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just flips up her hand and keeps talking: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Irene, no, no, you need to—listen to me—you need to just go to the salon and get it done—listen now, listen, your feet look like dead birds! Everybody says so...”
    Tundu shrugs after she’s gone. “Family, you know?”
    “I know. Least yours isn’t trying to kill you.”
    “Sometimes I wish they would, man. You wanna go? I take you to meet Mister Urbanski—he’s the taxi boss. Like I said: real shithead, that guy, but the job is the job.”
    Cason shakes his head. “Not today. I got somebody I gotta go meet.”
    “Employer?”
    “My brother. You mind giving me a ride?”

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Whiskey’s Thicker Than Blood
     
    T UNDU PULLS THE cab up to the corner at H Street and Ontario—not far from the elementary school Cason went to, once. He thinks suddenly about what it’d be like if Barney went to that school. What he’d go through every day. The fights. The drugs. The teachers paid a pittance to teach an overstuffed classroom of kids that’d rather hit you with a book than read one.
    “That the place?” Tundu asks. He lifts his chin, gestures toward the corner bar. Dirty red overhang. Sign that reads GIL’S BAR in white. Also smudged with the filthy fingerprints of this perpetually grimy city.
    Cason nods. “Yeah.”
    “You got my number?”
    “Mm. What do I owe you?”
    Another big laugh from Tundu. “Don’t worry, chief. I’m calculating. Mister Tallyman. Up here.” He taps his forehead in the center with a thick tree-root finger.
    Cason claps him on the shoulder and exits the cab.
    The city breathes heat. It’s not even summer yet and the whole town’s got a muggy, gummy feel to it. And it smells like a sewer system backing up.
    Into the bar, then.
    Bell jingles. It’s cool in here. Ceiling fan blows air scented with spilled beer and old wood. It’s dark and dim, like an old forgotten bar should be. A few old salts lined up at the watering hole. A woman in her 40s—heavy-lidded eyes look over pock-marked cheeks into a tall glass of something boozy. Like a witch at her cauldron.
    And it’s only 10:00 in the morning.
    But these people don’t matter.
    Only the man behind the bar matters.
    Connor—‘Conny’—looks up. He’s younger than Cason but somehow looks older. Bonier, for sure—all bedknobs and broomsticks, this guy. Whiskery wire-brush chin. Dark, deep-set eyes. His nose is a mountain with many smaller peaks. Soon as he makes eyes on Cason, he clucks his tongue, shakes his head.
    “Cason, you fuck,” Conny says. Big bright smile. Contains no happiness. First thing he does as Cason walks up is start pouring a beer. “Yuengling lager, unless you want one of those fuckin’ hoity-froofy craft beers. Which I don’t have, by the fuckin’ way.”
    Cason takes the beer. Doesn’t drink it. “Conny. Been a while.”
    “A while? Been a fuckin’ ice age.” Conny leans in, squinting. Lowers his voice a little. “Hey, by the way, heard about your guy’s house getting’ blown to fuckin’ hell’s asshole and back. Supposing you’re out a job.” He leans back, resumes his normal too-loud volume. “Don’t think you’re gettin’ work here, you lazy shit. Unless you feel like swabbing Flynn’s syphilitic spit from his pint glass, ain’t that right, Flynn?” Conny throws a glance toward the nearest old salt, a bald, liver-spotted eagle of a man whose white beard is mopping the bar. Flynn says nothing, just shoots up a crusty old middle finger. “Flynn, you old fuckin’ prick, you’re the best. I mean that.”
    Cason’s turn to lower his voice. “How’d you know? About the thing.”
    “The explosion? I know all, big brother.”
    “Can we—can we talk about this somewhere else?”
    “Don’t think we need to. These fine fuckin’ patrons are my friends and compatriots.” He offers a sloppy hand gesture to indicate the whole of the bar. “Each and every one of them, you see.”
    Another