Honor

“You know the kid. I need to find him and I want to know his real last name. You helped him get a job in my club. I can hold you responsible for all the shit he fucked up.”

The kid held up his hands in front of him and started to shake his head. “That was Noe! She got him the ID. I just introduced them. Tyler was in a tough spot. I wanted to help.”

“What’s his real name?” I shook my hand out and the kid watched my move warily.

“Tyler French.”

I frowned because the name didn’t immediately ring any bells. It was disappointing. I thought once I had a name, a clear line between who the kid was and whatever reason I had given him to mess with me would be clear, but I ended up with nothing.

“Why does he have it in for me?” I let my fingers clench into a loose fist and the kid gulped. He lifted his hand to wipe his bloody nose and cringed when he came away with blood on his arm.

“I don’t know. He wanted a job at the club really bad and that was all he said. Tyler’s life is shit. His dad is a freak, one of those people that can’t get rid of anything—ever. So he grew up in a junky house that was the worst on the block in a bad neighborhood. The old man was rough on him, really rough, so I wasn’t surprised when he said he needed money to get out.”

The kid shifted again and his eyes looked away from me and then back at me.

“What else?”

The puffy-faced young man slowly started to slide down the wall until he was resting at my feet with his head in his hands. He fisted a bunch of dreadlocks between his fingers and pulled.

“He also asked me to hook him up with a gun. He’s got a couple sisters and Child Welfare just pulled them from his dad’s care. I think that was the final straw for him. Like he had nothing left to lose, ya know?”

My back teeth clicked together in aggravation. “Did you come through for him?”

The kid peeked at me over his bent knees. “Yeah. I had a buddy that wanted to buy a plane ticket back home to New York. He sold Tyler a piece for a few hundred bucks.”

“When was this?” This was information that made the situation with the unpredictable Tyler even more dangerous. Messing with my club and my money was one thing. Having the means to permanently take away the one thing I had ever wanted for myself was another. I couldn’t risk Key like that. I wouldn’t risk her.

“A few days ago.”

“So where can I find Tyler French now?”

The kid shook his head and he looked like maybe he was going to cry. “I don’t know, man. We run the streets. We hop trains. We sleep in squats and under bridges. It’s not like we have addresses.”

I grunted. “Tyler didn’t look homeless when he worked for me.”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know where he’s been staying. Maybe he got a girl or something.”

I considered the cowering kid in front of me as I tried to decide if he was telling me the truth or if he was protecting his friend. Between the bruised and bloody nose, the watery eyes, and the generally defeated demeanor, I came to the conclusion that he knew I wasn’t messing around and could bring a world of hurt down on him if he wasn’t up front with me.

“The worst house on the worst block, where can I find it?”

The kid folded forward and let his forehead rest on his knees. “Dude, Tyler’s already got kicked around by life. Can’t you just cut him a break?”

“No. Tell me where the house is.”

The punk muttered the address and I slipped out of the alley and made my way to what really was the worst part of the Point. It was block after block of run-down single-family homes covered in graffiti and with bars on the windows. It was a neighborhood with asphalt instead of grass in the yards and a place where your neighbor was more than likely selling drugs rather than Girl Scout cookies. It was a neighborhood where, if you saw a woman on the street corner, she wasn’t waiting for her kid to get out of school, she was waiting for a john to pull up so she could offer him a twenty-dollar blow job.

I found the worst house on the block with no trouble. There were rusted bikes in the front yard leaning up against the warped and cracked siding . . . like seven of them. There was a collection of broken coolers and a menagerie of car tires making an obstacle course to the front door. I debated knocking to see if the person in charge of this mess would come to the door, but decided against it. I didn’t have time to waste and getting a rusted door slammed in my face just to have to force my way inside anyway seemed pointless, so I just put my shoulder against the flimsy wooden door and shoved. I heard the lock creak and the handle break away from the frame, but the whole thing barely moved.

I swore under my breath and put more of my weight into the motion. I heard something fall and a male voice bellow from somewhere inside. Once there was enough space to squeeze through, I entered the house and almost instantly regretted my decision. When the kid said the dad was the kind that never got rid of anything, maybe I had been so worried about finding the kid that I failed to read between the lines and realize that the dad was a hoarder. No wonder the kids had been pulled from the home. I hadn’t ever been anywhere as horribly putrid or vile as the inside of this home.

It was alive with bugs and rodents. The smell was so pungent that I could practically see it hanging in the air in front of me. It smelled like trash, bodily fluids, and a general waste of life, with boxes, piles of trash, dirty clothing, and random junk that blocked me everywhere I turned.

I heard the voice calling out the name “Tyler” and then a litany of swearwords as I carefully picked my way through the maze of refuse and rubbish. The voice was slurred and sounded mean, so I couldn’t blame the kid for wanting to get out of this hellhole. I just didn’t know how all this came to have anything to do with me.