We begin the evening chatting about sports, Billy’s passion. He’s a rabid Chicago Cubs baseball fan. Mel had led him astray from the Likens family tradition of being Southside blue-collar White Sox baseball fans. In the winter he’s a Blackhawks hockey fanatic and plays recreational pickup hockey. He’s not just a sports fan, though; he’s also a relief pitcher in the thirty-plus Chicago Central Baseball League, and he’s damned good. Billy turned down baseball scholarship offers so he could go to work after he knocked up Shelly with Craig when they were eighteen. He’s also into rocks; a rock hound and a rock climber when he isn’t digging them up. He’s allowed to take the kids rock hounding, but rock climbing is forbidden by Shelly—not even on the twenty-foot hill in their neighborhood park, “lest they also lose their minds and start risking their necks hanging off the sides of mountains.” He’s a fun guy to hang with.
My eyes stray to his hands while he bitches about the Hawks blowing a three-goal lead in the third period of last night’s game before losing in overtime. At Shelly’s insistence, Billy’s hands are surprisingly clean for a mechanic’s, at least when he’s not working—“don’t be touching the kids with filthy hands and leaving oil stains on their clothes!”
Billy steers our conversation to the topic we’d agreed to take a break from tonight. “That FBI stuff is eating at me, Tony. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
I relate the conversations I’ve had with Penelope and Ben Larose, complete with our conclusion that the NTSB can’t make a solid case for structural failure. “Larose doesn’t think they’ll even try. The most likely scenario is that Windy City and/or AAA Avgas is casting aspersions to try to pin the blame on you in civil court. They’re probably whispering bullshit in the investigator’s ears to get the FBI sniffing around.”
“Why?” Billy asks in exasperation.
Joe’s visit last night offered a disturbingly stark explanation of why, but it’s not something to be shared with Billy. Or is it? Doesn’t he have a right to know everything about a situation that has the potential to destroy his livelihood? I decide to park that consideration until I’ve had time to think it through. Which prompts me to realize that I need to have a discussion with Penelope about what I learned during Joe’s visit. What a mess. I tell Billy that we think something might be amiss with the paperwork about the hundred-hour inspection.
“How can that be when we’ve given the NTSB the paper trail for the work?”
“We’re looking into it, pal. More to come. Now, let’s get back to our agreement not to screw up our night by obsessing over this shit.”
He gives me a rueful smile and apologizes.
“No worries,” I say while waving to get our server’s attention. When I do, I order another bourbon for me, a Miller Lite for Billy, and ask for more peanuts. Dry-roasted, generously salted peanuts… one of my gastronomical weaknesses. I hope to eventually be reincarnated as a cow so I can laze away the days with an endless supply of salt licks. Until then, I make do with peanuts and potato chips.
“So, what’s up with your father and all the crap around your place?” he asks. “Real sorry to hear about the cop who got shot, man.”
I give him a drastically abridged version of the story, leaving out the lurid details of Papa killing his sister’s rapist and his recent flight to Italy.
Billy isn’t quite buying the bare-bones tale I’ve spun, but he lets it go after I deflect a couple more questions. “How about you, Tony? You’ve been divorced awhile now, huh? Any women in your life?”
There’s a topic that won’t take long to cover. I turn my glass of bourbon this way and that to catch the light. I definitely don’t want to start wallowing in that misery over a few drinks. Morose Tony is definitely not Fun Tony. “Well, there’s Brittany,” I reply lightly. “A handful by any measure.”
Billy lifts an eyebrow in surprise. “Really? I’ve always gotten the impression that she’s a good kid. Troubles?”
I shake my head. Aside from her mother’s threat to steal her away from me again, things are good on the Brittany front. “Not from her. More crap from her mother. She filed for custody again.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. Michelle and her parents have invited us to a little get-together to discuss custody ‘without the unpleasantness of going to court.’”
“That sounds hopeful.”
“Hah!” I sneer. “I’m being given an opportunity to surrender gracefully.”
“Why would you?”
“Because that’s the way of the universe according to Prescott Rice the Fucking Third: You got. I want. You give or I take… and break you into a thousand little pieces in the process.”
Billy frowns. “They sound like nice folks.”
A bitter
