That’s How I Roll: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t the answer he was expecting. His face didn’t move a muscle, but I could feel the words hit him just the same.
    But this guy was too much of a professional to be taken out with one punch.
    “Then just tell me something, Esau,” he said. “Tell me why a man with your intelligence wouldn’t take this incredible opportunity. The opportunity we’re offering you, right now, here, today. Can you tell me that much? Just for my own understanding.”
    My hands rested on the wheels of my chair. Rested lightly. “That’s not how I roll,” I told him.
    And I smiled real friendly, so he’d know there was no hard feelings.
    ater that night, alone in my cell, I thought about what I’d said. There’s probably a lot of different ways to look at those parting words of mine.
    Maybe the Feds had meetings about that; I don’t know. As far as they were concerned, I guess those were my last words, in all respects.
    But just because I’d turned down their best offer didn’t mean they were going away. They couldn’t do that: there was a fire to feed, a legend to maintain.
    Kill a Fed and you die. You
all
die.
    But lurking shadows don’t scare me—I grew up under them.
    So, when Step Four came out a shade of gray, I plucked it out right away.
    very bomb-builder has his own style, but there are certain rules for all: handle the ingredients with respectful delicacy, and never close it up until everything needed is inside.
    That’s why I never stopped talking with the Feds. They had one of the ingredients I needed before I could wrap the package.
    Ever since I came to understand that money can buy more than just things—like cars or houses or big TVs—I’d gone after it. I committed all kinds of wrong acts for all kinds of wrong people, all purely for the money. The money to buy safety for me and Tory-boy.
    I was all done with that kind of work, but I still needed money.
    It wasn’t just money I needed, it had to be
clean
money. I didn’t care what they called it, or whose name was on whatever paper they signed to get it, but the money would have to come from a source the Feds couldn’t ever trace back to those wrong people I had done all that wrong work for.
    I knew the Feds would be watching any money coming in to me. And even if I managed my way around that, I’d have to get the money back out.
    There’s ways of informing without actually saying a word. There’s ways you can draw a bright-red arrow pointing wherever you want it to. The people I’d worked for, they’d expect me to be aware of this.
    So I had to make sure they knew I was keeping faith with them. Because now the river was flowing in the opposite direction. A certain kind of work still had to be done. But instead of getting paid, I was fixing to make some payments.
    Maybe I should have said to myself, “Well, I was always loyal to them, why shouldn’t they do this one last thing for me?”
    But you don’t ask favors of your employers. That’s not the relationship. Nothing I had done for them had been an act of friendship.You might be friendly with a doctor, but you don’t walk into his office without expecting a bill when you leave.
    I never even considered the possibility. Even if they wouldn’t think of it as blackmail—and I wouldn’t blame them if they did—that’s just not how it’s done. I’d been paid fair and square for what I did, every time I did it. That’s where the old saying comes from: “If you don’t like the job, just put the bucket down.” My kind of work means that you put it down
gently
, not drop it and splash water all over everyone else.
    I’d had a goodly amount put away, in different places. But once they had locked me up, I’d been forced to spend a big chunk of that money.
    Most of that went toward keeping things in place while I waited them all out. That wasn’t so hard. I was used to doing business over the phone, and I could use the jailhouse pay phone anytime I wanted. After all, I hadn’t been