Chapter 33

The ride to Hazelwood Pub was just as bad as Rob had feared. He became concerned that they weren't going to make it in time for the seven o'clock appointment with Gerry, but the driver assured him it wouldn't be a problem. He reminded Rob that he didn't have to find parking and would be dropping him off at the building entrance.

As they got closer to the square, vehicular traffic thinned out, but the crowds of people walking around celebrating caused their own issues. Judging from the trash scattered about, Rob figured there had been a parade early with attractions that appealed to children and the younger crowd. Now it was time for the adults to participate in the time-honored tradition of getting hammered and acting stupid in public. Despite the fact that it normally wasn't allowed, Rob saw several people walking around with mugs and glasses of green beer, wearing silly hats and dressed all in green.

His driver wove carefully through the knots of celebrants until they arrived at their destination. As he had promised, they arrived just before seven o'clock.

"Here's my card," the driver said before Rob climbed out. "I have others to take care of tonight, so it might be a few minutes before I can come get you. If you end up somewhere else, let me know." Rob nodded his understanding and got out.

Standing on the sidewalk, he looked up at the sign above the door that said simply "Hazelwood," wondering what had inspired the name. He pushed open the door and entered a world of noise and dark lighting. He realized that in days gone by the air would have been cloudy with cigarette and cigar smoke as well. The smell of old beer and sweating, overcrowded bodies fought for his attention along with the snatches of conversation going on all around him.

Rob's eyes roamed the establishment, the additional height given by his boots letting him see over the tops of most of the heads in the room. Not seeing Gerry on the first pass, Rob made his way around the room. Considering how crowded it was, he expected Gerry would be at the bar rather than sharing a table with strangers. It took Rob five minutes to determine that Gerry wasn't there yet, so he headed to the bar. Once there, he ordered a lemon water.

"I'm driving," he said to the bartender's disgruntled look. The man nodded his head and handed over a button with the letters DD embossed on it.

"Show this at any bar on the square and you get the nonalcoholic drink of your choice free," he said.

Rob thanked him and pinned it to his shirt under the duster. He turned around with his water in hand and surveyed the room again, taking time to admire the young ladies who had come in dressed to kill, so to speak. He snorted in his glass as the image of Elaina in her hunting leathers with blood on her lips came to mind. Suddenly, the young ladies weren't so fascinating.

The door opened, attracting Rob's attention, and he saw Gerry walk in. Rob pulled his hat down to shade his eyes and watched as the man swaggered into the bar, stopping to hit on the ladies he'd been eyeing earlier. Rob laughed to himself as, one after the other, the young ladies blew him off. With a self-centered sneer on his face, Gerry walked right past Rob without seeing him, stepping up to the bar and loudly demanding a beer. Rob saw the bartender look over and hold up a finger to indicate he would be around in a minute.

Rob considered his old friend as Gerry waited to be served. He hadn't changed that much, in Rob's opinion. He still kept his shaggy blonde hair shoulder length, and he still dressed somewhat sloppily. There were a few added lines on his face, but nothing more than could be expected of a man his age. The only difference that Rob could see was his attitude, as if the world owed him something. Gerry snapped his order at the bartender when he finally got to him, earning himself a black look and an unspoken promise of poor service in the future.

Rather than stepping away from the bar and allowing other patrons to get their orders in, Gerry turned around and leaned his elbows on the railing with his beer in his hand. Rob could see him scanning the crowd, sizing up the competition and checking out the girls. Just as Gerry focused on one girl and moved to approach her, Rob moved in and stepped in front of him.

"Move it or lose it, asshole," Gerry grunted.

"Is that anyway to greet an old friend?" Rob asked, pitching his voice to carry over the noise. Gerry's head snapped up to look at Rob's face. Rob deliberately kept all emotion off his face, preferring to give nothing away. Gerry settled back against the bar.

"Well, look who it is," Gerry sneered. "Just like old times, eh, buddy?"

Rob simply stared at him, waiting for him to get it out of his system. Gerry started fidgeting when Rob didn't speak.

"Well, I'm here," Gerry grudgingly said. "What do you want?"

"Maybe we should go to the back where it's quieter," Rob offered. "We wouldn't want everyone here to know what a wonderful father you are."

Gerry gave him a nasty look, but pushed off anyway and headed toward the back, away from the bar. It's lack of proximity to the dispensing of alcohol made it a less than favored place to most of the attendees, so the crowd was much thinner and the noise was subsequently less. As they made their way to the back, Rob was momentarily distracted by the front door opening, and he saw a slender form wearing a gray hood slip in. Something about the way she moved reminded him of someone, but at the moment he couldn't think who. He returned his attention to Gerry and followed him. They found a recently vacated table near the back exit and sat down.

"You need to step up for your kids, Gerry," Rob began without preamble. Gerry slammed his mug to the table, slopping beer over the top.

"They are not my kids," Gerry snarled. "That slut slept with anything with swinging meat between its legs. There's no way you're making me responsible for them."

With an obvious effort at keeping his temper, Rob replied, "At the very least, Jillian is yours. After all, look where that got us." Gerry snorted and looked away. "What, are you going to try to say Jillian's not your daughter?"

"How would I know?" Gerry replied. "She slept with me, she could have been sleeping with others. She was just another conquest, you know?"

Rob lowered his head to keep his angry eyes from flashing at Gerry, and he clenched his fists on the table top. When he felt in control again, he looked back up.

"If you believed that, why did you marry her?" he asked in a deadly calm voice.

"'Cause at the time, I believed she was mine," Gerry answered with a shrug. "Now, not so much."

Rob reached into his pocket, pulled out a photograph and threw it to the table. Gerry picked it up and looked at it. He shrugged and dropped it.

"What are you showing me a picture of Billy for?" Gerry asked. "I know he's not mine. He doesn't even look like me."

Rob lifted the photograph and showed Gerry that it had been folded. Now it showed two little boys standing side by side: one blonde, the other brunette.

"This isn't a picture of Billy, you ass," Rob said, his temper hanging by a thread. "This is a picture of you and me, taken twenty-two years ago. That's not Billy..." he stabbed his finger at the picture, " ... that's you. Tell me again he doesn't look like you."

"Fuck you!" Gerry screamed, standing up. Rob had stood when Gerry did, and Gerry leaned in, nearly spitting as he continued. "There's nothing you can do to make me responsible for those brats."

"Is there a problem here, gentlemen?" A rather large man in a tight black t-shirt was standing next to the pair. "Maybe you should take this outside," he recommended when neither spoke.

Having lost all sense, Gerry shoved at the bouncer's chest, accomplishing exactly nothing. Sensing that his chance to get Gerry to do the right thing was slipping away, Rob grabbed Gerry by the front of his jacket and pushed him back toward the exit. He held up a conciliatory hand to the bouncer.

"That's the alley back there, right?" he asked, giving the man his best stone-faced look. It was obvious they were about to be thrown out, so he was trying to make it simple, but the man reached for Rob anyway. Rob slapped the man's hand away and shoved him away. The bouncer's face showed surprise that Rob was able to set him back like that, and Rob took the opportunity presented by the bouncer's hesitation to shove Gerry backward to the door. Despite his best efforts, Gerry was unable to free himself from Rob's grasp and perforce went along. The exit had the ubiquitous pushbar and they nearly fell into the alley as Rob pushed him out through the door. Rob saw the bouncer shaking his head as he turned away to attend to the rest of the raucous crowd now that his current project was out of the building. The door swung shut on its own, and the latch engaged with a loud clack in the otherwise quiet alley, cutting off the sound from within the bar.

"All right, dickhead," Rob snarled in Gerry's face. "One way or the other, you're going to do right by those kids." He shoved Gerry away, slamming him into the side of the pub's dumpster. Gerry stumbled for a moment, barely retaining his balance in the muck that coated the alley floor. There was a brief flash of light as someone cracked open the back door then quickly closed it again.

"What's it matter to you?" Gerry blustered. Rob stepped up and grabbed his jacket with both hands, lifting him and carrying him to the back wall of the pub.

"Those kids deserve better than you," Rob growled, slamming Gerry's back to the wall. "If you won't take responsibility for them, give them to someone who will. You do know it would only take a DNA test to prove they're yours, don't you?"

"Oh yeah? So who's gonna take the brats, you?" Gerry pulled and pushed at Rob's hands, but Rob wasn't budging. Rob pulled him back and slammed him against the wall again. "All right! All right! What do you want me to do?"

"You will call Elisabeth Downey," Rob said harshly. "Remember her? Your mother-in-law? The one who's been caring for your kids? You will call her and ask her what she wants. If you can't man up and take responsibility, you tell her you'll give her full custody. If she wants to adopt them, you will sign the papers. You got that?" He punctuated each statement by bouncing Gerry off the wall.

By this time, Gerry's was hanging limply from Rob's hands. "Who the hell are you?" he asked fearfully. "What happened to you, Rob? When did you get so hard?"

"Ten years ago, on Halloween," Rob snarled. "When my two best friends betrayed me. Now, one of them is dead – and the other one probably should be." Rob opened his hands and let Gerry drop to the ground. "Get out of here, you piece of shit. The next time I see you, I will kill you. Don't make me have to come looking for you."

Keeping his eyes on Rob, Gerry got up and tried to brush himself off. He was backing away, headed for the street, when he bumped into someone and gave a little shriek. He turned and fled from the alley. That someone turned out to be Elaina, and she sashayed up the alley to Rob.

"That went well," she cooed as she cozied up to him. "Don't you think so, little sister?"

Rob felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind. Even through his duster, Rob recognized the feel of Dawn's breasts as she pressed up against him.

"Mmm," she hummed. "About as well as should be expected, coming from our man."

"I thought I told you two I needed to do this alone," Rob murmured into Elaina's hair.

"And you did," she replied. "You never knew we were here, did you? But if you had needed us, what would you have done, even if you didn't know you needed us?"