18740512 22:02:33

(note - previous entry dated 18640512 06:44:19 has been revised to 18740512 06:44:19)

18740512 22:02:33

LA-N-0800

"Mister Isaac Garrey is requesting to see you now."
"Oh, now he shows up? All right then." Carbondale nodded to the waitress and flipped his hand upward and away from his body. She dutifully turned away and went to summon the gentleman to the table. "Keep en eye up. There was some pressure earlier today."
"Oh, this was the wagon?" Venedy positioned the hilt of his sheathed sword against the side of his lap after asking. Carbondale nodded silently in response.
Isaac Garrey walked over to the table in stiffly exaggerated steps and swings of his arms. His hat was still on his head, and his face formed a frown with enough strength to cast shadows over half of it under the dim light of the room. Carbondale extended a palm to motion to the open chair across from where he was seated, but Isaac remained standing as he spoke out.
"You had no right to do that. None!"
Carbondale tilted his head to his side and narrowed his eyes as he stabbed his opened hand to the chair twice more. Issac became agitated enough to contort his head from side to side as he murmured an angry mumble of words and pulled the chair back enough for him to sit at the table.
"Take your hat off and relax. Show some respect." Venedy kept his body otherwise motionless and his stare upon Isaac as he issued the command.
"You. You listen to me." Isaac curled his hat into his fist and threw it upon the side of the table in front of him. "That boy, he was a good kid. I just took him on a few months ago. I watched him grow up for the last ten years. His parents, that family. They were with me that long. The look on their faces as they asked me about their son."
"Look. Let's start from the beginning." Carbondale placed the cigar he held between his fingertips at the side of the ashtray in the middle of the table before continuing to speak. "You're talking about your delivery driver Matthew right? The eighteen year old man, right? Not a boy?"
"Yes, him, yes."
"OK. Now, what did his parents ask you about? What did they say about his son?"
"They. They asked me if I had heard the same thing that the police told them, that Matthew was missing."
"Missing, yes. That's what I thought. So maybe-"
"No, cut the bullshit. He ain't missing. He's gone. You know it, and I know it."
"I know it? Isaac - no, I don't know it. I don't know it at all. Do you know it?" Carbondale turned his head to his left to ask this of Venedy, and he silently shook his head in response. "What's your proof? Did you go to the morgue? Did you see a report of deceased persons for the day?"
"No, I didn't, but-"
"And the wagon you're missing. Did you see that at all? That might have some evidence of a kind of incident that you're implying. Did you see that at all?"
"No! But God damn it-"
"So this is what we have, here. You come to me saying that something has happened to someone - and that I was somehow responsible for this thing to have happened, and you have no proof at all that any such thing happened, nor that I caused it to happen. So now let me ask - what are you doing here?" Carbondale took the cigar from the ashtray and imbibed an amount of smoke large enough to coat the whole area of the table as he breathed out. "Why are you wasting my time with this shit?"
"This is rich, this is fucking rich." Isaac laughed out loud as he shook his head. "How can you look me in the face and just lie, lie, lie through your teeth like that?"
"Hm, y'know what? That's the same question I asked myself all these times when I asked for you to pay off your juice. The same fucking question."
"I told you! How many times did I tell you that I was good for-"
"No, how about this - you wanna know the answer to that question? How I'm able to lie to you? It's the same answer for how you were able to lie to those parents you just talked about, when they came to you. There's your answer."
"What? I was fully honest with them. They asked me if I knew their son to be missing and I said I didn't know."
"I'm sure you did, Isaac. But that's not what you told me as you sat down here. You told me that you did know what happened to him, didn't you."
"But, well, yeah, but I-"
"All right then. I'm glad we got that settled. Can we next get to settling your debt to me, then? When can we do that?"