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  “I ain’t got cold feet, bitch.” He started to lift from his knees, but Tomas pushed him back down.

  “Wait until he’s walking toward the car with his back to us.”

  The man cautiously descended two steps, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. Had he spotted them? Just then, the dog from earlier lumbered past them, heading toward the street.

  Alfonso let out a breath.

  “He’s moving again,” Tomas said, smacking Alfonso on the leg.

  Alfonso removed the gun from his jeans, aiming the barrel toward the dark sky. He watched the man take the last step into the alley.

  Tomas nodded his head, and the pair moved out from behind the bin and began moving cautiously down the alley. Their rubber-soled shoes were barely audible. Halfway to the target, Alfonso picked up the sound of a rap beat. It was coming from the bakery. Old-school Tupac? Maybe. It kicked his pulse up another notch.

  They closed the distance to the man quickly. He was approaching the back of his car, and they were no more than twenty feet away. Alfonso could hardly contain his exuberance. He would soon be back in the game.

  He stepped on a can.

  The man whipped around and spotted them.

  “Fuck!” yelled Tomas. “Get after him, dammit!”

  Alfonso sprang out of his stance so fast that his shoe slipped off the can. His knee dropped to the wet, rocky cement. Regaining his footing, he saw the man darting for the driver’s-side door, juggling his keys.

  Alfonso moved like the wind. The man put his hand on the door handle, and there was a beep. He opened the door just as Alfonso reached him, the barrel of the gun pressed against his forehead.

  “Please don’t hurt me.” The man’s voice quavered. He clutched his bag with one hand and pushed his glasses up on his nose with the other.

  Alfonso’s heart hammered in his chest. He just stood there for a moment, wondering if some greater force would send a signal for him to let this man live…something that would lead him on a path to redemption.

  “You going to do it, Alfonso, or are you going to go back and flip burgers?”

  Alfonso didn’t answer Tomas. He couldn’t. He was so hyped up, he could hardly breathe.

  “Alfonso. That’s your name?” the man said, now with a bit of hope in his voice. “I’ll give you everything I’ve got, about a hundred dollars in cash, all of my credit cards. Here, you can even take my car.” He extended his hand with the key fob in it. “It’s all yours. I won’t tell a soul. I just want to live.”

  The gun suddenly felt heavy in Alfonso’s hand as a flood of images flashed through his mind, all of which were of his baby girls. Would they one day be proud of their Pops?

  He felt tears pool in his eyes.

  “Did you hear me? You can have everything—the cash, the credit cards, the car. Just don’t kill me. You may not give a damn about your life, but I care about mine,” the man said with an air of defiance.

  “You hear that, Alfonso?” Tomas said from behind him. “He says you don’t care about your life. It’s now or never, motherfucker. What do you say?”

  Tears burst from his eyes. He squeezed the trigger. The man’s head snapped back, and then he slowly crumpled to the ground.

  “I choose to get my respect back, bitch!” Alfonso growled.

  Tomas laughed as Alfonso grabbed the man’s wallet and briefcase. And then the pair disappeared into the dreary night.

  8

  An old song whined from the jukebox in the corner. I think it was a tune by a local Austin act, Monte Montgomery. Hard to tell for certain. Half the lights blinked on and off. The jukebox must have been thirty years old. Of course, my hearing wasn’t stellar. In fact, in a public place like Peretti’s, with all the ambient noise, it was nearly impossible to hear anything or anyone distinctly. I had to make sure I stared at their mouths, which, for some, can be a bit creepy.

  I lifted the tumbler of bourbon whiskey, moved it around until one of the overhead spotlights caught it just right. The booze had taken the edge off my nerves but had also hindered my ability to think very clearly.

  It was for the best. Just ask Poppy.

  “You gonna sweet-talk that beautiful whiskey or just down it?” She smacked a shot glass onto the wooden bar, leaned a full bottle of whiskey against the side, and poured until it reached the rim. She held up the glass. “You drink the good stuff; I’ll stick with the cheap shit. You with me?”

  Not exactly in a celebratory mood, I didn’t leave her hanging. We clinked glasses—I was a little clumsy and knocked her glass too hard. It began to spill, but she quickly threw back the whiskey and then wiped her face with her arm.

  Damn, she was hardcore. Always had been, at least for the last two years that I’d known her. I just smiled.

  “What’s so frickin’ funny?”

  “Nothing,” I said. She was an original and did what she needed to keep her life moving forward. It wasn’t my place to start pointing out her flaws. At this moment, her life was far more stable and, frankly, happier than mine.

  I shifted the glass from one hand to the other. No matter what I did, I couldn’t help but retrieve a memory from my time with Nicole. Right now, the recollections focused on our California relationship—“phase one,” as we’d later called it. A period in our lives when we were so full of spontaneity, sharing our souls with each other, dissecting the meaning of life without taking life too seriously. To sound cliché, we were carefree and madly in love. And yet, we didn’t have to say it. We showed it to each other every day.

  I recalled one time when we were standing on a pier watching the sun set behind a low bank of fog that was drifting in, seemingly splitting the Golden Gate Bridge in half. The vibrant colors, the rough bay water lapping against the pier, the waft of fish in the air. We just wrapped our arms around each other and took it all in. It must have lasted a half hour. Neither of us said a word. We didn’t have to. We were both thinking and feeling the same thing. That was when I learned what intimacy was all about.

  “Can I call you Mr. Deep Thought?”

  It was Poppy again. Wearing a short T-shirt that allowed people to see her pierced navel, she put a hand on her waist. She was not a small woman, but the proportions were set to perfection. Still, your eyes went either to the colorful tattoos lining her arms and neck—she’d yet to show me other parts of her body—or the red dreadlocks that draped behind her head.

  To me, she was Austin. Raw, coarse, yet genuinely honest. Like I said, she was an original.

  “My thoughts aren’t very deep right now. Very single-threaded.”

  “Come on, Oz. You need to snap out of it. It’s not like you to be this way.”

  “Can’t you just let me drink and wallow in my own self-pity?”

  Someone called her name from the other end of the bar. The place wasn’t quite half full. Just enough to pay the bills, I’d imagine, and to keep Poppy entertained. She turned her head. “Hold on a second,” she yelled at them, then turned back to me, both hands on the edge of the bar.

  I tried avoiding her glare. Through the foggy mirror behind the bottles of booze on the opposite wall, I watched a young couple walk by, each with a hand in each other’s back pocket. I shifted my sights back to Poppy. I could practically feel the lasers shooting from her eyes.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to not do what you just said you were doing…this whole wallowing and pity thing. Isn’t that the same thing you told me when we first met?”

  Poppy had been my second client. After a preliminary hearing with my first client—a wealthy woman accused of a hit-and-run—I’d lingered in the court a little too long, and the judge ordered me to defend her. Pro bono. Dad was less than thrilled, but he knew I had no choice. She’d been arrested for prostitution and drug possession. She was a mess. Strung out on cocaine, she could hardly connect two words together. She was depressed, anxious, and scared. Her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in an outlet, and she cou
ldn’t stop scratching her arms.

  After a listless first meeting with her, I figured I couldn’t help someone who didn’t want it. But as I lay in bed that night, I thought about why I’d become a lawyer. Yes, I’d dreamed of joining my father at the firm and taking the world by storm—it was an immature if not grossly superficial notion. But before dollar signs had taken control of my motivations, I was inspired to get through law school so I could make a difference in people’s lives. And who needed it most? The ones who couldn’t afford a high-priced attorney. The ones who thought no one cared whether they lived a vibrant life or slowly dissolved into a shell of a person. That, I realized, was where I could make the biggest difference.

  I had gone back the next day to meet with Poppy, focused on helping her, not just her case. I was able to strike a plea bargain on her charges. I floated her some money for clothes, found her a job as a waitress at a diner, and tried to make her feel like she was worth more than being a piece of meat.

  It turned her life around. After that, she went through what she called her enlightenment period; she became a tattoo artist for a while, colored her hair, and eventually started managing Peretti’s. She was dating some chick she’d met in the tattoo shop, and she was as happy as I’d ever seen her.

  Now she was trying to return the favor.

  “It’s different.” That was my comeback? I knew it was lame the moment I said the words.

  She nodded, crossed her arms just under her sizable chest. She didn’t say anything for a moment, analyzing me, which made me uncomfortable. I finally lifted the glass and sipped my whiskey of choice—Knob Creek.

  She huffed out a breath. “Just keep drinking. Drink until you can’t stand, and then when you wake up tomorrow, just sit down and write a folksy song about losing the love of your life and how your dog pissed on your clothes.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “But the lyrics will sound better.” She cracked a smile.

  I snickered, rolled my eyes, and then thought to check my phone. No reply to a text I’d sent earlier to Arie, asking what the plan was for the office and for defending Dad. Poppy finally moved on to help other customers, allowing me to ponder her get-over-it directive. Easier said than done. I couldn’t help but wonder what had caused this instant change in Nicole. After we’d both survived the bombing, if anything, I appreciated her and what we had more than ever. But she had become distant. Or had she been that way before and I didn’t notice it? Some event must have triggered her change.

  And then I let the dagger theory pierce what little protective shell that was still intact: she could be involved with another man.

  I had to repeat the phrase to myself twice to believe I was even thinking it. If someone had uttered that phrase prior to two months ago, I would have not only laughed, I would have bet anything that neither of us would ever cheat on the other. I firmly believed there was a stronger likelihood that the world would finally succumb to some type of apocalyptic event before Nicole and I even had a hint of any trouble in our relationship.

  Maybe now was the time to invest in an underground shelter.

  I caught myself smiling in the smoky mirror—crazy man. I took another sip of my whiskey.

  As for my theory on whether she was cheating or not, did it really matter? She’d apparently been working on this exit for a while. And she’d made a clean break. Maybe, in the long run, I’d appreciate her heartless approach of ripping off the bandage. For now, though, I had to take steps to move forward and focus on something that would get me out of this funk. Helping Dad. Ensuring the firm survived. Figuring out where I was going to sleep for the night.

  I pulled out my money clip and tossed down my credit card just as Poppy showed up with a plate full of nachos and a tall glass of ice water. “Eat,” she said, pointing at the plate. Then she walked off to ring up my bill. I didn’t argue. I’d downed four nachos and most of the water by the time she returned. She flipped the card back on the counter.

  “It was rejected.”

  “What?”

  “The card is no good.”

  And then I remembered that one part of the text from Nicole. There might be some interim rough spots as credit and debit cards are reissued. Until then, I’m sure you’ll be okay.

  I pulled out a different piece of plastic, this one from another bank, and handed it to Poppy.

  “You sure you want to be embarrassed again?”

  My hands dropped to the bar, defeated.

  “Just checking,” she said, backing away with both hands in the air.

  I ate one more nacho and watched her body language from afar. She attempted to run the card through twice. Each time, she pressed her lips together. Then she headed over to give me the bad news.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I said, feeling my pockets for cash. And then another memory hit me. “Dammit.”

  “What’s wrong now? Someone steal your dog…you know, the one you’re going to write that song about?” She grinned playfully.

  Her brand of humor was ill-timed, to say the least. “I gave all of my cash away to Sam, the old guy who shines shoes outside of our office. Nicole shut down all of my cards. I’ve got nothing, no place to stay. I’ll have to sleep in the back of my Cadillac.”

  “You sure she didn’t have the car repossessed?”

  “Funny.” But I still looked toward the door. I snapped my head back when I found a large black man standing two feet to my right. He had a hoop nose ring and wore the kind of cap that golfers wear. Except the cap looked as tiny as a yarmulke on his oversized head.

  “I saw you take out those three guys this morning. It was badass, Oz.” He broke out in a smile.

  And that was when I knew I had a friend I could count on.

  9

  An hour later, I stood in front of a painting larger than I was. It was one of the most authentic pictures I’d seen of Santa’s sleigh. I was in awe. “You painted this?”

  My old high school friend chuckled so hard I thought the floor might start shaking. His jowls certainly were. “Just check the lower right-hand corner.”

  Under a picture light from the second-floor studio in his downtown flat, I saw his name. Or, rather, his old nickname. “Tito. That stuck with you all these years?”

  “Yep.”

  Randal Adams had played defensive tackle on my high-school football team. He had a nasty disposition on the field, but off the field, he was the polar opposite. Always singing a tune or telling a joke, he was the life of our locker room. While quite the performer, the “Tito” nickname had nothing to do with Tito Jackson of the Jackson Five. Instead, it was his penchant for downing burritos at a rate usually associated with food-eating contests.

  “Didn’t you used to say that you wanted to be a black Jerry Seinfeld?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think it through very well. For one, I’m not Jewish.”

  I felt my brow furrow.

  “That was supposed to be a joke. See? I guess I made the right career choice.”

  I shuffled to my right and stood under the next cone of light. This painting featured a little boy in a onesie opening a jack-in-the-box in front of a sparkling tree on Christmas morning. The kid’s exuberant expression was priceless.

  “Wow, Tito. I had no idea.”

  “I didn’t either. Not until I just started painting one day. It just felt natural, like I should have been doing it all my life.”

  I looked around the room. “I see a lot of Christmas-themed paintings. What other types of things do you paint?”

  “Mainly that.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Not sure you knew, but my dad walked out on us when I was still real young. It hit everyone pretty hard. So, when I first started painting, I tried a few other things at first, and they were pretty good. But I knew I had something else I wanted to show the world. So I thought about what made me the happiest growing up. And that was when Ma, my two sisters, my younger brother—my whole family—g
ot together for Christmas. It was special. And so I just try to pass along that same feeling.”

  “That’s really cool.”

  “Yeah, life is crazy at times. When my dad took off, Ma was worried sick, working two jobs. My two older sisters had to get part-time jobs to help pay the bills. There were no guarantees any of us would amount to anything. And then a few years later, something pulled me into painting. After a while, I became content with my life. I’d found my passion, that thing that makes you think you’re helping make the world a little bit better.”

  He held his fist up high as he spoke. Obviously, he was fully immersed in his newfound path. “Man, once you find your passion, you realize no one can take that away. No one can walk out on you and destroy your life. It’s about what’s in here.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “And how you choose to share it with everyone else.”

  I nodded, held his gaze another beat. His wisdom seemed to hold extra weight.

  I studied two more of his paintings. Both continued the two recurring themes: a Christmas setting with a joyous vibe.

  The odd thing about my family was, despite being Jewish, we actually celebrated Christmas. I think we said we were Jewish just because of family roots, which went back to Poland. I hadn’t been to the temple in years.

  “You do okay as a painter?” I asked.

  He barked out a laugh. “Check out the price tag just next to the painting of that little boy. By the way, that’s supposed to be me.”

  I smiled, leaned closer to the wall, and saw the price tag. “Two grand?” I sounded almost too excited for my former teammate. I reached over and gave him a bro hug. “Tito, I’m so glad for you, man. And your timing couldn’t have been better for me. I needed something to cheer me up.”

  “Well, I’m no Santa,” he said with another belly-jiggling chuckle, which, of course, made me think of Old Saint Nick. “Seriously, dude, I just wish your world was a little better right now.”

  “You and me both, Tito.”