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“What did you do? Did you fuck her?”
Jack’s voice immediately went cold. “Lou, I told you – ”
“Forget I said it. What the hell – you just went in there and asked her?!”
“I told her we knew about the phone call last night. I told her you planted the post-it note so she would find it. I told her that nothing was going to happen to her, but I needed to know what was going on. She broke down crying and told me everything.”
Holy fucking shit.
The world was a crazy place.
“What’d she say?”
“Some guy from the food stamp department got a hold of her. Found out she was buying food stamps and threatened to turn her in on trumped-up charges – fraud and felony shit – unless she helped him.”
Translation: a DEA agent had snagged her in a drug buy. But rather than turn her in to the police – which was fucking pointless in Richards, since we owned the department – they must have decided to use her to catch a bigger fish. Probably waved some sort of racketeering or drug dealing charges in her face.
“Did she give you a name?”
“Just some guy. Robert Smith or something.”
‘Bob Smith’?
Jesus Christ, could she have picked a more generic, fake-sounding name?
“What did he want her to do?” I asked.
“Everything you thought they wanted her to do.”
“Holy shit,” I murmured. “Are you sure she was telling you the whole truth?”
“I listened to her make a call to him.”
“What?!”
“Yep. Their front is a florist shop in Los Angeles. She left a message, said Venus the stripper was calling, and for Robert Smith to call her back. Five minutes later a guy called, and she put him on speaker phone. Didn’t tell him I was there, of course. Started off by telling them that she found out the club knew she was a mole, and that the thing the other night at Vern’s had been a fake to flush them out. The guy asked her if she was sure. She said ‘yes,’ then he said, ‘Damn it.’ He said if she was compromised, not to call back again unless she was in danger and they’d get her out. She asked if they were going to drop the charges, and they said they would either drop them or bust them down to misdemeanor level since she’d tried. Told her they’d be in contact, and that was that.”
I swear to God it was like he was speaking Chinese. It must’ve been what Benjy felt like when somebody started talking about the stock market. I just couldn’t make heads or tails of it. None of it made any fuckin’ sense.
The DEA just gave up and said, ‘Oh well, thanks for playing’? That shit doesn’t fuckin’ happen. The Feds are tenacious assholes. They don’t just fold.
And they were dropping the drug charges because she tried? Not in this world, buddy.
I didn’t buy any of this shit.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I listened to the whole fuckin’ call myself, Lou. Although…”
I could hear the hesitation in his voice.
“What?”
“I’m thinking I might have her stay at my place for a while. The guy was, uh… he was giving her free food stamps to keep her in line. I’d like to get her off of them.”
Translation: the DEA guy was giving her coke.
Smart motherfucker. Addicts will do just about anything to get their fix.
