"Doing what?" "This. Any of this." Leo gestured vaguely at the room, at the night, at everything. "We came in here with guns. We were going to rob this place.
You could have Declan almost He stopped. Because what he'd started to say was Declan almost broke my cousin's arm before we even sat down, and we both know it, and instead you offered us coffee and you're making phone calls, and I don't understand the logic of it." Mike heard what Leo didn't finish. He considered his answer with the care of someone who doesn't say things carelessly. "Because I've sat on the other side of that equation," he said finally.
"Not in a diner, different circumstances. But desperate and stupid and pointing something at someone who could have ended it in about four seconds and chose not to." He paused. "A man made a different choice that night. It cost him something.
I've been trying to figure out what I owe on that for about 25 years." The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was full. Brenda had stopped pretending to wipe down the counter. She was just standing there listening, her dishrag forgotten in her hand, her reading glasses still pushed up on her head where they'd been since before the door came in.
"What happened to the man?" Leo asked. "The one who let you walk?" "He died," Mike said. Not dramatically, just matter-of-factly, the way men talk about other men who are gone when they've had long enough to make peace with the loss. Riding through Nevada, semi crossed the center line.
Wasn't anything anyone did wrong. It was just the world being careless with something worth keeping. He looked at his coffee cup. He had a code.
Simple code. He said the one time I ever heard him explain it, he said, "I don't spend violence. I don't have to spend." Like it was a resource. Like it was something finite that you used up and couldn't get back.
He turned the cup. I've tried to run that account the same way he did. Doesn't always work. But tonight it does.