Josh stayed seated, and Danny’s hand on the boy’s shoulder held so much tenderness, Michael’s heart gave a bruised throb.
“Hey, Michael,” Josh said gruffly. “Sit with me, okay?”
Michael did as he asked, realizing that it had been Josh who’d wanted to speak with him.
“Look,” Josh said. “We probably would have brought you in earlier. I’ve just been feeling like shit, and nobody wanted to make a decision like this without me. You know we’re, uhm, sort of shady, right?”
Michael grinned reassuringly. “You mean like ‘hiring an ex-convict to be your mechanic’ shady or ‘the insurance guy in a suit who can lift a wallet’ shady?”
Josh gave a delighted if rusty laugh. “Both those kinds of shady,” he said. “We don’t want you to ever get into trouble on account of what we ask you to do. Everyone else here, they’re here because this keeps them out of trouble. Except for Carl. I think he’s here because he hasn’t gotten into enough. But you’ve seen prison time, and we don’t want to drag you kicking and screaming back into a situation that may expose you to that again.”
Michael shrugged. “Look, I was in a bank with a gun. I get the feeling you people are a little subtler than that.”
“We are,” Danny said. “For one thing, we don’t like guns.”
“For another,” Felix added, “our lawyers would never admit you were even in that bank.”
Michael smiled at them, liking Felix’s style. “Y’all have been real kind to me,” he said. “And you pay me lots to keep up your cars. If you think I got something to bring to the table, as long as I’m not holding a gun and working with folks that’re gonna try to kill me when they’re done with me, I say shit’s on the way up, you think?”
“We will try to keep you as free from culpability as possible,” Julia said softly. “For one thing, Chuck would never forgive us if we promised you safety and got you thrown back in prison. For another, we would really, really like for this to succeed. But if things get too intense, nobody would hold it against you if you walked, do you understand? Just head on back to the apartment and be our mechanic, and you never have to admit you knew there was anything different going on.”
Michael winked at her. “Yeah, but y’all would probably stop feeding me, right? Naw, you folks keep right on feeding me and I’ll be happy to hang around after chow time if you think I got something to offer.”
He was going to turn away then, but Josh stopped him with bony fingers on his arm.
“Michael?” he said softly, “we’ll never stop feeding you. But I think you could have some very important things to offer.”
Michael’s entire body heated, and he mumbled something unintelligible as he broke away to find Carl and make his way downstairs.
“What’s wrong?” Carl asked as they neared the carpeted stairs to the den.
Michael just shook his head, unable to put into words what that moment had meant. How to explain to this nice guy in a suit that Carmichael Carmody had grown up getting whooped on for not collecting enough eggs or shooting a deer out of season? That when he’d been attacked by the rooster while in his school clothes, he’d gone without dinner for a week because his jeans had gotten torn? And that even if he wasn’t being punished, the odds of his brothers stealing the best food off his plate were very real, and while nobody would call them to account, he’d get in trouble for whining? Carl would never understand.
Michael and Beth had grown up vowing their children would never, ever have to go to bed hungry in the name of “punishment,” because when they’d been in high school, she’d been the one to bring an extra sandwich, knowing the odds of him not having eaten the night before were considerable.
Josh couldn’t have known that, couldn’t have known any of it. But he’d looked Michael in the eye and told him that he could eat at the family table and not do a damned thing more than ingest food.
And now Michael would go to prison all over again—he’d do it twice—to help that kid cross the damned street.
HE’D NEVER seen the den, but the décor made him smile. Felix and Danny apparently had a thing for hometown sports teams, because the walls were painted red and blue, in honor of the Cubs and the Bulls, with silver and black in one corner for the White Sox and an orange and black stripe in another corner for the Bears—or, arguably, the Blackhawks. The exception was the blank wall adjacent to the wet bar, which had been outfitted with big viewing screens that were apparently connected to a small audiovisual table that sat next to a chair in the middle of the room. The rest of the room was furnished like an average sports den—squishy, comfortable couches, beanbag chairs, with soft throws and pillows stacked in open shelves in the corner.
“Looks like a good place for movie night,” Michael said, thinking about how when Beth had bought the new house, she’d included a room like this for watching movies.
“It is, surprisingly,” Carl said. “As well as sports.” He gave a happy smile. “We watched basketball playoffs here in June. Sadly, the Bulls did not pull through.”
Michael tsked. “I would’ve had to root for the Spurs anyway. You know that, don’t you?”
“Well, whatever helps you sleep at night.” Carl made it sound like an indictment, but then he winked.
“Shouldn’t you be rooting for the Celtics anyway?” Chuck asked, passing them on his way to get to the cookies and pastries on platters in front of the couch.
“What makes you think I gave a crap about basketball when I lived on the coast?” Carl asked, rolling his eyes. “It’s only really fun when you have people to cheer with.”
“Huh,” Chuck muttered. “I never really thought of that.”
“That’s because you’ve been sort of a solitary fish until now, Charles,” Lucius murmured.
Grace’s laugh was loud enough to echo off the low ceiling. “What kind of fish are you, Chuck? Are you a Texas fish?”
“Chuck ain’t from Texas,” Michael said, hoping he wasn’t exposing any secrets. “His accent is almost right, but he’s got some Ohio in there, I can tell.”
He was suddenly the center of several sets of admiring eyes.
“Is he telling the truth, Chuck?” Molly asked, her purr almost predatory.
“He is indeed, Molly-girl,” Chuck drawled, standing up and taking his cookies to the back corner of the room by the stairs. “I cannot tell a lie.”
“You can too,” Grace admonished. “But you apparently can’t tell a Texas-sized lie.”
Chuck’s grin widened. “How big is a Texas-sized lie, little buddy?”
“As big as my—”
Hunter clapped a hand over Grace’s mouth and pulled him over to the wall across from Chuck, and Michael realized they were positioned like sentinels to guard the room. Hunter let go of Grace, who kissed him briefly on the lips and wandered back toward the couches and the conversation pit.
Michael watched as Carl maneuvered himself back by the wet bar, accepting a glass of orange juice Danny poured him with gratitude. He turned and nodded, gesturing for Michael to go to the couch, and Michael looked at him questioningly, silently asking Carl if he was going to join him.