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"And that sweatshirt?"
"It's Rome's," she said, shrugging as she reached for the phone to, presumably, call the gate.
"Stealing his comfy hoodie and he ain't your boyfriend?" I smiled, thinking about the endless hoodies women had lifted from me over the years.
She ignored me as she talked to Al at the gate, telling him to let in the guy from Famiglia, then hanging up. "Did you make coffee?" she asked, brows drawing together.
"Yeah."
"Jeez. Just make yourself at home why don't you?" she asked, smiling a little.
"Someone's got to. Your coffee grinder still had a factory seal on it."
She gave me a small smile. "It's easier to get coffee in the lobby at the office."
"Your stove front still has that protective plastic on it," I pointed out and she laughed.
"I don't cook or bake and even if I did cook or bake, it seems pointless to just cook for myself."
"Your not-boyfriend isn't over here all the time?"
"Jesus. What is your obsession with Roman?" she asked, waving a hand out like I was being unreasonable.
"He stayed here last night, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"In your bed?"
"In the guest room!" she yelped out, frustrated. "Alright enough about Rome. You're here to give me answers."
"Actually, baby, I'm here to get answers," I countered, watching as she moved past me and went toward the coffee pot, fumbling for a second as she looked at her cabinets, like she couldn't remember where the coffee mugs were. Back to me, I got to see her fan-fucking-tastic ass in those second-skin jeans she had on.
"Well I have no answers for you. So you can just get that out of your head. What do you know about the Third Street gang?" she asked, going into her fridge for milk.
"Babygirl..." I groaned slightly, not wanting to go there, but knowing there was no way she was going to give in. She turned, brow lifted behind her giant glasses and fuck if it wasn't the cutest God damn thing. "Fine," I sighed. "What do you want to know about them?"
"Well, you've told me they sell slam..."
"Smack," I corrected, grinning.
"Smack, whatever. And that they are pimps."
"Yeah, babe."
"So what are they doing at that huge warehouse on Kennedy?"
The warehouse on Kennedy? I didn't know shit about a warehouse on Kennedy, let alone one connected to the Third Street gang. "Is that where you were last night?"
She waved out a hand on a huff. "Yes. Okay, fine. Yes, that's where I was last night."
"Why?"
"That's my business," she said in a firm tone, her chin lifted, her brow arched in a haughty way that had my lips twitching. "What could the Third Street gang be doing in a factory that big? Making heroin?"
"No, baby," I said, trying not to laugh.
"How do you know that?"
"You know nothing about drugs, do you?"
"It wasn't exactly in my curriculum at school, no."
Guess that made sense. Sad thing was, I knew everything there was to know about drugs by the time I finished grade school. Despite my mom's, grandma's, and aunts' best efforts, there was no shielding me from all that shit growing up in the area I grew up in.
"Heroin is an opiate, but it's part synthetic so you can't just extract it from poppy. It's made from morphine. So first you need to extract the insides from the poppy, dry the morphine so you can ship it, then chemically extract the heroin from the morphine."
"And you know that they aren't doing this because..."
"Because it's too much fucking work, Elsie. The biggest supplier of opium and morphine is Afghanistan. Do you know how hard it is to ship shit in from Afghanistan to the United States right now? Third Street isn't big enough to grease the palms they would need to to get that shit in here. And why bother when you can get a contact from Mexico or Columbia, fuck, even fucking Burma or Laos, to do the dirty work for you? You lower your overhead and your risk of getting found out. So, no, they're absolutely not making heroin in that warehouse on Kennedy."
She was silent for a moment, tapping her nails on her mug as she thought. They weren't fake nails, either, I noticed with a bit of surprise. They were short and shaped and painted a pale pink, but they were her own nails.
"Could it have something to do with the prostitutes?" she asked a minute later with a shrug that suggested she already knew the answer.
"Can't think of a reason why it would."
"All you are doing is nixing my ideas," she shrugged. "Got any of your own to throw around?"
"Babygirl, I don't know what you want from..." I trailed off as the doorbell chimed.
"Say 'saved by the bell' and I'll throw my coffee at you," she warned, clicking it down on the counter and moving over toward where she dropped her purse. I bypassed her, going to the door, taking the food and paying the delivery guy before she could even get her wallet out of her purse. "Hey what are you doing?" she asked as she walked up to me closing the door.
