Leer knew he was facing a big problem when it came to Max's father. He had to get information from Max without looking entirely clueless so he decided to leverage the fact that just hours ago, Victor was dead.
"Max," Victor confided,"I don't even know what to think about tonight myself much less what I'm going to tell anyone else about it. I mean, how often does a person rise from the dead out of the back of an ambulance bound for the morgue. Nobody seemed to really be grieving my loss, either. Even you looked like you were being horribly inconvenienced by my resurrection."
Max's face dropped open, she paused, then answered Victor's implication thoughtfully, "Victor, you can be very hard to live with. You're stubborn, opinionated, bossy, arrogant and not the least bit interested in anything that doesn't fit in a box that says "What Victor Wants". There were plenty of people there tonight who would have loved for those ambulance doors to remain closed. Some of them probably even con sidered blowing the damn ambulance up, just to make sure! And I must admit, I was beginning to let ideas of what life would be like without you, creep into my head. But something has changed," Max looked deeper into Victor's eyes,"you're different." Max said softly, making Leer feel unmasked, exposed. Max continued,"But I'm not talking about that whole rising from the dead thing."
"What?" Victor blurted in response,"What do you mean?"
"Sorry baby, daddy doesn't really give a shit about you," Max sneered,"What he will care about is what happened before your fight with Tommy Levito. He's going to want to know what happened to a whole load of JumpJuice, and that means everything. How'd it go missing, or more like, how did someone manage to steal our whole delivery without a fight and where the Varst is Bobby? I mean Bobby could handle a half-dozen of Tommy's guys five out of six times and at least three of them the other one time out of six, so who in Farb's name got the drop on him? I guess it's time to ask your new best friend where he put our boy. If he does have him, that means he's got the juice! He sure did get upset when you tried to pin him down on it before. Bet you don't want that to happen again."
"No, you're right Max. I want to know, but I'm not dying to find out!" Victor joked.
Max laughed with true appreciation. She was beginning to forget what an asshole Victor could be. Leer could sense that Max was opening up to Victor and realized that he had a limited time to get the answers he needed before morning.
"So what other part of everything do I need to come up with." Victor asked,"I don't know who has the JumpJuice and my guess is that Tommy doesn't either, and I don't think that's the answer he's after." Victor paused.
"What?" Max sensed something in Victor, something significant. She asked gently,
"Are you scared Victor?" Leer remained quiet,"I can't believe this, Victor Alonso scared of Sal Lorenzo>"
"It's not that!" Victor snapped back.
Leer knew he had to maintain some consistency in his behavior or risk the collision of this and several other parallel words, better to stick with newfound sensitivity than outright fear.
"I just want you to tell me what YOU want. Not what you think I want. Not what you think Sal wants or what Tommy wants. Tell me Max, what do you want? Victor sat down on the grass, leaving Max standing over him, the moon high above her as she pulled the baseball cap from her head, whipping her long, black hair free. She looked so familiar to Leer.
"I remember," he said without thinking.
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