He can see the look, wry and guarded, that Donna used to give him when he did that, slouched into the thick backwoods drawl of his granddaddy’s buddies. Rednecking up, she called it, and she hated it—she never said so, but Cal could tell. Donna was a Jersey girl from the hood, but she never leaned on her accent, or hid it either; people could take her or leave her. She thought Cal was lowering himself by playing to people’s dumb preconceived ideas. Cal has his pride, but it doesn’t run in that direction. Acting like a hick can be all kinds of useful. To Donna, that was beside the point.
Donna’s opinions don’t change the fact that Eugene’s glance has just the right dismissive flick to it. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m planning to.”
“Looks like I got the wrong end of the stick,” Cal says, taking off his baseball cap so he can scratch his head thoughtfully. “But Brendan Reddy does wiring, doesn’t he? I got that part right?”
“He did, yeah. But I don’t know where he is these days. Sorry.”
This puzzles Cal. “You don’t?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Well,” Cal says, readjusting his cap, “nobody else seems to. It’s a mystery, seems like. But folk keep on telling me you’re the big genius around these parts. I reckoned if anybody would have an idea where Brendan went, it’d be you.”
Eugene shrugs. “He didn’t say.”
“He got himself in hot water some way or other, didn’t he?”
Another shrug, one-shouldered. Eugene concentrates on buffing his paintwork, squinting along it to make sure there’s not a single streak.
“Oh,” Cal says, grinning. He isn’t going to bother trying the mama-guilt card, not with this kid. “Now I get it. A smart guy like you, it’s easy for me to forget you’re still a kid. You still think you can’t tell tales or you’ll get beat up in the playground.”
Eugene looks up sharply at that. “I’m not a kid.”
“Right. So what the heck did your little buddy do?” Cal is still grinning, propping himself more comfortably on the gatepost. “Lemme guess. He spray-painted bad words on a wall, got scared he’d catch a whipping from his mama?”
Eugene doesn’t lower himself to answer that.
“Knocked up some girl, had to get out of town before her daddy found his shotgun?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Eugene sighs. “I don’t actually know what Brendan got mixed up in,” he says, tilting his head to examine the sheen from a fresh angle, “and I don’t care. All I know is, he isn’t as smart as he thinks, and that’s a great way to end up in hassle. That’s all.”
“Huh,” Cal says, his grin widening. He registers the isn’t. “You’re telling me this kid Brendan came up with some shenanigans fancy enough that you can’t make head or tail of ’em, but he’s the dumbass here?”
“No. I’m telling you I don’t want to make head or tail of it.”
“Uh-huh. Right.”
“What do you care?”
If Cal had ever talked that way to a man old enough to be his daddy, he wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a week. “Well,” he drawls, “I guess I’m just nosy-like. I’m from a little backwoods town where people like knowing each other’s business.” He scratches something off the back of his neck and examines it. “And back home there were plenty of people who talked like they knew it all, only when you got down to it, they didn’t know shit from Shinola. Guess that’s the same all over the world.”
“Look,” Eugene says, irritated. He sits back on his haunches, preparing himself to explain this in small words. “I know Brendan had some plan to make money, because he’s always skint, and then all of a sudden he was going on about how this summer we could go to Ibiza. And I know it was dodgy, because a few days before he left we were hanging out here and a couple of Guards went past, and Brendan freaked out. I thought maybe he had some hash on him, so I was like, ‘God, chill out, they didn’t come all the way down here just for your spliff,’ but he was all, ‘You don’t get it, man, this could be bad, like really bad,’ and he took off like his arse was on fire. So I’m very happy not having a clue about the details, thanks very much. I’m not interested in spending days in some interrogation room answering pointless questions from some half-wit Guard. OK?”
“Right,” Cal says. He finds himself despising Eugene a little bit. He understands that Eugene and Brendan were friends due to happenstance and habit rather than to choice. Cal has those childhood friends, some of whom grew up to do various things that landed them in prison, or to do nothing at all except sit on their porches drinking 40s and make kids they can’t support. He still stays in touch with them, and when their needs get urgent he still lends them a few bucks he’ll never see again. It seems to him that the least Eugene could do is care what kind of mess Brendan got himself into. “What were the Guards here about?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” Eugene says. He drapes his cloth neatly over his bumper, picks up a can of lube and starts carefully spraying his cables. “I doubt it was anything serious. I saw them leaving like twenty minutes later. But knowing Brendan, if the Guards weren’t after him that time, that would just make him figure everything was grand and go right back to his big plan, instead of doing the smart thing and dropping it before they actually did come after him. That’s what I mean about Brendan not being as smart as he thinks. He’s intelligent enough, but he doesn’t think things through. If he’d used his brain in school instead of mitching off to get stoned, he could have got into college. And if he’d used it to think through his brilliant idea, he wouldn’t have ended up so terrified of the Guards that he’s probably sleeping in a doorway somewhere.”
Cal says, “He wouldn’t get in touch with you, if it came down to that? Borrow a few bucks, sooner than sleep rough?”
“Oh,” Eugene says, considering that for the first time. “I mean, obviously I’d, if he really needed . . . But he wouldn’t. Brendan’s ridiculous about money. Like, you can’t even offer to buy him a pint, or he gets the hump about charity and storms off home. It’s like, fuck’s sake, we’re all just trying to have a good night out together here, what’s your problem? You know?”
Cal figures Eugene’s manner of offering might be the kind that would have sent him storming off home, too, at nineteen. He wholeheartedly agrees with Brendan’s decision to go to Fergal, rather than Eugene, for extra cash. For him to do even that, the need must have been urgent. “Well, some folks are touchy that way,” he says. “He didn’t say nothing to you that day, about where he was headed?”
“What day?”
“The day he left. He was meeting you, wasn’t he?”
Eugene stares at Cal like he shouldn’t be allowed out alone. “Um, no? What with me being in Prague with the lads from college? It was Easter hols?”
“Right,” Cal says. “Easter hols. Sounds like I can’t count on Brendan coming home any time soon, huh?”
Eugene shrugs. “Who knows, with him. He could take a notion and be home tomorrow, or he might never come back at all.”
“Huh,” Cal says. “There anyone else that might be able to help me out?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Eugene says. He dabs away a trickle of excess lube and leans back to examine the bike. “Think I’ll take this for a spin, get it properly dried out.”
“Good idea,” Cal says, straightening up off the gatepost. “If you hear from Brendan, tell him there’s work waiting for him.”
“No problem,” Eugene says, picking up his helmet from the drive and flicking a speck of something off it. “Don’t hold your breath.”