The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10)

The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10) Page 34

“Dyson,” Josie shouted.

“What? I’m supposed to wait until he hit me?” I moved close to Roy and leaned in. “You were going to hit me, weren’t you, Roy?”

He nodded even as he brought a hand up to cradle his jaw.

“I guess you’re upset that I cut Jill out of the crew, am I right?” He nodded again. “Maybe you think I have the hots for her.” His eyes locked on mine. “Not true. It really isn’t. She’s out because she doesn’t have the stomach for any of this; she doesn’t have the heart for it. Jill’s gone along with you so far because you made her. Every step of the way, though, she’s been thinking she should run—you can see it in her eyes, in her demeanor. Your slapping her around isn’t helping any, either. All it does is make her want to run that much more. Where do you think she’s going to run to, Roy, if you keep punching her out? She’s going to run to the cops, and then we’re all screwed.”

“She won’t go to the police.”

“What’s stopping her, Roy? Her undying devotion to you? I have no doubt that Jill loved you once, but I think you’ve pretty much beaten it out of her. I understand that times are tough; I understand that they’re tougher on some than on others. Beating on the one person who has vowed to stick with you for better or for worse, tell me how that helps? Look, your personal life is your business. If you don’t love your wife, that’s fine with me—”

“I love my wife.”

“I hadn’t noticed, but that’s not my concern. My concern is staying out of prison, so Jill is out of it. It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to her until the job is over, either. You might try to remember why you married her in the first place—I bet you had some pretty good reasons.”

I stepped back and offered Roy my hand. He took it, and I helped hoist him off the ground.

“No hard feelings, okay?” I said. “I need you, Roy. These kids, they don’t know which end is up. If we’re going to pull this off, it’ll be you and me doing the heavy lifting. I know I’ve been giving you a hard time since I arrived. That was just to establish hierarchy for the kids. You’re army; you understand what I’m talking about.”

He nodded, and I patted his arm.

“Good man,” I said. I started walking toward Josie’s car. Roy called to me.

“Dyson. When this is over, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”

“Roy, Roy, Roy,” I said. “When this is over, you’re going to be too busy counting your money to even think about that.”

A few moments later, Josie and I were in her car and heading toward the county road. She had an amused expression on her face. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

“You handled that really well,” she said. “You not only got Jill out of the robbery, you got Roy to agree with you. He doesn’t even seem all that angry that you punched him. How did you do that?”

“I read a business book once, The One Minute Manager. It taught me everything I know about running a crew.”

“Did it teach you how to be a criminal?”

“No, that I learned reading Donald Trump’s autobiography.”

Krueger was a “city” in name only. The entire community could have fit easily inside Target Field with room left over for an executive golf course. There was very little of it that I could not see from the road: an orange-brick schoolhouse next to an overgrown football field and an outdoor hockey rink, the boards still up even though the ice had been gone for months now; a gas station/minimart at the crossroads; a bar, restaurant, hardware store, bait and tackle shop; a building that looked like a barn with KRUEGER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT. painted above the door. A half-dozen businesses made up Krueger’s downtown, with an abundance of empty parking spaces in front of them. Houses packed close together, some new, most old, surrounded the downtown. They thinned out as we drove; there were longer and longer stretches between neighbors until there were no neighbors at all. Yet I could see plenty of people living their lives—a mother with a stroller, young kids running through sprinklers, older kids playing baseball; a young man working a barbecue grill while his buddies watched, plates in hand; an elderly couple walking down the road, their arms linked.

“A great place to live, I just wouldn’t want to visit here.”

I was speaking to myself. Josie heard me, though, and added, “Until the jobs went away.”

“Not much worth stealing.”

“No, not much. Do we have time enough for me to make a quick stop at my office?”