“They find anything?” I asked.
“Not yet. And I’m still on the first damn camera.” He tapped the screen before turning it to face me.
The angle showed the other side of the door we stood next to, and it looked fine to me. I opened my mouth to ask what the issue was when someone walked by.
Kind of.
Because the footage only showed halting steps before whoever disappeared.
“Either they’re buffering…” I started.
“Or the cameras are slow as shit.”
“Better ways to honor yourself in your work than by making everything glitch, Glitch.”
He shot me a glare. “How long has the quality been like this?”
“No clue. Don’t check it.”
His head went back, and he looked offended that his handiwork went unused.
“When shit happens, there’s no need to run the footage. I’m always here. That means I’m always around to see it live.”
“You didn’t check after you were shot at?”
“Cops took everything and said none of the angles caught it.”
“You would think they’d have let you know that the quality was right up there with a dial-up modem running the internet from a free AOL disc.”
“They probably assumed that was how it normally ran.”
“Insulted. I’m fuckin’ insulted.” Glitch ran his hand over his tattooed head. “The plan was to run some updates, maybe add a new camera or two to cover more of the block, and that should’ve been it. But now I need to troubleshoot before I attempt to add anything else.”
“Am I still on track to reopen Friday?”
Covering the lost wages for the week with nothing coming in meant I was hemorrhaging money.
I could do it for a stretch without feeling the pain, but anything longer than a few weeks was gonna make shit tough.
Especially if my employees were using that paid hiatus to line up new jobs that didn’t involve bullets and cops.
“Should be.” Glitch hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “This’ll likely mean getting into the walls to upgrade some wiring. That cool?”
“Can you make it faulty enough to torch the place but good enough to look like an accident to an arson investigator?”
“Yes,” he answered instantly. No smile. No joke. Nothing but the truth. Especially when he added, “But you’d be better off having Beck do it.”
Beck, who worked for our buddy Nox, specialized in fire. I would say it was his job, but it wasn’t work when he loved what he did.
And that crazy motherfucker really loved it.
“I’ll pass.” I gestured to the bar and shelving behind it. “If I let him loose with matches, this wouldn’t be the only wood going up.”
“Fuckin’ hell.” Glitch’s grimace returned to frustration as he gestured to the men across the room. “Wrap up this room.”
“Got it,” Haze called back.
“You quitting already?”