I shifted in the seat, uncomfortable under his hard watch. “You still haven’t explained your relationship with Keene.”

He grunted, pushing back from the window. “You got it right. I worked for him. I killed those two men in the desert because he told me to.”

“Why?”

Simington stared at me like he was trying to make a decision. Sitting under his look was uncomfortable, but I didn’t turn away. I refused to be the one who blinked. And in that hard, unflinching stare, I could see it—all the years of what he’d done and the time in prison. There wasn’t much that could reach or scare Russell Simington.

“Why?” I repeated.

And then a tiny crack appeared in his expression, his hardened features softening for just a moment.

“Because if I hadn’t,” he said, “you and Carolina were going to die.”

THIRTY-SIX

Simington rubbed a finger over the tattoo of my name on his wrist. “Your mother was smart to tell me to get lost when she did. I wasn’t a complete disaster when you were born, but I was heading in that direction.”

I took a deep breath. I knew I was about to hear some things I’d wondered about my whole life. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, an empty smile on his face. “I was never into anything good. It was just varying degrees of bad. Didn’t know any different. And I was good at what I did.”

“Which was?”

“I enforced.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I always liked that word. Almost made it sound legit. I was hired muscle. Threatened, intimidated, beat the shit out of people.” He paused. “Sometimes more.”

The glass between us was cloudy, smudged. I wanted to wipe it clean so I could see his face clearly.

“Keene and I ran in the same circles,” he said. “When all you do is the wrong thing, you get hooked into the bad guy underground network. We were both in it. We had done some jobs together, some small-time stuff.” The expression on his face darkened, and he folded his thick arms across his chest. “Then he got something on me.”

“Your gambling?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow, surprised, then slowly nodded. “Nice work. Yeah. The gambling. I was shit deep in debt, and it was growing by the hour. I couldn’t stop it.”

“You could’ve stopped gambling.”

“Please. You’ve proved already that you aren’t stupid. All the clichés about gamblers? They all applied to me. I always thought my next big play was the one that would right the ship. And it wasn’t like I was going to get a job to pay off the debt.” The empty smile reappeared. “A real job, anyway.”

“What did you do before the casinos and Keene?” I asked for my own curiosity.

He shrugged. “Nothing you’d wanna hear about. Like I said. Hired muscle. Some of it was legit, some of it wasn’t. Same shit, different places. Not like I was punching a clock. Money was always good and when you aren’t afraid of much, you can always find work. I collected for dealers. Did some protection work for them. Pickup and delivery. I tried construction, but it didn’t take.” He shifted his weight. “I was better at destruction.”

That sounded about right.

“Not like I ever put a resume together, Noah,” he said. “The work I did, you don’t need one. You meet people in bars and your name gets around and you hang around in the wrong crowds. That’s your resume. I started right out of high school, delivering boosted cars, and it just grew. Always had cash in my pocket, never had a schedule, and I was good at it. Hard to believe you could get by doing that shit for thirty years, but I managed alright. And if I hadn’t started gambling, I’d still be doing it.”

“How’d that start?”

He laughed, shook his head. “Simple hundred dollar bet on a Lakers game one night. I won. Wasn’t a big deal that night, but, man. It flipped a switch.”

I took a deep breath, settled my thoughts.

“Okay. How did Keene play in?” I asked.

“He was employed by the casino,” Simington said. “By Moffitt. They extended me some credit lines—probably because they knew I’d never be able to get even, I was so far in. So they let me fall a little further. When it got pretty obvious that I wasn’t getting out of the hole anytime soon, they cut me off and told me I owed them.”

Simington leaned back in the chair and glanced over his shoulder as another guard did a walk-by. “I did some simple stuff first. Collecting and what not. Enough that I thought we were square.”

“Wait. Was Keene running a smuggling operation?”

Simington shook his head. “Yeah. Moffitt lets him scout his casinos for guys who are desperate for cash, maybe in over their heads, deep enough that they’re willing to do something illegal.”

“Drive people over the border.”

He nodded. “In return, Moffitt gets a percentage of Keene’s operation.”

“Why would Moffitt want in? That’s a huge risk for nickels and dimes.”

Simington shrugged. “I don’t know. Moffitt and Keene were tight. Keene ran a lot, though. Wasn’t just nickels and dimes. He was making some serious money.”

I filed that away for later thought. “Okay. You thought you were square.”

“Right. I thought I was done. My debt was square and I’d curbed the gambling. I was picking up odd jobs, looking for something steady. But then Keene told me I had one last job.”

“Vasquez and Tenayo?” I said.

“Names all sound the same to me.”

I looked away, thinking it was a bad idea to try to punch my hand through the window to choke him.

“Hey.” He leaned toward the window again. “Wasn’t my business to know their names.”

“What a professional,” I said, turning back to him.

“I was a professional,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Because I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was a bullshit job and I knew it,” he said. “I knew the two Mexicans had probably paid Keene and he was just being the vicious asshole he loves being. I had no problem collecting from guys who owed. But I didn’t make it my business to take out guys who had paid their debts. I don’t know if Keene did it on a regular basis—knowing him he probably did—but I didn’t want any part of that.” He laid his palms flat on the counter beneath the glass. “So I said no.”

“But you did kill them,” I said. “You admitted that. So what happened?”

Simington took a deep breath and leaned away from the window, uncertainty slipping onto his face for the first time in my two visits. His fingers went to the tattoo again for a moment, like my name might give him something. It made me want to rip the letters off his skin.

“I told Keene no,” he said. “He could take those guys out himself if he wanted it done. Figured the worst he would do was come after me. I had no problem with that. I wasn’t afraid of him because I was square and thought I was out from under him.” He hesitated. “But he went a different route.”

He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it, the skin tightening across his forehead. “Showed up two days after I told him no. Laid a piece of paper down in front of me. Had Carolina’s address and yours. Then he laid down a picture of each of you.” He shook his head, the anger bubbling in his eyes. “I never talked about either of you, but he found out.”

The whispers from the other windows filtered over the dividers, jumbled words and phrases. I wondered if anyone else was speaking with their father or having an even remotely similar conversation.

“I decked him,” Simington said, a corner of his mouth rising up. “But he just laughed. The message was clear. Do the job or he’d have someone do the job on both of you. We both knew he had me. I went to El Centro the next day and got it done.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone this when you were arrested?” I asked. “Why not tell the cops about Keene?”

“Because I knew if I dragged him in, he’d have someone on the outside get to you and Carolina,” he said. “Only way to protect you was to keep my mouth shut and take what came my way. And as I’ve already told you,” he said, angling toward the window, “I’m alright with all of it. I’m not here just because of what I did for Keene. This is my reward for a lifetime of work.”