I pulled up a tattered lawn chair and sat in it. We were in the central courtyard at Shady Oaks, sitting around the dried-up pool, which was filled with leaves and old cigarette butts instead of water. It was eleven o’clock on Saturday night, and I dropped a six-pack onto the concrete between us.
“Give me one of those.” Ben Hanratty, Devon’s lawyer, pulled his half-wrecked lawn chair closer and grabbed for a beer. Since he’d inherited an estate worth a billion dollars, Devon was now the kind of guy to have a lawyer—but, being Devon, he didn’t have the usual kind. Ben was in his thirties, with dirty blond hair and a scruff of beard. Tonight he was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, dirty jeans, and motorcycle boots. He looked like the president of the local MC on his night off, but he was actually a whip-smart lawyer who took no shit. He’d worked for Devon before the inheritance, had defended him in his prison case, and his loyalty to his client was without question.
“Is there a reason we had to meet here?” Devon asked me, cracking his own beer. He was dressed like Ben, in old jeans and a dark green Henley beneath a battered leather jacket. Together they looked like they were about to mug someone or take some old lady’s purse. “I thought when I moved out of my apartment and gave it to you, I’d never have to see this place again.”
“Especially after Olivia moved out,” Ben agreed. Olivia had lived in the apartment across the way until she’d moved into Devon’s house in Diablo last month. “I see the place hasn’t improved since I saw it last.”
I picked up my own beer. “The place hasn’t improved since it was built in the sixties,” I said. “What did you expect?”
“That we’d meet somewhere with actual chairs,” Devon said, squirming in his lawn chair. “And maybe a roof.”
“You’ve gotten soft,” I teased him. “Shady Oaks used to be good enough for you.”
In one of the corridors above us, a cloud of pot smoke wafted from an apartment. Someone laughed. Two women came into the complex and crossed the courtyard, weaving and giggling. One of them catcalled us, loudly. Devon glanced over his shoulder at them and turned back to me, shrugging. “It’s a dump,” he observed. “So what do you want us here for?”
“Gwen has a problem,” I said, “with the piece of shit she wo
rks for.”
Devon’s eyebrows shot upward. “Gwen?”
“The stripper?” Ben asked.
“Listen,” I said, and I laid it out for them. I felt myself getting angry even as I talked about it, but I kept myself under control. This meeting was about getting shit done, not giving in to my emotions.
Even if it would feel really, really good to make this Trent guy sorry.
When I finished talking, Devon gripped his beer. “She hasn’t told Olivia about any of this,” he said. “She doesn’t know a thing.”
“Gwen is proud,” I said. I could relate. “She’s embarrassed that she got into it. She wanted to deal with this herself. But she can’t.”
“Which she admitted to you,” Devon observed sharply. “When exactly?”
After I spanked her ass red, I thought, but I said, “Never mind that. The point is, something needs to be done about this situation. Gwen could sue him for her back pay, but she can’t afford a lawyer.”
Devon’s voice was low and dry, the way it was when he was starting to get quietly, hotly angry. “She can now.”
“That would be me,” Ben broke in. He put his beer down and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “He can’t withhold her pay like that. It’s so fucking illegal it gives me a hard-on. I’d sue him for free, just to put a hook in his balls, but Devon won’t let me.”
“Nope,” Devon said.
Ben shrugged. “I’ll take your money if you insist. But something tells me that’s not what we’re going to do.”
“Correct,” I said. “So we sue him, so what? It takes months before it goes to court, and in the meantime he declares bankruptcy or leaves the state. Gwen never gets her money, and he starts up somewhere else. We need a better plan.”
“Which you’ve already thought of,” Devon said, his green eyes gleaming in the dark. He swigged his beer. “Spill it, Max. Do we put him out of business?”
“I thought of that, too. Still not good enough,” I said. “He just comes up with a new name and pops up somewhere else, takes advantage of a new roster of women. No. I want this guy finished. As in, completely finished.”
“I like the sound of this,” Ben said, laughing.
“I hired an investigator,” I told them. “A fellow vet. I know him from the bar I go to. It only took him a few hours today to find a few things we can use.”
“Such as?” Devon said.
I took a long drink of my beer. “First of all, he’s behind on his back rent in the office he rents. He’s about to get evicted. The building itself is underwater, and the landlord is desperate to sell.”
Devon’s voice was still angry. “How much?”