Agent Driscoll was watching me intently. He was not only tall, but thin.
Immediately I thought to myself that he could be knocked out with one punch. Guys like him, with long, skinny necks could almost always be punched out with one solid hit to the jaw. Their necks didn’t have enough muscle to keep the head steady.
“It’s obviously shocking to have federal agents show up at your door,” Driscoll said. “We understand that.”
I folded my arms. “You said this has to do with the gym that I attend?”
“It does,” Driscoll said, then looked to his partner.
Nick Cairns smiled a little. He was short and stocky, and when he smiled he looked angrier than he did when he wasn’t smiling. “How much do you know about Quarry Davenport, the owner and manager?”
I shrugged. “Not all that much. To be honest, I don’t really like him.”
“Oh, yeah? How come?”
I shut my mouth, realizing I’d already said too much. This is what they wanted.
They wanted me to sit down and have a friendly chat and start relaxing, letting my guard down. Then they’d slowly pull information out of me, and before long I’d have given them enough to get me and the entire gym into trouble.
But I wasn’t going to let myself fall for that trick. “You don’t have to like a guy to be coached by him. In fact, sometimes it’s better if you don’t,” was all that I said.
Nick’s grin widened. “You think we came down to your apartment to try and squeeze information out of you, Justin?”
It was as if he’d read my mind. These weren’t just dumb, local cops trying to get me to dime out on my friend over some pot charge. These were FBI agents, which meant that whatever else this was, it wasn’t smalltime. And they weren’t here messing around.
“I don’t know why you’re here. Maybe you could do me a favor and just tell me.”
Agent Driscoll was looking at a few of the wrestling trophies that were in a display case in the corner of the room. “You wrestled in states?”
I nodded, glancing at him. “Yeah.”
“You must have been damn good.”
“I was okay.”
He straightened up. “You weren’t using PED’s back then, too, were you?”
I didn’t even flinch. I looked that skinny fucker straight in the eye. “I’ve never used performance enhancing drugs.”
He put up his hands. “It was just a question—relax.”
Nick Cairns was watching me closely as I reacted to his partner. It was something like being in a fight against two guys at once. The second you tried to handle one punch from one guy, the next was cracking you upside the head.
“Listen,” Nick said softly. “You know that Quarry is dirty, right?”
I met his eyes and said nothing. I just swallowed. For some reason, I couldn’t lie to him. I wanted to. But something in me just wouldn’t let me do it.
He nodded, as if to himself. “I figured,” he said. “Well, we know he’s dirty too, Justin. And he’s into a lot of bad stuff—worse than you might even guess.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Everything,” Driscoll said from over Nick’s shoulder. He came striding up next to him now. The two of them were facing me like a couple of threatening parents scolding a little kid.
“I don’t see how it’s any of my business,” I said. “I train at his gym but we’re not friends and he doesn’t tell me anything about what he does.”
“If only it was that simple,” Driscoll said.
“I think it is that simple,” I told him.
He chuckled. “Maybe we know better than you how this stuff works, seeing as how it’s what we do for a living and all.”
“Listen, if you’re just going to try and intimidate me, you probably should stop wasting your time.” I looked at them both, my eyes unwavering. “My job is fighting. I knock people out for a living. So I’m not going to piss in my pants because you come into my apartment and flash a couple of badges in my face.”
“That’s cute,” Driscoll said, looking at his shorter partner. “We should write that one down, huh?”
Nick Cairns was still watching me though. And he wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, we can write it down on the list of dumb shit that people say right before they get brought up on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking, and extortion.”
A jolt of electricity went through my spine when he said that I could be charged with those kinds of crimes. It felt similar to when I was about to fight, and the adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream. Suddenly, it was as though I could see everything in crystal clear detail: the green flecks of brown in Nick’s pupils, the lines in his forehead—
I could even make out every pore in his skin.
He had slightly yellow teeth, probably from drinking a thousand and one cups of coffee over the years, sitting at his shitty desk while he figured out ways to hurt innocent people like me.
I stared at him, feeling the first signs of pure rage in my body as I watched him looking back at me with his smug face.