Page 84 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Did Oliver Landau kill Felix’s father?” he blurted out one day, loitering in the left-open doorway of Bob’s office. In secret, he thought it was funny that an outlaw had an office, with filing cabinets and everything, but he approved of it, too: even outlaws needed to be organized.

Bob lifted his head slowly, brows raised, as if he couldn’t believe what Harlan had just said. Harlan couldn’t quite believe it himself, but he didn’t feel his usual urge to look away, or duck his head, or, even worse, run out of the room. He braced his boots apart on the floor, met Bob’s gaze steadily, and said, “The guys have been talking for two weeks, and I’ve heard things. I know Remy Lécuyer and his mother are dead. That they were killed. Did Oliver Landau do it?”

Bob stared at him a long moment, unblinking, brows notched. It was an assessment. Harlan thought maybe Bob was truly looking at him for the first time, and wondered what he found there (hoped it was the man who’d nearly choked Dee unconscious, and not the prospect who fished a sponge from the hallway toilet).

Finally, after the moment had stretched so long that Harlan wet his lips in anticipation of asking something else, Bob said, “Yeah. He did.” His clenched jaw and flat gaze dared Harlan to be shocked, to protest, to threaten to run to the police.

It wounded him, that look, more than he wanted to admit. All the hard work he’d put in around here, all the “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “yes, coming right up, sir” bullshit he’d been slinging, and Bob thought he was some sort of rat?

God, whatwouldthey do if he went to the police? If he told them about those heavy, clinking crates. If he told them what Dee had, that Oliver Landau had gone missing days ago, nowhere to be found, just like Felix?

No. He dashed the thought. He wouldn’t do that to Felix. When he saw Felix next, he was going to offer his deepest condolences.

“…kid?” Bob was speaking.

He blinked, and said, “Did Felix kill Landau?”

Bob’s gaze narrowed. “The less you know about that the better.”

Which meantyes.

Jesus.

So that was where Felix had been: finding, and then killing, and then disposing of Oliver Landau, just as Dee had said.

“Why?” he pressed. “Did Remy know something? Was he–”

Bob waved him to silence. “The only beef Landau had with Remy is beef that bitch Dee put into his head. The worst thing that man ever did after that woman left him was stay in town. He shoulda picked up his boy and fled the fucking state.” He shook his head, sadly, and returned his attention to the notebook before him, a clear dismissal.

The next day, he asked Frenchie, “When will Felix be back?”

Frenchie, sitting on the porch rail, one leg stretched out before him, the other dangling off into the open air, was smoking and tapped ash over the edge onto the gravel below. “Dunno. But trust me: you’re gonna want to steer clear when he does.”

He wouldn’t elaborate, so later that afternoon, he caught Diego and Mudbug out back by the storage shed, smoking, and he paused in his box-carrying trips to ask for clarification on Frenchie’s meaning.

The two of them shared sly grins. “Didn’t ya hear?” Mudbug said, wizened face screwed up with glee. “He’s not ‘Felix’ anymore. That boy finally got himself a road name, and it was Landau what gave it to him.”

Diego kicked him in the boot. “Shut up, you old fart.”

Mudbug made a face and waved him off. “Nah, nah, the kid needs to hear it. He needs to know not to fuck around with the man who makes you beg for mercy before the end.”

That was how he first learned that Felix Lécuyer was now known as “Mercy” to his club brothers.

Felix started coming back around, and though Harlan didn’t get the chance to speak with him right away, on that first night back, when the Dogs cheered, and drinks were hoisted aloft, and Felix was greeted with fanfare like a returning war hero, he could tell right away that he was Felix no longer. Not the Felix he’d first met, at least.

The man who wended his way through the clubhouse that night appeared taller, sparer, his arms ropier with muscle. All of that was just an illusion, though: he’d already been tall, and spare, and ropy with muscle. A hulking beast in the making, still caught up in boyhood’s lean spring. It was his face – the light in his eyes – that was changed, and turned his once-jovial, obvious kindness into the mask of a thoughtless animal, one wary, and withdrawn, ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

Harlan stood, transfixed, as Felix – Mercy – moved through the sea of well-wishers. They clapped him on the arms, and shoulders, and back as he passed them, offering condolences that sounded more like congratulations. Felix didn’t react to any of it. He found a table over against the wall, and sat with his back pressed to the wood paneling. A girl appeared before him, shimmying out of the crowd to set a beer before him with a dramatic bend at the waist that left her breasts all but tumbling out of her top and into his face. Felix didn’t react to that, either, and she withdrew looking disappointed.

Bob grabbed a fork off a table and rapped it against the side of a beer bottle until a hush fell and everyone turned to look at him. His gaze fell on Felix, who gazed back with an expression impossible to read, devoid of all warmth – of any kind of feeling at all.

“I just wanted to say,” Bob said, voice that magic blend of affection, and gravity that only Southern men seemed capable of pulling off, “we all know our own Felix has been going through a rough patch, and we know,” he said, seriously, “that thingsmight be rough for a while. We’re all broken up with you about your family, son.”

There were murmurs of agreement and commiseration.

Felix inclined his head in slight acknowledgement.

“Remy was a good man,” Bob continued, “raised by a good woman.” He tipped his bottle, and poured a splash of beer straight onto the floor. Everyone else followed suit, and Harlan knew he ought to go fetch the mop, but he didn’t want to interrupt Bob’s moment. “They’ll be well missed.”

---