Brady pulled into an abandoned lot on the east side of Octoberfaire, closer to the inner city than the bay. His friends got out of the car before me. I followed behind, at a distance, and kicked around a bit of trash before Brady noticed my distance. He came to walk beside me.
A few other trucks littered the area. One familiar truck stood out in my mind like a misplaced blue toothbrush.
"That was good," he said, the beige envelope still wrapped beneath his sinewy arm. Had he put on muscle? "Better than good. We hit a great stash of old municipal bonds we could sell off to collectors."
"Never took you for a trash collector."
"Come on, it ain't that bad. Nothing wrong with picking clean abandoned places like that old factory. Besides, if we didn't go, someone else would."
"It just feels so weird," I said, honestly. "Like, you say it's just old junk, but why does it feel like you're not being honest with me? I doubt Kyle or Owen are historians looking to get their tomb raiding on." And I believed it. They were some jumpy motherfuckers.
We leaped a wire fence on the edge of the lot and landed on a patch of dirt, worn down with constant use. It wasn't long before we reached a clearing below the lot, just outside of view from the surrounding buildings, where a bit of wood and concrete met with surprising symbiosis. Like an outdoor amphitheater, with rows of stone benches leading down into a pit. The foundations were cracked, splintering, and worn down. I felt more unsure as I followed the rest of them down toward the recess, like I wasn't supposed to be there. A mix of wooden fences, more stone foundations, industrial metalwork, and brick walls hid the pit from unwanted eyes. The entrance to a sewer breached the far end of a higher vantage point.
A group of other high schoolers, and maybe some college-age guys, idly hung around the general area. Maybe fifteen in total, including us. Each of them wore a dash of that same kind of yellow Brady wore. More of his weird group, I guessed. They didn't seem to care that we were there. More bored than anything.
I stopped to listen. I heard a light thrumming leaving the sewer, like there was movement further down the tunnel. No one else seemed to notice, or care. I was ripped from my focus when a small object was tossed at me.
I caught the brick with ease. Its surface was smooth, velvety, and green. Money. I flipped through the wad of cash like a gambler counting cards. I almost got a paper cut.
"That's your pay," Brady said. "For the job." He stood close to the far side of the pit, beside a dais.
"I barely did anything."
"Come on now Lynn. Just take the money and shut up." He laughed, though it wasn't his usual one. His voice strained against my ears.
"For what? I didn't earn this. I don't want it."
I weighed the wad of cash with one hand. The paper felt like sand on my fingertips. It was so brittle, like it could fall apart at any second.
"What do you mean you don't want it?"
"I didn't do this shit to get paid. I did it to help a friend out."
"You did, and now you're getting rewarded for your generosity."
"What's so generous about breaking into a factory?"
"It would mean a lot to me if you just took the money." Brady's smile thinned. He stared at me like I was a stranger. Nothing more.
"Keep it," I said. I walked forward and shoved the wad of cash right back into his hand. "Look, this has been fun. But I'm over the weird skulking shit. If you want me to help out, you have to be honest with me."
"Honest? When have I ever been dishonest with you, O'Neal."
I just stared at him, waiting for his joke of an attitude to blow over. His brow was as sharp as a visor, as dark as a helmet. He didn't want to give in. Fine. If he wanted to play stupid, I just wouldn't play with him. Kyle and Owen watched us snap at each other like hyenas giggling to themselves with those high-pitched cackles.
"You know, I didn't bring you here just to pay you." He gave the wad of cash to someone else to hold onto. Someone I didn't recognize. They eyed me up and down. "I brought you here to make you an offer, man. Something so good I know you won't refuse."
"You're making it sound like you're offering me to join a cult."
"Nah dude, it's nothing like that," he said, laughing. "Nah, nah we're more like a club."
I frowned. "A club?"
"A club," he repeated more strongly.
"A club," Owen parroted.
"Ah," I said. "A club."
"It's a pretty big club. With a lot of people in it. And everyone likes to help each other out, doing favors, covering for each other, like a band."
"Like our band?"
"Look, man," he said, orbiting me. "We've got a good thing going with Jimmy, Mel, and those guys. But, getting our name out there takes a lot of hard work. I know we play good music. Damn good music. Dude, you're the best guitarist in all of Easttown." He placed his hand on my shoulder. It felt cold to the touch. "But good chords aren't enough to get our name out there these days. These guys are the reason I got us gigs at that skate park."
"What do they want?" I had suspected who Brady was rolling with--going on jobs with--for a little while now. Their names were everywhere in Easttown and Lenox. It was hard to not know who they were with the amount of influence they had on the city. I just didn't want to say it out loud, too afraid that to say it out loud would make it real, a tangible reality. Brady's yellow handkerchief poked out from the back of his jeans.
"They just want us to clean up some old dusty lots, like what we've been doing already."
"So, what you're telling me is you've been making me do Saint's work these past few months?"
"I've been letting you in on our club, Lynn. They like what you've been doing. And, I trust you."
"Yea, well, I'm not sure if I trust you anymore."
"Watch your tone, O'Neal," Owen said. Brady held out his hand to calm him down.
"That's enough O'. We're all friends here."
I surveyed the area again. The way we came in from was flanked by two kids with baseball bats. Leaning on the walls, bored out of their minds, and picking their teeth with grime-stained nails. I wondered if I could take them. If push came to shove, I gathered that I could get right by them, maybe put the both of them on their asses. Deal with them even if they have those bats. It's Brady, Owen, and Kyle who I'm less sure of. I could still hear a faint hum escaping from the sewer.
"What exactly are they making you searching for?"
"I can't tell you if you're not 'in the club', so to speak."
"How about you tell me what you're looking for and I'll think about it."
He shook his head. A chain-link gate opened with a loud clang and suddenly, one kid with a bandana covering his face rushed through. He lined up in front of Brady, panting and kneeling over himself.
"No luck," he said between breaths. "We couldn't find him."
Brady scowled harsher than anything Lynn's seen for a while. His nostrils flared and his eyes went red.
"What do you mean you couldn't find him? Did he fall off the face of the planet?" Damn, why did he have to snap at him? Brady forced the courier to answer to his disappointment. It wasn't like anything I was used to, at least in the band. Brady's never been this pushy… at least with his friends. Then again, we weren't exactly being gentle with those two freshmen on the wharf, scaring them like that. This was something different. I was an idiot for thinking we were different.
The courier shook his head and swallowed a lump of phlegm. His knees vibrated quietly like rubber tubes.
"He wasn't where you said he'd be--"
"Damn it. Can't you losers do anything right? Then, if we can't find him, we can use the kid. He should know where he is."
"What are you talking about?" I asked. What kid? This sounded like a little more than urban exploration to me.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "Doesn't matter much anyway. We're just going to pay that twerp you scared off a few days ago a little visit."
"I thought you just wanted them scared off? There's no reason to track the kid down. He's just a kid for God's sake."
"We're paying him a visit. And like I said, don't worry. No one's getting hurt. Besides, last time I checked, you weren't above clocking that kid on the wharf."
"That was… a mistake."
"A mistake?"
"I was lost in the moment. I didn't mean to escalate things."
"I get it Lynn, you did something you probably wouldn't have if not pushed to. But, I didn't tell you to go that far, that was on you."
That really got my blood boiling, because a part of me knew it was the truth. I hit and fought them, not Brady.
"I realize that. I'm not making the same mistake as last time."
"You won't make another mistake if you just trusted me. Because, man--" he gripped my shoulder "--I believe in you. And I need your help."
I shrugged him off. "Just get dumb and dumber to do it. I'm out. I'm going to grab some fresh air." I walked past Brady's outstretched hand. Owen and Kyle went to grab for my arms. Their grips were vise-like, as if they were waiting for this opportunity.
"Hey, hey, cool it you two," Brady said. "It's alright, let him get some fresh air."
I didn't look back until I was outside the pit, afraid that if I'd look back, I'd see the disappointment on Brady's face. The two goons standing guard didn't even notice me.
I lit a cigarette just outside the entrance to the lot, watching the ashes flicker away into the night, reminding me of that lightshow. Damn it, why did Brady drag me out here? What's his aim? So many questions floated around in my head so many things I thought about myself and the people around me slowly burned away to leave a hole, a pit. I felt hollow.
Back then, I didn't have to think about stuff like this. Things were so much more simple. I'd meet up with Brady and the other kids at Jimmy's, we'd kick a can around the neighborhood or hang around the train tracks. Maybe, we'd bang some sticks on some drums, make some sort of eldritch sound. We ruled the town. Nothing was beyond our reach.
But now? We went to different schools. We hung around different people. Things just weren't the same anymore. Gone were the days where we'd fuck around at the wharf without making someone bleed.
I walked over to the familiar looking blue truck from earlier. It was otherwise unchanged in the few minutes I'd been inside. I leaned against the front, pulled a long drag, and blew it towards the windshield. I laughed to myself.
Did I really want to follow Brady into the Saints? I don't want to deal with that kind of shit. Damn, I just wanted to play my guitar, like we've always done it. Why'd he have to go and do a thing like that?
Or maybe I was the pussy.
I smothered the cigarette and started my way back to the pit when two figures diverged from the chainlink fence. I ducked behind a low concrete barrier just out of sight before they could register me. They came out so suddenly my skin crawled.
They lit a cigarette too. "Freezing out," Owen said.
"Ha, you're kidding," Kyle said. He shuddered.
"Quit hogging it." Owen pulled the little white stick out from Kyles' teeth and began to suck up the smoke.
"No fair!"
"It's my cig. Get your own, dick."
Kyle coughed and rubbed his arms. I rubbed my own arms, suddenly aware of the cold.
"There's no way in hell we're seeing him again," Owen said. He dragged long and hard on the cig, making it glow like amber.
"Tonight at least. You think he's gone gone?"
"Probably hightailed it out of here the second he left the pit. God, you heard me. We should've merc'd him right after he said no the first time."
"Brady wouldn't have been happy."
"Man, fuck him. He's just the pillar's chauffeur. I still think we should drive around and look for him. What's that bastard thinking of letting him go just like that?"
"It's not like we don't know where he lives. Same spot as that guy we were looking for."
"Hey, did you hear from D?"
He nodded. "Sheer fucking luck he's bringing the kid. As annoying as the dude is, he's got his moments."
That didn't sound good. And what did they just say? "Same spot as that guy we're looking for"? They must be talking about Monty. I couldn't think of anyone else who fit the bill.
A click, so quiet I almost didn't catch it, released beside me. It was the latch of the truck, I realized. The headlights blinked and lit the two of them in bright glowing halos before the lot fell into dark again. Then, the truck door thumped open. A long and silver bat stuck out like a sword in the night, catching the shocked looks of Owen and Kyle who tossed their cigarette to the ground and prepared to fight.