Sandra Brown - Play Dirty

THAT IT?”

“That’s it.” Griff Burkett tossed a small duffel bag onto the backseat of the car, then got into the front passenger seat. “I didn’t bring much with me. I’m sure as hell not taking souvenirs.” He wanted no memorabilia from his stint in BIG-official code name for the Federal Correctional Institute in Big Spring, Texas.

He made himself comfortable on the plush leather, adjusted the air-conditioning vent to blow straight at him, then, realizing they weren’t moving, looked over at the driver.

“Seat belt.”

“Oh. Right.” Griff stretched the belt across his chest and latched it. Tongue in cheek, he said, “Wouldn’t want to break the law.”

As lawyers went, Wyatt Turner was okay. But if he possessed a sense of humor, he kept it under lock and key. He didn’t crack a smile at Griff’s wry remark.

“Come on, Turner, lighten up,” Griff said. “This is a special day.”

“Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones commemorating it.”

Turner drew Griff’s attention to an ugly, olive green car parked in a handicapped space. Illegally it seemed, since there was no tag hanging from the rearview mirror. Griff didn’t recognize the make or model of the car because it was younger than five years old. Nothing distinguished the no-frills sedan except the man sitting behind the wheel.

Griff cursed under his breath. “What’s he doing here?”

“It’s been all over the news that you were being released today, but I don’t think he brought champagne.”

“So why’d he come all this way to see little ol’ me?”

“I assume he wants to pick up where the two of you left off.”

“Fat chance.”

The object of their conversation, Stanley Rodarte, had parked where he couldn’t be missed. He had wanted Griff to see him. And Griff would have recognized him anywhere, because Stanley Rodarte was one ugly son of a bitch. His face looked like it had been hacked out of oak with a chain saw, by a carver too impatient to smooth out the rough edges. Cheekbones as sharp as knife blades cast shadows across his ruddy, pockmarked skin. His hair was the color and texture of dirty straw. Behind the lenses of his opaque sunglasses, his eyes-yellowish, as Griff recalled-were no doubt trained on Griff with an enmity that even five years hadn’t blunted.

Griff shrugged with more indifference than he felt. “It’s his time he’s wasting.”

Sounding like the voice of doom, Turner said, “Obviously he doesn’t think so.”

As they pulled closer to the other car, Griff flashed Rodarte a big grin, then raised his middle finger at him.

“Jesus, Griff.” Turner accelerated toward the prison gate. “What’s the matter with you?”

“He doesn’t scare me.”

“Well, he should. If you had a lick of sense, he would scare you shitless. Apparently he hasn’t forgotten about Bandy. Steer clear of him. I mean it. Are you listening? Do not cross him.”

“Am I gonna get billed for that unsolicited advice?”

“No, that advice is on the house. It’s for my protection as well as yours.”

Despite the blasting air conditioner, Griff lowered his window as Turner drove through the gates of the federal prison camp that had been his home for the past five years. The area in which he’d been incarcerated was classified minimum security, but it was still prison.

“No offense to the folks in Big Spring, but I don’t care to ever enter the city limits again,” he remarked as they left the West Texas town and headed east on Interstate 20.

The air was hot, dry, and gritty, perfumed by diesel and gasoline exhaust from the well-traveled highway, but it was free air, the first Griff had tasted in one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-five days. He gulped it.

“Feel good to be out?” his lawyer asked.

“You have no idea.”

After a moment, Turner said, “I meant what I said about Rodarte.”

The sand-bearing wind scoured Griff’s face and flattened his hair against his head. “Relax, Turner,” he said, speaking above the noise of a foul-smelling cattle truck roaring past. “I won’t wave red flags at Rodarte. Or at anybody else. That’s in my past. Ancient history. I took my punishment and paid my debt to society. You’re looking at a rehabilitated, reformed man.”

“Glad to hear it,” the lawyer said, heavy on the skepticism.

Griff had been watching Rodarte in the car’s side-view mirror. He’d followed them out of Big Spring and now was matching their speed, keeping at least three vehicles between them. If Wyatt Turner realized that Rodarte was on their tail, he didn’t mention it. Griff started to say something about it, then figured there were things his lawyer didn’t need to know. Things that would only worry him.

Three hundred miles later, Griff stood in the center of the apartment’s living area, which was a laughable misnomer. A person might exist here, but you couldn’t call it living. The room was so dim it bordered on gloomy, but the poor lighting actually worked in its favor. A crack as wide as his index finger ran up one wall from floor to ceiling like a jagged lightning bolt. The carpet was gummy. The air conditioner wheezed, and the air it pumped was damp and smelled like day-old carryout Chinese.

“It’s not much,” Turner said.

“No shit.”

“But there’s no lease. The rent’s paid month to month. Consider this only a stopover until you can find something better.”

“At least Big Spring was clean.”

“You want to go back?”

Maybe Turner had a sense of humor after all.

Griff tossed his duffel bag onto the sofa. Not only did it look uncomfortable but the upholstery was stained with God-knew-what. He remembered fondly the high-rise condo he used to live in, in the ritzy Turtle Creek area of Dallas. Suffused with natural light during the day, a spectacular view of the skyline at night. Outfitted with countless amenities. Half of the gadgets and gewgaws he hadn’t even known what they were for or how to work them. But the important thing was that he’d had them.

“When you sold my place, weren’t you able to keep any of my stuff?”

“Clothes. Personal items. Pictures. Like that. It’s all in a storage unit. But the rest…” Turner shook his head and nervously jiggled his keys as though anxious to get back in his car, although the drive had taken them nearly five hours with only one stop. “I liquidated everything in the Toy Box first.”

That had been Griff’s pet name for the extra garage he’d leased in which to store his grown-up toys-snow skis, scuba equipment, an Indian motorcycle, a bass fishing boat that had been in the water exactly once. Stuff he had bought mostly because he could.

“The Escalade and Porsche went next. I held off selling the Lexus until I had no choice. Then I began emptying the apartment. I had to sell it all, Griff. To pay off your fine. Consulting fees.”

“Your fee.”

Turner stopped his bit with the keys. Under other circumstances, the combative stance he took would have been humorous. Griff was more than half a foot taller, and he hadn’t slacked on workouts during his incarceration. If anything, he was harder now than when he went in.

Wyatt Turner had the pallor of a man who worked indoors twelve hours a day. A workout for him amounted to eighteen holes of golf, riding in a cart, followed by two cocktails in the clubhouse. In his mid-forties, he had already developed a soft paunch in front and sagging ass in back.

“Yes, Griff, my fee,” he said defensively. “I get paid to do my job. Just like you do.”