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Clevenger said he looked up when he heard the sirens, faint as old regrets calling in the distance. He said everyone seated at the tables around him were
trying to ignore the nightly soundtrack until it became apparent that whatever was going on was coming their way.
Clevenger, nursing a beer, staring at Molly, gorgeous as Aphrodite. A cool, pleasant night eating outside. Forty feet away, a car, battered and near death, shrieking on tire rims, taking the corner too fast and skidding sideways. Rolling onto the roof. Sliding nearer with a cascade of sparks like fireworks. Molly screaming. Jumping up. Everyone around erupting in terror.
Fifteen feet. Cop cars spilling forward like a dam broke. Before the suspect vehicle even came to a complete halt, the huge man inside it punching through the cracked driver’s side window. Hits the curb, rocks unsteady for a moment. The driver emerges, sees an older man and woman standing there.
Clevenger said Hulk clapped the older man upside the head and he crumbled like a wet sack of irons. Hulk grabbed the older woman. She screamed so hard her teeth flew out of her mouth. Then I was there, appearing out of nowhere. Clevenger heard Hulk bellow out This cunt dies if anyone—and then BOOM. My muzzle to his head, making the older woman safe.
Just like that we have what we call in the biz a firearm solution.
Clevenger said he was already making plans to pick up an application the next day at a police station near his apartment. Molly said, “I’m glad you don’t have friends like that cop.”
Ha.
I toss Nicky’s pad.
I find a duffle bag, an overloaded ash tray full of cheap cigarette butts and roaches and a couple of spoons, scorched on the bottom and stained in the bowl. Mainlining. Needles in the trash. Empty Chinese food containers. Beer bottles. Porn.
The door to the single bathroom is hollow-core. Too heavy on top. I leave it open, get a chair; stand on it. The top ledge of the door itself has been pried off. Tool marks along one side. I peel it back.
Hollow-core doors are partitioned inside by slats of cardboard. Users will sometimes remove the top and stash contraband inside them. Nicky has several ounces of weed in one section. About three ounces of cocaine in the next. He’s got a .22 caliber with no serial number next to the top hinge.
On the back patio there is a barbeque grill filled with paper ashes. No charcoal ashes. No wood. Paper. Burning his notes and ledgers. The organized distribution folks will have to keep some kind of temporary paperwork. When the shipment is complete they’ll destroy the paperwork, so that it does not become evidence against them.
Still, the ashes are cold and there is no smell of fire in the air.
These are old. Maybe Nicky really did have some degree of an operation going on here.
Plot point: assuming Nicky was some kind of network man, it’s possible that Delilah, among other problems, hosed the wrong dealer who just happened to be in a turf war. Losing a shipment like that would cost big bucks.
Tweakers kill over a few granules of meth or a single Big Fry pill. Giving the long screw to a dealer over an entire shipment is suicide, whether she knew what she was doing or not.
Sold it to an ex-boyfriend who middle-manned a deal. Pierce White? James Dobbins? Some third player?
I go back to the duffle bag—no doubt Nicky’s entire life packed up—and I dig. There are some clothes, a carton of the cheap cigarettes same as the butts that fill the ashtray, some mementos from a previous life where he was apparently a loving boyfriend or husband and father. These must be prior to his Big Fry existence. You see these remnants of ordinary, person-next-door lives with meth addicts, alcoholics, everybody.
You learn to despise addictions in a new way when you see what was sacrificed for them. If I felt sadness I would for the woman and child Nicky left behind.
I wonder what they would think knowing the Nicky they loved is dead, scrawny and weathered beyond his years, floating tits up and face down in a piss-filled toilet.
At the bottom of the bag is a five-subject spiral-bound notebook. The first two subjects have been torn out. Burned, I’m sure. The third subject is missing pages but when I open the cover up there are handwritten notes.
They have to do with the current production schedule. Excellent.
I walk out the door to Jeremiah’s car. On the way I flip open my cell phone and dial the best man I know. On the third ring he picks up.
21
Out of that armpit and back up north.
Jeremiah meets me at the corner. I get out, leave it running and light a smoke.
“You smoke in my car?” he asks.
“You smoke in your car.”
“Yeah, but it’s my car.”
