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“I was set up. Cops actin’ like I killed somebody but I just went for a drive and they’re sayin’ I was high or some shit—”
“What’s your PO’s name?”
“Officer Something. Bro, put your gun down.”
“Forget that,” I say. “Delilah Boothe. Talk.”
He’s sweating now. Nothing like waking up to a gun and the end of your life.
“Yeah, okay. Okay.” He wipes his face, then one armpit. He wipes the other, drags his hands down his flannel sleeping pants. I can smell the BO. “So anyways...I took some off the top of the shit—had to pay myself first, right? —and I brokered a deal with these guys. A cool ten grand for the shit. I got no idea where they scored the money, honest. The shit was easily worth fifteen or twenty on the streets but she jumped at it. I think she wanted to be rid of it, is all. They coulda offered her twenty bucks and she woulda took it. She’d take anythin’.”
“How’d she get it?”
“Said some friends left it in her house and then went to jail. Found it while she was packin’ to move out. Didn’t want the jail birds to squeal and her go down for it also.”
“Why not just dump it then? Or turn it over to the police?”
“How the fuck would I know, huh? Scared, I guess. No, no nono. It was more than that, I bet. Money, bro. The root of all evil. The reason why Nixon went into Vietnam, bro. Cash money.”
“Sure. Then what?”
“We sold it and she took her cut—supposed to be five—and stole most of mine. Bitch breezed right out the fuckin’ door while I was asleep.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Alright, I was passed out. But the meds my doc has me on right now are really bad for my skin and I’m just so fuckin’ tired all the time—”
“Then what?”
“Uhhh...then, then...then I called around for her a little bit, down at Roscoe’s and shit, but nobody seen her. Bitch fuckin’ rammed one up in me.”
“What is Roscoe’s? Why call there?”
“Bar. Watering hole, you know. I know people there. I introduced her to people there. People go there. Make sense?”
“No. Is that the place where you introduced her to the buyers?”
“I introduced her to everybody there, man. It’s fuckin’ Roscoe’s.”
“Is that the place where you introduced her to the buyers?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“No one has seen her?”
“No. No. If they had, I’d get my money back. But like I said, bitch rammed one up in me.”
“That’s it? You just lose all that money and blow it off?”
“Look, bro, I been to prison and I’m on thin ice now. I dig too deep or cast a net too wide and my PO hears about. I go back on the inside. Officer Something ain’t got no tolerance for anything. I thought I’d seen the last of Delilah fuckin’ Boothe when she broke up with me after we were fired. She showed back up. She’ll show up again. It’s her way.”
I reach over to his wallet. His PO’s business card is one of the few things left inside now that I’ve taken his cash. There’s an extra-large condom which I take out, giggle and toss to the side. Some delusions are funnier than others. I keep the card. I’ll probably not do anything with it, but there are never enough small details.
“What about your ex-wife?”
“What about her?”
“She hunting for Boothe?”
