Read Online Mr. Hooligan by Ian Vasquez - Free Book Online Page B

bills to pay.”
    “And I don’t? Like I don’t have a child?”
    Gert said, coolly, “You the one that had that back room built. I didn’t realize you didn’t get a permit.”
    “Your husband was in charge of that.”
    Harvey said, “You’re blaming me now? I used the guy you recommended, I didn’t know he didn’t pull a permit.”
    “Okay, good, I’ll forego my pay then, damn.”
    Gert shook her head. “Still far, far from the goal.” Picking up the spreadsheet, reading. “What we can do, however, is finally collect all outstanding tabs.” She lowered the paper and smirked. “Like the sixteen thousand Carlo Monsanto and his crowd owe, for starters.”
    Riley knew it was another dig, but let it go. “No problem. I’ll tell Carlo again. But his tab isn’t the only tab.”
    She leaned forward to scan another page. “Some others here … piddly compared to that, few hundred at most.”
    Riley finished his coffee and sat back, fingers laced across stomach. He sensed them waiting.
    Gert examined the spreadsheet again, scratching her scalp with a pen. “We’ll need to take out a loan. Can’t see any other way. And we’ll need time to collect on those tabs.”
    Riley nodded. “I have some savings. I’ll contribute that. See what else I can scrape up.”
    Harvey and Gert, as if on cue, reached for their coffees and sipped. It was the offer they’d been waiting for all along. “That would be a big help,” Gert said. A finger rimming the cup. “About how much altogether?”
    “About eighty thousand.”
    Harvey cleared his throat. Looked away, looked at the papers on the table. “I may have hit the dog, but the health department thing, you the one insisted on keeping Turo, that boy so dense and incompetent he can’t do the easiest thing like clean this place properly. I’ve been telling you, but, no, you still want to keep him.”
    Riley furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong with you, Harvey? I’m here devising a financial solution out of this shit, shit that you caused, and you’re over there still wasting time playing the blame game?”
    Gert hooded her eyes with a hand and said, “Look here, stop this. Just … stop. So”—raising her head and exhaling—“eighty thousand, Riley. Plus about twenty from our funds, and let’s say,” scanning the spreadsheet, “we collect, realistically, about twenty thousand in outstanding tabs. That’s only one twenty.”
    “But like I said, I might be able to scrape up some more.”
    “ Scrape up ? Eighty grand more?”
    Riley thought it over. Had to accept it; the answer was no.
    “And what about time? We need some time.”
    He stood up, gathered some papers. “Finished with that?” he said, motioning at their cups. He took the cups away.
    Gert said, “Where you going?”
    He kept walking. “I’ll take care of this.”
    “What you mean?”
    Riley went around the bar, dropped the cups in sudsy water in the sink. “I mean I’ll take care of it, don’t worry about it. Lopez will get his money, we won’t have to spend ours and everything’ll be cool.” He snapped off the coffeemaker, dried his hands on a towel.
    “You’re gonna get another eighty grand, in addition to your eighty grand.”
    “That’s right.”
    “And it won’t cost the bar anything?”
    “That’s correct.”
    Harvey and Gert exchanged a look.
    Riley folded the towel on the bar and waited for questions he knew were brewing. None arrived. They’d rather not ask where the money would come from. They were going to spend it, thank him, treat it like a business expense to be repaid over several years maybe, and carry on with their guiltless lives, and he couldn’t fault them. If he were in their position, he’d probably do the same. Except he wasn’t so sure about the guiltless part. Their practiced silence about the source of his money and how it benefited them was a hypocrisy that aggravated him. Made them, in his eyes, less honest than if they’d simply acknowledged