Read Online The Way Things Are by A.J. Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

too late for three of them. They’re just cleaning up the mess.”
    “Three people died?”
    “I shouldn’t even be saying anything, but it’s been plastered all over the news since nine o’clock this morning, so it’s not like you wouldn’t have heard about it anyway. Give me a minute, I’ll see if they’ll let you get your truck.”
    Ken stepped out of the car for a moment and talked to the police officers standing guard by the gate. The police officer radioed to a man in a trench coat, who hurried over and greeted Ken with a quick hug. Definitely a hug, Patrick noted.
    “Wow,” Jay whispered. “What happened? I thought you said you got into a fight.”
    “Not your business, kiddo,” Patrick said simply, trying not to grind his teeth as he recognized the officer who had arrested him.
    “Ken said three people died? Do you know what happened?”
    “I stopped a fight, that’s all. Is that clear?”
    He could almost hear Jay roll his eyes. “Sure, whatever. This just looks like a lot of guys to clean up after a fight.”
    “All I did was stop a fight. I don’t know what’s going on.”
    After listening to the detectives’ line of questioning for four hours, he could guess. Ken had said it was already too late for three of them. Three people had died trying to sneak into the country in the containers he’d unloaded last night. He wondered how the boy had gotten out, how many others had been stuck inside a sealed metal box with him, how long they’d been trapped. If they’d come from British Colombia, it might have only been a few days. If they’d come from a port in Asia, it could have been weeks. More than long enough for three people to die of dehydration.
    And what a welcome the kid had received into the country. Escaping the nightmare of being trapped with the dead just to be attacked by three strangers on the docks.
    Patrick leaned forward, his adrenaline spiking all over again as he saw Detective Kowalski shoving a uniformed police officer, whose hands were cuffed behind his back, toward a waiting patrol car. He recognized the man’s sharp features, even though Patrick hadn’t seen him well in the dark. “Least they caught him,” Patrick muttered. “A fucking cop.”
    “What?” Jay leaned forward.
    Patrick snapped his head toward Jay. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
    “So who were the ‘lying motherfuckers,’ then?”
    “Jay, watch your mouth.”
    “Sure, Pop. Who were they?”
    “The officers who arrested me for stopping the fight.”
    “They arrested you? So that’s why you didn’t show up? You were in jail? They arrested you for helping somebody?”
    “They’ve got to sort out who’s actually responsible for things when people get hurt. I was the only one they could question because the kid didn’t speak English, and the other two were in the hospital. I figured it would happen. It doesn’t change the fact that it was the right thing to do. Is that clear?”
    “Yeah, sure.” Jay sat back and stared at the emergency vehicles, his eyes wide. “But you won, right?”
    “Kiddo, if you’ve got to fight, you fight to win. You don’t knock the other guy down and hope he runs away, you knock the other guy down so hard he can’t get back up. And sometimes, finishing a fight the right way once will mean you never have to actually fight again. If everybody else who hears about it knows that if they fuck with you, they’ll lose, they won’t bother. It’s that simple.”
    “Does that mean you won?”
    Patrick groaned. “Yes, I won.”
    “So it’s okay to get arrested for beating somebody up, but not for painting a picture?”
    “Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s okay to get arrested for beating someone up if they’re hurting someone else right then and there. It’s not okay to get arrested for painting a picture on someone else’s property. Not to mention the paint. Where the fuck did you get the money for those cans of spray paint?”
    “I….” Jay stuttered.