"The kind that matters." Leo opened his mouth and closed it. "He connected." Mike said. It wasn't a question. Bobby's expression answered it anyway.
"Loosely. He's not cartel, not fully. He's one of those operators who sits in the space between does favors, collects, favors stays useful enough that nobody cleans him up." He set the phone down. "He's got about 40 active debtors that we know of.
Most of them in the valley. He cycles them, keeps them just stable enough to keep paying, and just desperate enough to never fully pay off." Declan spoke for the first time. His voice was low and measured and had the quality of something that had been carefully stripped of everything unnecessary. He's a trap with a loan attached.
That's exactly what he is, Mike said. Leo was staring at the counter. Something was happening in his face, the kind of processing that happens when information you've been living inside of too close to see clearly suddenly gets described from the outside and becomes visible for the first time. I thought if I just if I could just get ahead of it one time.
You were never going to get ahead of it, Declan said. Not cruelly, just flatly factually in the voice of someone reporting a structural truth. That's not how it works. The interest isn't the product, you are.
Your panic is the product. The more desperate you get, the more valuable you become to him. Leo put his face in his hands. Corey made a sound not quite a word, not quite a breath, and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.
Garrett came back from behind the counter, sat back down in the booth, and said nothing. He didn't need to. Bobby's phone buzzed. He looked at it.
His face didn't change, but something shifted in the angle of his shoulders just a degree, just enough, and Mike caught it immediately. Talk to me, Mike said. Toad sent a message to one of our associates in Palmdale about 6 weeks ago, Bobby said. He was choosing his words with precision.