game he and Corey had played as teenagers, and Leon had always outlasted him.
“You want money,” Corey whispered.
“You owe me. Remember all those things I did for you, wingman?”
Corey didn’t want to remember any of it. “We did those things together.”
“I did time for you, too, do you remember that? A three-year bid, we didn’t do that together.”
“But that was for something you did on your own! That was your own solo job.”
“I could’ve brought you down to the sewer with me, and you know it, I could’ve brought you down for a whole truckload of dirt that I haven’t told anyone about-yet.”
Leon flicked the lid shut on the lighter and slammed it onto the table. Corey flinched in his seat.
“You’ve done well for yourself, and I’m proud of that,” Leon said. He exhaled a ring of smoke toward Corey’s face. “But you’ve forgotten your roots, kiddo, it’s time to pay the devil his due.”
Understanding washed over Corey like cold water. “That’s why you followed my wife today, isn’t it? You wanted to prove you could get to someone close to me if I don’t agree to what you want.”
Leon smirked. “Did I say that?”
“I know how you think,” Corey said. “You know what? I bet me running in to you this morning wasn’t coincidence, either, not by a long shot. You planned that somehow-something tipped you off about me and my business. What was it, huh? Did you plug my name into Google, too, learn all about my company, and figure you could run some half-assed extortion scheme on me?”
“If you say you know how I think, then you should know I don’t plan anything. I live in the moment.”
“Bullshit,” Corey spat.
“Think so? Okay-want to know what I’m planning at this precise moment? Do you? How about this. I’m planning to drop an e-mail to the law in Detroit describing a cold case that involves this upstanding citizen who lives in Atlanta but who actually has a quite unsavory past, and this e-mail will rather strenuously suggest that they investigate this particular individual, uh-huh, perhaps request a DNA sample from said person, ’cause, golly, the crime scene techs must have collected forensic evidence for this lingering, perplexing case, and it would be a simple process for them to pop all of it under the ole microscope and see if there’s a match-”
“That’s enough,” Corey said. “I get it.”
Grinning, Leon took another pull on his cigarette and chased it with a gulp of beer.
Looking around, Corey blotted his damp palms on his khakis. With Leon’s refusal to turn himself in, he saw only one way out of this. He didn’t like it, but it might be the only way to spare him and his family further involvement.
He dug his wallet out of his pocket.
“You have seen the light,” Leon said. “I have trained you well, grasshopper.”
Corey passed Leon all of the cash in his wallet: a hundred and twenty dollars.
“This is all I have on me,” Corey said.
“A hundred and twenty dollars?” Leon riffled through the bills, folded them into his pocket. His eyes burned. “You actually think I’m going to saddle up and gallop into the sunset for a hundred and twenty fuckin’ dollars?”
“Look, man.” Corey opened his wallet, showed it to him. “I’m telling you, that’s all I’ve got.”
“You’ve got more in the bank, a whole lot more. You think I’m the village idiot?”
Corey wiped sweat from his forehead. “How much do you want?”
“How much is your freedom worth to you?”
Corey had handled the household finances ever since he’d married. He did a mental calculation on how much he could withdraw from their accounts without Simone immediately noticing.
“I could give you five thousand tomorrow,” he said.
“That’s all your nouveau riche life is worth? Five thousand lousy dollars? You spent that much on window treatments in your McMansion. Do you realize how absurd and insulting that sounds, do you have any fucking clue how ridiculous it is, do you, do you, huh?”
Corey stammered. “Maybe. . maybe I could get you six thousand, or seven-”
“Fifty large.”
Corey thought he had heard him wrong. “Fifty thousand dollars?”
“You know what? Make it a hundred.”
“Leon, I. . I can’t.”
“Two fifty.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Three hundred.”
Corey was shaking his head.
“You know you have it,” Leon said.
“That’s not the point. Listen, I’m not paying you fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or some other crazy amount. Hell, no. I’m not doing it, Leon. You can’t bully me the way you used to, forget it, those days are over.”
Leon glowered at him, eyebrow twitching.
“You’ll take what I’m offering,” Corey said. “That’s five thousand dollars, cash. I get it to you tomorrow, you take it, and then you stay the hell away from me and my family and we forget we ever ran into each other again. Okay? That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”
Leon was silent for a breathless moment-and then he hurled his beer mug across the dining room. It exploded like a grenade against a far wall, bits of glass and foam spraying everywhere.
People spun around, gawking. A hush fell over the room.
Getting to his feet, Leon stuffed the cigarette lighter into his pocket and snapped on his sunglasses. He pointed at Corey, spittle spluttering from his lips.