Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(25)
With no further ado, he shoved the phone at me, maybe trying to distract me while he stormed into Slushy’s back office.
I didn’t know what to do. “Tobiah?” I said tremulously.
“June!” yelled Tobiah Weingarten, general manager of the Leaves of Grass ranch. “Will you tell him he’s making a giant f*cking mistake? He pisses off those Bare Bones gangsters he might as well be bringing the wrath of the entire syndicate down around our heads. Do you know who they have in their back pocket? The Ochoas, the Presencións, the Marins, the f*cking Joneses!” Tobiah’s voice became higher in register with each cartel family name he ticked off. He sounded like Mickey Mouse by the time he cried, “We don’t need to be f*cking looking for trouble!”
I just slipped the phone into my front shirt pocket—the shirt that still smelled of Lytton’s own scent. I was so eager to get back into Slushy’s office I shoved aside Slushy himself, smashing his jelly donut into his shirtfront.
“Hey, hey!” Slushy was miffed. “Don’t mess the threads!”
Inside the office, Lytton had already launched into his harangue. He was an upfront, direct sort of guy, I’d discovered. He didn’t mince words. I had to give him credit for giving voice to his feelings. I’d probably lose my religion too, if I had just heard what Lytton had heard.
“I want a simple yes or no, Ford.” Lytton pointed at the ground with fury. “Did you kill my f*cking father?”
Ford was standing with both palms facing Lytton. “Whoa. Back off, buddy. In the first f*cking place, it’s our father. Okay?”
“Semantics!” shouted Lytton.
“Digression!” yelled Slushy, holding his donut on high, trying to shove through between me and Lytton. “We are here to discuss your place in this family, Mr. Driving Hawk, not to toss about baseless accusations.”
“Lytton,” I tried to say quietly around the back of Slushy’s head. “Maybe you could discuss that later? Ford is here to acknowledge your place as his bro—”
“Just a simple yes or no,” bellowed Lytton. “It’s that f*cking simple. I have a right to know if my own brother took his f*cking pistol and blew out my father’s brains.”
True, newspaper accounts had said Cropper was found with a bullet to the brain, a dead Minion a few dozen yards away with a similar wound. There was ostensibly a second Minion who had been injured who had gotten away, so the urban legend went. Whoever that was had no doubt started the entire rumor mill going.
“Don’t answer that!” Slushy barked, shaping his hand into a gun and pointing it at Ford. “You have reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer!”
To my surprise, Ford wasn’t denying anything. He even had that helpless, guilty look. His hands flapped around pointlessly, and not many actual words were coming out of his mouth.
Slushy must’ve picked up on this, too, for he got between Lytton and Ford. Taking Ford by the forearms, he rattled him. “This can’t be answered without injurious disclosure. You have no obligation to respond, Ford!”
Lytton’s voice was low and dangerous. “There’s my answer. Yup. There’s my f*cking answer. You. Turk Blackburn.” It was Turk’s turn to jump as Lytton levelled his ire at him. “Yes, you, Bong Breath. You were there in the desert near Nogales when this colossal asswad decided to play God and snuffed out my father’s life.”
Turk put a hand on his chest. “Me? Who said I was there?”
Lytton sliced the air with his hand. “About thirty separate rumors, which all add up to one colossal truth.”
Slushy turned his efforts against Lytton now. “Mr. Driving Hawk. I have to ask you to desist from this sort of innuendo. It’s neither constructive nor productive, and it’s bordering on slanderous. You’re ensnaring my client with ambiguous circumstances.”
Lytton narrowed his eyes at the thin-haired lawyer. “Oh, there’s nothing ambiguous about this.”
Ford popped out from behind Slushy, moving him aside. “It’s all right, Slushy. The guy has a legitimate accusation and I should address it.”
Slushy persisted. “Over my dead body. You have the right to remain silent, Ford!”
“I have my answer already, Mr. McGill,” Lytton said, almost wearily. “I’d just like to hear it from the f*cking horse’s mouth.”
Even Slushy finally stopped talking. He looked as though he just wanted to sink into the wall because he could not shut his client up now. I knew there was no turning back from this shit. I even shrank back against the wall, linking Madison’s arm in mine. At least two of the men in the room were armed.
Ford lowered his voice now, but he looked Lytton straight in the eye. “I shot Cropper Illuminati, yes, in the desert outside Nogales. He was a dirty f*cking lowdown son of a bitch—just ask anyone in the club. As for the rest, that’s club business. You just have to trust me and believe me when I tell you, Cropper needed to die. I needed to end him.” He spoke like a pastor giving a reassuring sermon to his flock.
It seemed for a second that Lytton might be reassured by Ford, too. He seemed to be taking this all in stride. He nodded in assent to what he already knew to be true. I could feel Madison stop breathing. And everyone probably wished Ford would shut the hell up.
But I saw what Ford was doing. He was showing his newfound brother respect. He was attempting to build trust by confiding in him something that potentially could send him to prison for life. Nobody would care if Cropper was a creep who needed to be taken out. The eyes of the law would just look at facts. Ford was placing a huge trust in Lytton just telling him this shit. He could’ve easily denied it, and that would’ve been the end of it. There might not have been any trust between the two men if Ford never told Lytton, but Lytton would never know this hugely incriminating detail about last year’s explosion near the border.