"We don't have a read on Park the way we have a read on Velasquez. Park is unknown quantity." "Is Park going to be a problem?" Leo said. Mike and Bobby looked at each other. That conversation without words did again faster than language denser.
"Not tonight." Mike said. "But maybe not never." Corey said. "Corey." Leo said. "I'm just saying what he's not saying.
He's saying it." Leo said. "He's saying it in the way he's saying it. Listen." Corey looked at Mike. Mike looked back, and in that exchange Leo watching his cousin finally hear the subtext that had been running underneath the evening like a current.
Something shifted between the two cousins small and significant. Leo had always been the talker, and Corey had always always been the one who moved. Tonight something had reversed just slightly. Leo had done the listening, and Corey had needed to learn it, and now in this specific moment Corey was learning.
"Park will hear about tonight." Mike said. "He'll file it. He may ask questions. He will not come to the Pioneer Wells Diner at 2:00 in the morning looking for satisfaction.
That's not how men like Park operate. They operate in paperwork and phone calls and slow pressure." He looked at Leo, and then at Corey. "Which means you are not targets tonight, but it also means that your names Danton Baxter, those names exist in a conversation now that neither of you started." Leo absorbed this. "What do we do about that?" "You do nothing about it." Mike said.
"Because you doing something about it is you stepping into a current that runs faster and deeper than anything you're equipped for." He held Leo's gaze. "You go to Ruben. You fix the car. You drive to Stockton.