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“The nurse shakes it up with me, too. I figure I scratch her back—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off.
“Thanks for your shitbox car,” I say. “Now scram. I’ve got someone else meeting me here and he’d hate to find out you’re stealing prescriptions from rehab patients and using them to barter for pussy.” I smirk. “Or date rape.”
Jeremiah stares at me, incredulous at my joke. I think he knows I’m razzing him. I think. But, then again, he’s stolen drugs before and gotten busted so maybe he doesn’t think it’s so funny.
“Next time, RDB, when you want a favor
you show up with cash.”
“If it’s going to be like that, Jeremiah, I’ll show up with cops.” I smile. He turns his head to the side and spits because he doesn’t dare do it in my direction. He ducks into the car and leaves.
He flips me the bird as he passes out of existence here on this snow-covered avenue. I laugh and blow smoke chasing after him. I don’t think it catches up.
I’m not even done with my smoke before the unmarked SAPD car rolls up; its headlights twin beacons cutting through the noir swath of life stretched out all around me.
22
I walk up to my old partner, comfortably seated inside his car, warm as a hotbox.
The window rolls down and Graham Clevenger’s elbow dangles out. I lean in.
“This notebook will be quite a find,” I say, smiling in earnest to my old friend. The ambient heat washing out from the open window is a welcome blanket covering me in the frigid exterior here. I’d sit in the car but I want to smoke more than I want to be warm.
Clevenger looks at me and readily accepts the spiral-bound ledger, begins to leaf through it.
“Did you take this off a doctor or something?”
“Big Fry dealer. Former dealer.”
“This guy could have written prescriptions, alright. Oh—” His eyes widen at the text. “Where’d you get this again?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“I gotta tell the captain it’s from somewhere.”
“That depends on the captain. Is it Captain Reichland or Captain Moody now?”
“Jesus, Buckner. I told you back in August that Moody died.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm...Oh that’s right.” I smile. “Moody died?”
“Yes, Buckner. How many times—”
“Moody’s dead?” I ask, finding this to be hilarious.
“Bastard,” Clevenger says. “I know how you felt about the guy but let his body rest.”
“Probably not.” I didn’t care for Moody at all. Hearing he’s dead over and over again is my idea of fun.
Clevenger clears his throat and says, “And not Reichland either.”
“No? You’re shitting me. The Nazi holdover is gone also? Who then?”
