Chasing China White

by Allan Leverone

  Derek stared unblinkingly back at Crowder. This day was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Diversification,” Crowder said, “is a fancy way of saying I have my fingers in a number of different pies. As you’re undoubtedly aware, I provide local retailers with the product you have so enthusiastically been consuming the last several years.”

  He paused, and seemed to be awaiting some sort of acknowledgment, so Derek said, “So I’ve heard.” The words caught in his throat so he cleared it and repeated them. “Yes, so I’ve heard.”

  Crowder nodded. “Well, I’m active in a number of other business enterprises, and it may—or given your situation, may not—surprise you to learn that clients involved in some of those other enterprises occasionally encounter credit difficulties. You are not unique in that regard.”

  “Okay…”

  “Obviously you’re wondering where I’m going with all of this.”

  Derek nodded wordlessly.

  “Then let’s get down to business. I need you to pay a little visit to a client of one of my other enterprises. The man has run up a dangerously high debt load, and all you have to do is talk a little sense into him.”

  “That’s it? I just have to talk to some guy?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Derek’s heart sank. He knew the “favor” had sounded too good to be true. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that we’ve already ‘talked’ a number of times. Talking is unlikely to yield a satisfactory outcome.”

  “So…”

  “So you will visit him at his home. You will leave his home with enough cash and/or liquid assets to pay off the man’s debt load, or at least lower it to a reasonable level.”

  “You expect me to do a home invasion?”

  Crowder spread his hands. “Tomato, tomahto. I prefer to think of it as simply executing a business transaction.”

  Derek squinted in concentration. He’d never done well in school but he wasn’t an idiot. Something was wrong here, and even confused and in pain it only took a second to figure out what it was.

  “Don’t you have people for that? The two guys that brought me here seem well equipped to handle that sort of thing.” He rubbed his elbows unconsciously.

  “As I mentioned a moment ago, representatives of my organization have spoken multiple times with Mr. McHugh regarding his credit issues. Words have been had, threats made. If McHugh sees my men within a hundred yards of his house he’ll be on the phone to the police immediately. They’ll come running and the opportunity to extract what is owed to me will go by the boards, for who knows how long.”

  Crowder smiled. Derek didn’t think he’d ever seen anything quite so chilling. “That is where you come in. Mr. McHugh has never seen you. He doesn’t know you. I hope you won’t take it personally if I say you look…harmless. You are exactly the person I need.”

  Derek swallowed heavily. He’d never been good at confrontation. He was more the “go along to get along” kind of personality, and the notion of storming some poor bastard’s house and making off with his valuables seemed so far out of the realm of reality he was having a hard time picturing it.

  Crowder took in his hesitation and said, “I’ll even sweeten the pot. Offer you a little signing bonus, like they do with professional athletes.”

  “A bonus?”

  “Yep. If wiping out your debt doesn’t provide enough of an incentive, I’ll instruct your dealer to give you a couple freebies upon successful completion of your assignment, as a token of my gratitude.”

  Free heroin. Derek felt himself salivating. He was actually salivating like one of Pavlov’s fucking dogs at the thought of a couple of free fixes. Christ, how pathetic was he?

  Crowder interpreted his continued silence as uncertainty. He said, “Of course I won’t force you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. I’m offering you this opportunity as a way to get ahead of your own credit difficulties. If you choose not to take me up on my offer I completely understand.”

  “You do?” Derek realized he’d been breathing shallowly, and now he took a deep cleansing breath.

  “Of course. I don’t believe in issuing ultimatums, so I’m happy to offer you a second option.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I own a couple of lobster boats, signed over to me several years ago to satisfy another debt. You can hire on as a deck hand.”

  “Deck hand? On a lobster boat?”

  Crowder nodded. The smile had disappeared, and his face looked as though it had been carved out of a block of New Hampshire granite. It was hard and cold and his eyes glittered blackly behind lids that had closed to slits.

  “That’s right. Of course, if you select that option you can expect a one-way trip. The boats get pretty full, I’m told, and there isn’t a lot of extra room once those traps start getting emptied.”

  He leaned forward, placing both palms on the desk and starting up that infernal thrumming again with the fingers of his right hand. “But I’m sure a three mile swim back to shore through the frigid waters of the Atlantic would be no problem for you, would it?”

  3

  McHugh’s property was impressive, just as Crowder had said it would be. Massive front lawn. Long, sweeping driveway that curved gracefully to the left for no particular reason.

  And the house itself? Big and beautiful, like something out of a magazine, and featuring a wide wraparound farmer’s porch. Decorating the porch was a pair of wicker rocking chairs and some kind of fancy swing hanging from shiny chains bolted to the porch ceiling.

  Derek hadn’t even entered the damned house yet and he already knew it was going to be the nicest place he’d ever stepped foot in, not that that was saying much. He’d grown up in a dumpy apartment in Southie, left home at sixteen and lived in a succession of ever-nastier shitholes since.

  The nicest place he’d ever laid his head for more than a couple days was an old farmhouse way out in the country that had been converted into a rehab facility. He lived there for four months before being kicked out for relapsing and recalling it as “the nicest place he’d ever lived” wasn’t exactly the same as saying it was a nice place to live. It had been old and drafty and creaky and about as welcoming as a kick in the teeth.

  And that was another experience Derek was familiar with.

  One thing junkies learned early on was that they occupied the bottom of the societal food chain, right alongside rapists and child abusers. Normal—meaning non-addicted—people misunderstood guys like him. They feared them and wanted nothing more than to ignore them entirely. To go about their business and pretend they didn’t exist.

  It didn’t help that addicts had the unfortunate habit of alienating everyone who cared about them, stealing from family members, friends and loved ones, being consistently unreliable and occasionally dangerous. The path of addiction was nothing if not predictable, leading to hopelessness, lawlessness and self-hatred, and Derek had followed that path right down the line.

  Which explained what he was doing here, lurking outside an upscale home in the middle of nowhere—Boxford was a long way from Southie—after dark, waiting to commit an act of which he would never have imagined himself capable in those long-ago days before he’d first stuck a syringe filled with poison into his arm and eased down on the plunger.

  If there was anything to be grateful for in the hell his existence had become, it was that he could barely remember what it was like to be normal. Although, to be honest, he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt normal.

  Derek realized he was stalling, strolling down a memory lane that in his case was weed-infested and strewn with snakes, because he really didn’t want to do what came next. He dreaded doing what came next. But as seemed to be his habit—pun definitely intended—he’d painted himself into a corner and the opportunity to change the outcome of this particular situation had long since passed.

  In all probability it had never existed.

&nb
sp; The homeowner’s name was Jeff McHugh, and supposedly he was some bigshot wheeler-dealer. A stockbroker, or a banker, or maybe a real-estate developer. Derek didn’t know which and didn’t much care. What mattered was that Jeff McHugh was an addicted stockbroker or banker or real-estate developer.

  McHugh’s addiction was gambling, not drugs, and although Derek had never met the man, in many ways he envied him. McHugh undoubtedly suffered from his weaknesses, but he was at least capable of maintaining some semblance of normalcy. He could work, and have a family life, and still more or less juggle real-world responsibilities like an adult.

  When heroin was your master, none of that was possible. Your entire existence revolved around scoring your next fix, scheming ways to get the cash to pay for your next fix, and worrying about becoming too dopesick to function before that fix materialized.

  And sometimes, getting so deeply into debt with your dealer that you were forced to commit desperate—not to mention criminal and potentially violent—acts.

  But just because Jeff McHugh’s particular demon didn’t involve jamming needles into soft tissue didn’t mean it was benign. All compulsions came with a steep price tag, with McHugh’s steeper than most.

  Because Derek had been given an untraceable handgun and told not to leave the man’s house without enough cash or liquid assets to erase most if not all of a twenty-five thousand dollar gambling marker. Even as nervous as he was, he couldn’t help smiling as he recalled his reaction upon hearing the size of McHugh’s debt.

  He’d stood with his mouth hanging open, thinking he must have misheard or misunderstood. When he learned he had actually heard what he thought he heard, it only hammered home the difference between a high roller like Jeff McHugh and a lowly scumbag like himself. Derek Weaver would never in a million years be permitted to run up a twenty-five grand tab. Not by anybody, for anything, at any time.

  Twenty-five hundred would be out of his reach, and in fact his debt was far lower than that, and still he’d been hauled into Crowder’s office and given the unlikeliest of tasks with which to redeem himself.

  Dammit, you’re stalling again. Get your shit together and do this, asshole.

  McHugh had protected his property from prying eyes by constructing—or more likely paying someone to construct, since rich bastards like Jeff McHugh rarely performed their own manual labor—a natural screen composed of some sort of shrubbery. It formed a ring around the edges of his land every bit as effective as if he’d built a ten-foot-high fence, and now Derek forced his way through the shrubs. He earned a series of scratches on his arms and face for his efforts.

  He paused to brush dead leaves and twigs from his clothing and then hurried across a spacious back yard, fully exposed should the mark happen to glance out a rear window. The journey felt like it took an hour, and with every step Derek imagined hearing the concussive boom of a shotgun blast a split-second before being knocked off his feet, death enveloping him in what would almost but not quite be a welcome event.

  He flattened himself against the side of the house and stood breathing deeply through his mouth in an attempt to remain as stealthy as possible while simultaneously calming his nerves. The attempt failed on both counts, exactly as Derek had suspected it would. He finally gave up the attempt and inched along the side of the house until reaching the big farmer’s porch adorned with the wicker chairs and decorative swing.

  He lifted himself over the railing as quietly as he could, certain once again he was making enough noise to alert the homeowner to his presence. Lights were on inside the house and McHugh’s BMW was parked in the driveway, so even if Crowder hadn’t assured Derek the man was home it would have been obvious.

  He’d also promised Derek that McHugh’s wife and daughter would be away. “They go shopping together every Tuesday night like clockwork.”

  “Today’s Tuesday,” Derek had said stupidly, confirming his status as a goddamned idiot to Crowder, as if the man didn’t already know.

  Crowder wrinkled his nose as if he’d just gotten a whiff of a noxious odor. “Exactly,” he said drily, with the exaggerated patience of a man talking to a particularly dense three-year-old. “So it has to be done tonight if we want to be sure there’s no collateral damage.”

  Derek’s initial reaction was to find it odd that the man in charge of a criminal enterprise involving—at a minimum—drugs, gambling and extortion would have committed the schedule of the spouse of one of his customers to memory. On the other hand, Crowder’s goons had managed to find Derek and roust him without breaking a sweat, and he hadn’t had a permanent address in more than a year, so who was he to question anything?

  He had moved as far as McHugh’s front door and was now standing like a goddamn statue, and had been for probably close to a minute. The porch was bathed in low-wattage recessed lighting, so the longer he stood out here the more likely he was to get caught.

  And he’d begun to shake. Hell, calling what he was doing “beginning to shake” would be a pathetic understatement. Derek was shivering like he’d wandered into a February blizzard without a coat. It was partly due to nervousness, but mostly because the heroin Crowder had promised as payment for taking on this little job would be withheld until his return.

  Crowder was no fool. He’d obviously had plenty of experience dealing with junkies.

  But the problem was that Derek really needed a fix. Maybe Crowder had misjudged just how badly Derek was jonesing, or maybe he just didn’t give a damn, but in addition to shaking, Derek was sweating like he’d just run a marathon and he felt weak and washed out. He fingered the pistol in the right-hand pocket of his hoodie, knowing that unless he used the gun to punctuate his threats, McHugh would probably just laugh in his face and then beat the shit out of him.

  He’d call the cops after kicking Derek’s ass and Derek would be taken away and that would be that. He would languish in jail, which would probably be to his benefit because if he somehow managed to get himself released, Crowder would hunt his ass down and throw him on a fucking lobster boat.

  He sighed deeply and knocked on the door. Not the angry, insistent banging of a thug out to collect an overdue debt, but rather a polite rapping of the knuckles, exactly as Crowder had instructed. “Don’t let him think anything’s wrong until he opens up. Once that happens, force your way inside and get down to business.”

  A moment later the door swung open and there he was. Derek had seen a picture of his mark, of course, but in person McHugh looked bigger than he’d expected. He was tall and bulky, muscly, like a bodybuilder, with curly sandy hair and a scowl on his face. Maybe he was unhappy at having his alone time interrupted.

  “What do you want?” he grunted. He didn’t seem nervous, but he didn’t seem anxious to chat, either. In fact, he’d barely finished spitting out the question when he began stepping back, preparing to slam the damned door right in Derek’s face.

  So Derek pulled out his weapon.

  He’d kept his hand in his pocket the entire time, and now he yanked the gun out so enthusiastically it snagged on the side of his pocket and almost tumbled to the floor. Somehow Derek held onto it and even had the presence of mind to stick his foot over the threshold so McHugh couldn’t close the door all the way.

  He aimed the gun in McHugh’s general direction and said, “Back away and let me in.”

  He managed to keep his voice steady, more or less.

  McHugh’s eyes widened and he did as instructed. He glanced back and to his left, a quick shift of his attention before returning his gaze to Derek.

  When there was sufficient room that he guessed McHugh would not be able to bum-rush him before he could squeeze off a shot—not that he had any goddamned intention of shooting anyone, but he couldn’t let McHugh know that—Derek stepped inside the house and eased the door closed with his foot. It thudded shut and Derek was filled with the sudden bleak certainty he would never leave this place alive.

  “What the hell is this abo
ut?” McHugh said, his voice a low growl. It seemed the man was trying to keep his voice down and that struck Derek as odd. After all, they were alone inside the house. But to the extent he could focus on anything—his mind was spinning and he was shaking and sweating and craving heroin—he assumed McHugh had never been victimized by a home invasion before and didn’t really know how to act.

  It was a feeling Derek fully understood.

  “You know what this is about,” he said.

  “I don’t have any cash in the house, if that’s what you’re looking for. I might have a hundred bucks or so in my wallet. It’s yours. Take it and go and we’ll call it even. I won’t even call the cops after you leave.”

  Derek scoffed, but inside he was actually considering the offer. A hundred bucks would set him up for the next couple of days. He could float away on the chemical high he needed so fucking badly and nobody would get hurt.

  Until Crowder ran him down. Then there would be pain, and plenty of it, and McHugh wouldn’t be the one suffering.

  Derek shook his head. “You’d better goddamned well have some cash in here, or at least something of value. I’m not leaving until your debt to Mr. Crowder is satisfied.”

  McHugh blinked in surprise. “That’s what this is about? My marker to Crowder?”

  “That’s what this is about,” Derek agreed. He continued to train the gun on the man, who continued to speak in a near-whisper, as if they were talking in church or something.

  “Jesus,” McHugh said. “Crowder sends one guy? That’s it? And not just one guy, but a guy who’s white as a ghost and looks ready to pass out any minute now?”

  “Shut up and gimme the money.” Derek was still scared, of course he was, but now he was a little pissed off, too. Righteously so, he thought. Who the hell was this guy to ridicule him when he was the one holding the gun?

  “I told you, I don’t have cash in the house. I certainly don’t have twenty-five grand. A guy would have to be nuts to keep that kind of money lying around.”