“Whassup, brotha?” a familiar voice called out. “When did you start smokin’ again?”
I didn’t startle, but I was no less caught off guard as Jonathan Ferris walked around the edge of the fence and opened the dual gate of the dog park. He flipped his hair out of his eyes as he walked over and sat down next to me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Your phone ain’t workin’,” Jonathan responded.
“I think the cops still have it,” I replied. “Took my Barrett, too.”
“That sucks.”
I looked down toward the ground and took another drag of my cigarette. It occurred to me that the action made me look nervous, and I started to straighten up and get myself in check but changed my mind. It would be better at this point to be considered nervous in front of Jonathan, considering his source of income was the same as mine.
Jonathan was Rinaldo Moretti’s chief information man. He had been your typical bored and brilliant teen with a propensity for hacking into various computer systems around the world just to show that it could be done. Now he did the same for our boss, either to find out the things Rinaldo wanted to know, break into banking systems to help out with a little money laundering, or sometimes just to use his phone to get a seat at a busy restaurant without having to wait.
He was also about the only person in the world I would consider a friend.
Deceiving him wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I was going to have to try. Jonathan was a perceptive guy though most people’s first impressions dismissed him as a backwoods hick. He sounded like one, but behind the thick accent was an exceptional mind. I needed him to believe I was still pretty much off my game so he could report the same back to Rinaldo.
I kept my eyes down, blinked a few times, and took another drag without saying a word.
“I didn’t really think I’d find ya here,” Jonathan said. “I figgered you’d go back to your apartment, but not come out here.”
I moved my head slowly to look up at him.
“Don’t have much of anyplace else to go,” I commented quietly before looking back to my shoes.
“How ya feelin’?”
I thought about it and decided to answer him honestly.
“Like I’m waiting to start seeing shit again,” I said. “I’ll know it isn’t real, but I’m still waiting to see it, you know?”
Jonathan nodded. He’d been with me at the shooting range once when I started seeing images of insurgents coming out from behind the targets. I’d just stopped taking the meds the military doctors had given me, and I wasn’t completely prepared for the consequences.
“Did you see shit out here?” he asked as he nodded his head around the park. “I mean, when you decided to blow the place up?”
“Not really,” I said. “I was hearing a lot of stuff, and that fucking garage door kept going off and sounding like a perimeter alarm. There was already so much other shit in my head. I hadn’t slept, and I just…I dunno.”
“Cracked.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s all right, brotha,” he assured me. “Shit happens. Rinaldo understands, even if he is kinda being a dick about you.”
“How so?” I asked. I looked up at him because I had no idea what he was talking about.
Jonathan shrugged and shifted his position on the bench to bring one foot up on the seat. He took out another smoke, patted Odin’s head as he came by, and leaned back.
“He’s pissed you didn’t come to him first,” Jonathan said. “I told him it don’t work like that, but ya know—he feels bad he didn’t see it was coming that quick.”
“Feels bad?” I laughed.
“He does,” Jonathan said
with a nod. “He’d take you over Nick right now, that’s for sure, with him datin’ that Russian bitch.”
I wasn’t expecting him to bring up Nick, and since I had just been thinking about him and his girlfriend’s connection to the Russians associated with Greco, I took the opportunity to plant a little more information in Jonathan’s head, assuming he’d take it back to Rinaldo.