He felt it, and it confused him, and he filed it away for later. "Tell me exactly how you got into debt with Velasquez," Mike said. He was still looking at Leo, not Corey. Leo understood why, even if he couldn't have articulated it.
Mike had been watching them since they walked in, probably since before they walked in, and he had already made his assessments. Corey was the unpredictable one. Leo was the one who could talk. "It started about eight months ago," Leo said.
He was sitting at the counter now, both hands visible. His voice flat with the particular flatness of someone telling a story they are ashamed of. I lost my job at the distribution center in Fresno. Warehouse work, I'd been there 3 years.
They downsized, cut the whole second shift, gave us two weeks notice and a handshake. My girlfriend was pregnant. We needed the apartment. We needed the car.
I needed cash fast and the banks weren't He stopped, started again. The banks weren't interested in a guy with a credit score like mine. So, you went to Velasquez, Mike said. I went to someone who knew someone who knew Velasquez.
I didn't even know who Toad was at first. I just knew it was quick money at bad rates and I told myself I'd pay it back in 60 days. Leo shook his head slowly and the motion was so heavy it looked like it cost him something. $2,000, that's all I borrowed. 2,000 and it's six now.
Six now and it'll be eight by the end of the month if I miss Friday. He looked at his hands. He took my car once already. That one outside is Corey's.
He took the first car, held it for eleven days, then gave it back when I found $1,200 somewhere and begged a guy I went to high school with for the rest. His jaw tightened. My girlfriend left in March, took the baby to her mother's in Stockton. She said she wasn't She said she couldn't watch me make it worse every week.