The Bootlegger’s Legacy Read Free

was over in a corner booth, obviously already headed toward drunk, sipping his usual scotch and water. Joe slid in and waved a finger at the bartender, who immediately begin fixing a gin and tonic—his usual.
    “How long have you been here?” Joe wasn’t sure he would stay if Mike was already beyond discussing anything.
    “Just a little while. I have had only a couple of drinks—so don’t get all high and mighty on me!” Mike made an ugly face as he said his piece. Under more normal circumstances, Joe would have left to avoid the conflict headed his way. He’d seen Mike like this before. But today he felt he needed to help Mike the best he could.
    The bartender brought his drink, and Joe sat back and sipped without comment. In a little while the tension seemed to let up some. Mike was still sulking, but he was doing it with a more pleasant expression on his face.
    Joe had given thought to Mike’s financial problems. Without some surprise he didn’t think there was much hope. Mike was like a lot of people, including Joe—he had borrowed as much as he could in order to live the life he wanted to live, right now—to hell with the future. Credit cards had been a way to live beyond their means and enjoy the good life. Everyone did it—why not him?
    Joe had counseled Mike several times about the debt and the declining revenues of his business—even when he felt like a hypocrite doing it. Mike would just shrug his shoulders and say, “Everything’ll be better next month.” It never was.
    “Let’s get to it, okay?” Joe prodded Mike. “Do you have any assets you can sell?”
    “Everything is hocked to the max. Even if I could sell something, it’d just go to pay off debt—there wouldn’t be any cash.” While not a surprising answer, at least Mike seemed lucid and over the anger Joe had encountered when he first arrived.
    “How about Samantha. Does she have any assets or family money she could get?”
    “Well, even if she did, I wouldn’t ask. I’m sure she’s already planning her life after we’re done. My guess is that she’s hidden a tidy sum somewhere that I can’t reach so once everything starts to collapse she’ll have a nest egg to use when she starts over without me. I know she got some money from her brother’s estate after he died—she never told me how much, although I’d guess it was considerable.”
    “Well shit, what kind of deal is that? She’s your wife. That’s as much your money as hers, and you need it—now!” Joe was stunned that Sam would have her own funds and not be helping deal with the family’s financial woes. She and Joe had never got along, so it was easy for Joe to think ill of the bitch.
    “Maybe legally, but I’m not going to pursue it. I just don’t want to talk about that—it’s not going to happen.”
    Mike was beginning to lose interest in the conversation. You can only talk so much about your failures. Eventually it becomes pointless.
    “There is something that could be—oh never mind, that’s crazy.” Mike seemed to be drifting again.
    “Crazy? This whole conversation is crazy. Listen, Mike, I know we’re different. I’m not much of a risk taker, but crazy is the mess you’re in right now. You have big financial problems, and we’re in an expensive bar sucking down costly drinks. Is that crazy? If you have any ideas, even crazy ones, now’s the time to hear about them.”
    “Okay, okay stay calm. This is a strange area for me. You know my father kind of lost his mind before he died. My mother stayed with him until the last few months, when she couldn’t take it anymore. She asked me to help her with him. During his last years he and I had become a little closer, although he was always distant with me. Or maybe I was a little bit distant with him, I don’t know. Anyway she asked me to help.”
    “I looked around for a place he could be moved to. There just wasn’t much that was very pleasant. Then there was an incident with him and my