Page 95 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“You can hit me again, if you want,” Walsh said. “I won’t try to stop you.”

“I will.” That was Michael, sliding in between them, seemingly out of nowhere. “You had your hit. That’s the only one.”

Aidan tipped his head back so he looked down his nose at Michael, and snorted. “Down, boy. I’m not gonna do anything.” He tried to step around him, and Michael stepped with him. “Seriously? Dude, I’m done.” He held up his empty hands. “And I’m your VP, so, like, fucking stand down because I told you to.”

Michael didn’t move, and Walsh knew exactly how chilling his unblinking stare was.

“Ah. I get it.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Dad’s not dead, which means Walsh isn’t prez, which means I’m nothing, huh? Just some stupid sucker who made an ass of himself, right?” The authority bled out of his voice, and he sounded tired and defeated.

Michael stepped aside, and Aidan came to the bar beside Walsh, leaned over, and plucked up a bottle of Jim Beam, the closest in reach. When he had it, he settled onto a stool, and took a slug straight out of the bottle.

Walsh didn’t sense a threat radiating off of him, so he climbed onto the neighboring stool.

Michael walked around behind the bar and started filling a clean towel with ice from the cooler.

“Thanks,” Walsh murmured, when he passed it over, and pressed it to his flaming-hot jaw.

Michael nodded, but didn’t retreat. Leaned back against the cooler and settled in to wait, gaze trained on Aidan. Loyal, despite everything.

Aidan took another swig, capped the bottle, and put it back. “Are you really going to New Orleans?”

“Yeah. Want to come?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

Walsh nodded, and, inwardly, felt the first stirrings of hope. To Michael, he said, “See which of your dogs your uncle can spare.”

“Just trackers?”

Walsh considered. Thought of Boyle, of Big Jonny, of a man in a wig calling “fillette” through the Lécuyer back door. “A catch dog, too. One way or another, Boyle’s not getting out of the swamp alive.”

Twenty-Four

Fallon was very familiar with underground establishments. He’d learned a long time ago how to use cash and subtle questions in the right sorts of places to find what he was looking for without a lot of scrutiny or pushback. Even so, it was astounding to witness how many underground contacts and allies Boyle had amassed over the years.

Allies was perhaps too strong a word. None of the men setting up camp in the old depot werefriendsof Boyle.

First had been the prisoners. Boyle, it seemed, had spent his entire career catching powerful people in compromising positions, and was now owed more than a few favors. A judge was able to get the convicts released from the federal prison in Alabama, but all of those men had either been killed by the party of Lean Dogs chasing them, or tucked tail and fled once their buddies were killed. Boyle had fumed for about a hundred miles, and Fallon had figured that was that: they were on their own. His plan at that point had been to abandon the kid and flee the second Boyle gave him the chance.

Instead, Boyle had placed a dozen more phone calls, and that was when the thugs-for-hire had started coming out of the woodwork, lured by the promise of cash and indifferent to the threat their targets posed.

“Lean Dogs don’t fuckin’ scare me,” one of the men, a hulking bruiser named Lloyd, had said when he introduced himself in front of the depot.

Lloyd and his men, who’d arrived in three nineties-era F150s lifted up on fat mud tires and tricked out with spotlights, brush guards, winches, and aftermarket welded doors that looked armored, were unloading duffels and setting up tables,and chairs, and all manner of camp equipment on the moldy concrete floor of the abandoned metal warehouse where hunters had once brought their gator hauls for processing.

Remy was over in a corner – Fallon had gotten too nervous leaving him outside after the little shit almost got himself eaten, so he’d hauled him indoors to keep a closer watch on him – tampering with some bit of trash he’d found.

“Hey, Mulder,” someone called, and Fallon hated that he turned around.

The man who’d called him was wiry and rat-faced, with a scraggly mullet so stereotypical Fallon wondered if it was a wig. He laughed when Fallon turned, and gestured to the piece of equipment he stood beside: a massive hook on a length of wire attached to a rusted hydraulic lift, and a track in the ceiling that ran all the way out through a roll-top door to the fetid concrete pool out back. “What’s this used for?”

“We’re in a gator processing depot,” Fallon said. “What do you think it’s for?”

The rat-faced man put his hands up. “Hey, I’m just wondering. Does the hook start here, or out there?” He grinned, afterward, a shitty, shit-eating grin.

“Take your best guest,” Fallon said, and his phone rang.

For the seventh time in a row.

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