“Please, Toad,” Hartley asked sweetly. “It’d mean a lot to me.”
He sighed and leaned up against the car, eyeing Hartley. “Caldwells are bad news,” he said finally. “I always thought the Dixie was bad, but the Caldwells are worse. They’re smaller than the Dixie, got less men and such, but they’re nasty. Just last month they cut a man’s eyes out for betraying them. Can you believe that? Cut a man’s eyes out!”
I shook my head. “Nasty.”
“Real nasty, Travis. I got lots of stories like that about them, but I won’t tell them. Truth is, the Caldwells are not people to mess with.”
Well that was pretty bad news. I didn’t know what I had expected, but stories about plucking eyeballs out wasn’t exactly it.
“Who’s running them right now?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I said it,” he answered, shaking his head.
“Try me.”
“Really, you won’t.”
“Toad.”
“Janey. Little Janey Caldwell is running the whole show.”
I blinked at him, surprised. “Ray’s old girl?”
“Yeah. That’s her, except she changed a lot after that accident.”
“I left pretty soon after that,” I said.
“You missed it then. Janey went from a sweet girl to cold as ice. Her family started getting into some intense shit, apparently because she was pushing her brothers into it. Well, years later, Janey is the one running it all.”
“What about her parents?”
“Her mom is too drunk to care, and her pop don’t care who makes the calls so long as he gets paid.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s hard to swallow, Toad.”
“Would I lie to you, Travis? Would I?”
“No. I know you wouldn’t.”
Jane Caldwell, leader of the Caldwell family gang. Sweet Jane the prom queen, my brother’s old girl, now a violent gangster.
Time really fucking changed things. Though I shouldn’t be too surprised. I went from a petty criminal to a highly trained and lethal Navy SEAL. Was it so hard to imagine that Jane could go through a transformation like that?
“Okay, Toad. You’ve been helpful,” I said.
“Don’t do it. Don’t get involved, whatever you do.”
“We won’t,” Hartley said. “I’m already scared off.”
I glanced at her and then back to Toad. “You heard the girl.” I shook his hand. “Thanks again.”
We turned and quickly left before Toad could launch into more stories, which he no doubt wanted to.
As we put some distance between us and Toad, Hartley looked at me. “You know this girl?” she asked.
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
She chewed her lip as we stopped next to the car. “Seems like you know everyone.”
“Knoxville isn’t so big,” I said, “and my brother was pretty popular.”
“Sounds like it. What were you like back then?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “I was like everyone else here: stupid as fuck and trying desperately to get out.”
“And you did.”
“Guess so.”
“What’s this girl like?”
“I really don’t know, not anymore at least. After the accident, after Ray died, I enlisted almost right away. I never saw what she was like after.”
“Still, you knew her before.”
“She was a nice girl,” I said, trying to remember. “She was always nice to me. Not all of Ray’s friends were, back then. I didn’t play football, and so a lot of the guys didn’t think I was worth talking to. Not Janey. Everyone liked her.”
“Cheerleader?”
I laughed again. “How’d you know?”
“They always are.”
“It’s such a cliché, I know.”
“Can’t be helped. Some clichés happen to be true.”
“I don’t know how she went from pretty, popular cheerleader to leader of a drug gang in only a few years. I really don’t.”
Hartley nodded slowly. “I guess we’ll find out.” She opened the door to the passenger side and climbed in.
I smiled to myself. Hartley was perceptive, surprisingly perceptive. I hadn’t much thought about how she was going to work into this thing we had going, but maybe she could hold her own. I basically was figuring that she’d be a liability for most of it and I’d be spending half my time keeping her alive.
But maybe I was wrong. So far she’d known when it was time to turn on the charm and when it was time to hang back. She knew when to step up and drink the damn drink and when to smile.