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I don’t know if this is more than a laundering thing or just a florist whose owners pocket extra money. Fucking douche isn’t even listed as an owner like he is at the dealership and weird ass furniture store that seems on the up and up.
There’s the mayor and someone by the name of Henders, who could be anyone, but it’s a name that rings old bells.
I don’t even know if I’m chasing my tail or if I’m onto something, just like I don’t know if there’s a code and if it’s a specific one.
So, I use generic phrases likeextraspecial.
“The book, sir.”
I start going through it front to back and back to front, looking for a pattern. I’m usually muscle and protection, but we’re enforcers because when it’s needed, fucking intelligence packs a hard punch.
Some of the prices . . . yeah, there’s a pattern. In among the randoms are pictures of wildly differing bouquets and wreaths with the same price. There are seven different prices that run through the book, which seem to be in the wrong place—everything else goes the usual lowest to highest and makes sense, and then there are the wild jumps with matching prices that rise in fifty, seventy, and hundred-dollar increments. Those ones aren’t in order, so I think it’s to do with the pictures. I pick a middle price and a small bouquet.
It comes out in minuts, wrapped and with a bow.
I pay up and go.
Riding back to my hotel, I take the bouquet and aren’t shocked at all by the bags of coke and the pills that come out. It’s like a rave in flower form.
Three hundred in this form is highway robbery. I’m betting it’s fucking cut with all kinds of shit, just like. . .
“Oh shit. You gotta be fucking kidding me. Hendy?”
Hendy Henders, I can’t remember his real name, but he was a rich kid who partied hard back in the day, and selling drugs he bought and cut with crap was his MO. And he loved to get creative in selling it to kids at school.
Fuck . . . it makes sense. Sticking to what you know.
My phone rings, and it’s a call I’ve been waiting for. Tizio. “Flush them.”
That’s his advice after I tell him.
It makes sense because if someone finds me with that shit I’m done. So, I do. I wrap the flowers back up as he talks. It’s not as good as it looked when I got them, but I write the card for Nadie, since flowers are flowers and she deserves them.
“Woah. Back the fuck up, Tizio.” I sit on the sagging bed. “Who are The Westies when they’re at home?”
“That’s what they call themselves. Your Ralph and the others see themselves as powerful movers and shakers. They’re guys dumb enough to jump in bed with people without checking credentials. So, it seems Ralph got himself talking to this one guy who’s with those fuckers who’s bad enough he made the 86s uneasy. And he got Ralph and his cronies in bed with El Cabeza, the Smith Group—”
“The Smith Group isn’t here?”
“Fucking interesting, isn’t it?” Tizio clicks his tongue. “El Cabeza have been seen, but neither group is active in town, so it’s a dead end.”
I swear.
“Did you just swear in Portuguese?”
“Yes,” I mutter.
“Must be bad.”
“It’s the same shit with Avah. Bits and pieces and no solid leads to the shit starting to affect Dallas and we still don’t know about O’Grady and the Lowlanders.”
“A hurdle,” he says. “But it says it’s got far reaching fingers, whatever these idiots got involved in.”
“Who’s the puppet, and who’s the master?” I ask.
“Yeah. But the Smith Group, this ex-86ser, are bad.”
“You know this how, Tizio?”
