“What?” I answered.
“It’s Madison. Ann vouched for you. And I have the proverbial good news and bad news.”
“Can you say it on the phone?”
“Sure. The person you were asking about got in touch.”
“And . . . ?”
“And she says someone she trusts is going to set up a meeting between you and her.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is, you were right. There was a connection between my work and what she was looking for. But it doesn’t have anything to do with her. Not with herself, see?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s the bad news. I can’t tell you what she told me. I promised not to. But it is very, very serious.”
“You wouldn’t have called me if you couldn’t tell me something,” I said.
“Do you know what ‘empathy’ means?” she asked.
“It’s when you feel someone else’s pain.”
“Close enough. That’s her problem. And that’s all I can tell you,” Madison said.
I was just starting to ask her another question when she hung up.
“I need to get in the street,” I told Gem.
“I understand. Do you not want me to—?”
“I do want you to help. I apologize if I gave you any other impression.”
“You are very formal to a woman who has you inside her.”
“I . . . That doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“You act like a very stupid man sometimes, Burke. You know I was not talking about your cock. Or you should know.”
“I’m just screwing this up, Gem,” I told her, feeling hollow.
“Then do what you know how to do.”
“I . . .”
“You know how to hunt. That’s what you do. What you are. I will get my pad. I will write down what you tell me. And then, while you are doing whatever it is you . . . must, I will get the information you want. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said, not wondering where the guilt had gone to anymore. Not with it sitting on my shoulder like a fucking anvil.
The way Madison had related the information told me her conversation with Rosebud hadn’t been over the phone. The girl was close by; I was sure of it.
Anyway, I knew enough about her now. Rosebud wouldn’t ever get too far away from Daisy.
And she had said she was going to talk to me.
I just didn’t know what I was going to do when she stopped talking.
“I’m not doing it,” I told Ann.
“Why?” she demanded, hands on her hips.
“I don’t need you anymore. There’s no chance of a payoff. I’m in contact with the girl—through other people—and she’s going to come in.”
“Just like that?”
“I never said I would—”
“The money isn’t enough?”
“A hundred grand, against the hundred years I’d have to do if I got popped? No.”
“But that’s not the real reason, is it?”
“No. I already told you the real reason.”
“That you think I want you for a fall guy.”
“Or you’ve got a martyr complex.”
“The opposite,” she said. “I lose these”—flicking a hand across her breasts dismissively—“I might as well have had plastic surgery. Nobody who knew me here would ever recognize me. Once this is done, so am I.”
“How could that be? No matter how big the score, it can’t be enough to take care of all the—”
“I’m not giving up the struggle. I’m just going after it in a different way, once this last job is done. It’s not as if we’re alone. Some places—VA hospitals, for example—they know how to deal with pain. And they do it. There’s also—”
“VA hospitals?”
“Don’t look so surprised. The VA hospital system probably knows more about pain management than any other place on earth. Some of them, like the one in Albuquerque, they’re like . . . beacons in the night, for us. And Sloan-Kettering has been lobbying for changes in these stupid DEA laws that won’t allow them to administer enough—”
“Politics?”
“That’s right, politics. That’s where the change is going to be made. But I said politics, not politicians. You think there’d be any difference, no matter who was in office?”
“Me? I think the last two guys who ran for president were a pair of mutants.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they’d been line-bred for generations, like the way you’d do a bird dog or a racehorse. They never had any other purpose, right from birth. Problem is, you breed a dog to fetch birds, he might do it perfect, but he couldn’t shoot the birds, see?”
“No.”
“Politicians are bred to run for office, not to run the office once they get it. That, they don’t have a clue about.”
“That’s right!” she said, her voice juicy with promise. “They’re all whores.”
“I don’t think that’s fair to whores,” I told her. “All they do is fuck for money. Most of them would draw the line at the stuff the average politician takes in stride.”
“You think all politicians are sick?”
“Like mentally ill? No. What they are is litmus paper. They turn color depending on what’s poured over them. You think any of them actually have a position on anything? George Wallace first ran for office with the backing of the NAACP. After he lost, he vowed he’d never get out-niggered again. The only ones who truly have a position are the fascists. They’re for real . . . which is why they’ll never get elected. And neither will that narcissist Nader. Some ‘green’ party he’s running—all he accomplished was to vampire enough dumbass liberal votes to elect a guy who’d sell the Grand Canyon to a toxic-waste dump operator.”
“You’re right. Which is why I’m going into a new line of work.”
“What’s that?”
“Fund-raising,” she said, with a truly wicked grin. “You know how it says, ‘God bless the child who’s got his own’? Well, people dying in pain in America don’t have their own. But we can buy some for them.”
“That’s a better plan,” I agreed. “If the gun people can do it . . .”
“Yes! I know. We’ve all been thinking about this for quite a while. Things have to change. Even when there’s a huge market for a drug—like the so-called ‘abortion pill’—it took forever to get FDA approval. Not because of science—remember, this is something they’d tested on humans, and for years—but because the politicians were afraid of the anti-choice lobby. With pain medication, it’s a thousand times worse. The only market for new painkillers is for the ‘nonaddictive’ type. But the very reason for taking pain medication dictates that you become dependent on it. If it keeps you from being tortured, why shouldn’t you be dependent on it?”
I stepped away from her a little. Obsessives make me nervous. Maybe that’s why I scare people, sometimes. About some things.
“I’m not arguing with you,” I said, gently.
But it was too late to derail her train. “Do you know why dealers started cutting heroin with quinine?” she said, her voice shaking. “The U.S. government taught them. The military used to mix quinine into the morphine styrettes soldiers carried into battle in the Pacific Theater, because of the malaria threat. Nothing too good for our fighting men . . . until they come back home. The government doesn’t care. And neither do the drug companies. The only real R and D going on is for the illegal stuff, anyway. Like Ecstasy. You get a real quick turnaround on the research—instant profits—plus, you don’t have to pay the human guinea pigs; they pay you.”
“I know,” I said. Thinking about the morphine pump they’d hooked me to while I was recovering from the bullets meant to kill me. That magic pump that fired a little bit of painkiller into my veins every time I squeezed it. But I could only squeeze it six times an hour. And every time I did, the hospital’s billing computer went ka-ching! That machine hadn’t been deve
loped to kill pain; it had been designed by an accountant.
“But don’t you get it, B.B.? The DEA creates the market for new ways to get high. The pious, hypocritical—”
“I get it, Ann. But what good is one big score—even a humongous one—against that?”
“We need that shipment,” she said, adamantly. “We need something to sustain the ground effort, while the rest of us pull back and put the pressure elsewhere.”
“I can’t help you.”
“Yes, you can,” she said. “And I’ll show you why.”
I piloted the Corvette to Ann’s instructions. If she was trying to confuse me, she did a great job. I wouldn’t have been more lost if I’d been blindfolded. We pulled up to what looked like the bank of a river, but we were facing the wrong way for it to be the one that runs through Portland.
“Milwaukie,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“What do we do now?” I asked her.
“Wait. It won’t be long. Besides, it’s dark out.”
“So?”
“So haven’t you ever heard it’s much sexier to fuck outdoors?”
“No.”
“No, you haven’t heard it? Or no, you don’t believe it?”
“I’ve heard it. When it comes to sex, there’s people who get turned on by everything from latex to liverwurst. But, me, I’m a big fan of privacy.”
“That’s part of the fun,” she said softly, giving her lips a quick flick with the tip of her tongue. “That someone might come along.”
“Save it. When I was a kid, that was the only way it ever happened.”
“Outdoors?”
“Standing up in an alley. On a ratty couch in a basement with no door. On a rooftop; in the park when the weather was right . . .”
“Sounds like you had a lot of experience.”
“Experience? With sex, sure. With sex where you felt safe, like someone wasn’t going to run up on you any minute—not until I was much older.”
“I never tried it,” she whispered. “You sure you don’t want to show me?”
“I’m sure.”
“You don’t feel sure,” she said, giving me a rough squeeze.
“You didn’t ask me how I felt. You asked me what I wanted. And I told you.”
“You think, if we . . . if it happens again, you’ll be stuck? That you’ll have to go through with it?”
“No. And stop with the word games. There’s nothing for me to ‘go through’ with. I never made any deals.”
“You implied . . .”
“If you’d turned her up before I could do it on my own, I would have traded, like I said. But you didn’t.”
“Wait and see,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts. Then lifting them a little, just to show me what I had passed up.
“Time to go,” she said, about fifteen minutes later.
“Go where?”
“I’ll show you. We just had to park so . . . some people could be sure we weren’t followed.”
“So we never were going to be alone, huh?”
“You wouldn’t have known.”
“I get it.”
“No, you don’t. But this isn’t about that now. Just drive.”
The area behind the warehouse looked deserted. Except for the bright-red Dodge Durango.
“Flash your brights a couple of times,” Ann said. “Then pull in right next to him.”
I J-turned so that I could back in. As I was reversing, I saw two figures get out. By the time I was parked, they were sitting on the lowered tailgate of the Dodge.
Clipper and Big A.
“Hey, handsome,” Ann greeted Big A, giving him a kiss on the cheek, half big sister, half “Someday soon.”
“What’s up?” Clipper asked her, as if he was sitting in a coffeeshop and she’d just walked by.
“I don’t know,” Ann told him.
I took a step back, grabbed Clipper’s eyes, and took off my jacket. “All you had to do was ask,” I said to her.
“It was more fun my way,” she mock-giggled.
Big A ducked his head so I wouldn’t see him blush.
“What were you worried about?” I asked Clipper. “A piece, or a wire?”
“Guns scare me,” he said, calmly.
“We’ll be right back,” I told him. Then I reached over and grabbed the back of Ann’s neck. I would have used her hair, but I knew the wig would come off in my hand. “Come on,” I said.
She came along meekly enough until we got to the corner of the building. I had to put on a little pressure to get her to make the turn, out of sight of Clipper and Big A.
“Do it,” I said.
“Do . . . what?”
“Search me. Do a good job. I don’t know what all this is about, but I want you to be able to tell Clipper that I’m not carrying.”
She ran her hands over me. Tentatively, not sure what she was doing, but covering all the ground. It didn’t surprise me that she missed the sleeve knife.
“Can I . . . ?”
“Whatever you want,” I said. “Just get it done.”
She unsnapped my jeans. Pulled the zipper down. She tugged at the waistband just enough to get her hands inside. Spent more time there than she had to.
“All right,” she finally said.
We walked back around to where Clipper and Big A were sitting.
“He’s empty,” Ann said. “Now let me tell you what’s happening. B.B. doesn’t want to help us out with our . . . project anymore.”
If Clipper had a problem with “our,” he kept it off his face.
“And the reason he doesn’t,” she went on, “is because he thinks he’s found what he’s looking for.”
“Is that right?” Clipper asked me.
“Some of it. I never did want to ‘help out.’ It was supposed to be a trade. You know what I was looking for. If Ann turned it up, then that would have been different.”
“That ‘it’ you’re talking about is a human being.”
“Hey, that’s a good one. Very sensitive. You ever been a guest on Oprah?”
Big A started to get up. Clipper put out a hand to restrain him even as Ann started to step between us.
“You think she’s coming back soon?” Clipper asked.
“What I think is that she’s going to meet with me. Coming back, that’s her decision. All I ever wanted was the meet.”
“When do you think it’s going to happen?”
“Any day now.”
“I don’t think so. More than a week. Maybe even two.”
“And you’d know that . . . how?”
“Because she’s with us,” Big A said, pride strong in his voice. “She’s been with us all along.”
“Sure.”
“I kind of thought you might react like that,” Clipper said. “So I did something I hate doing. But I didn’t see any other way.”
“You ever just talk straight out?” I asked him.
“Sometimes,” he said, nodding as if he was agreeing with something.
“Want to take a walk, cutie?” Ann asked Big A.
“I’m staying here with—”
“Go ahead, Big A,” Clipper said to him. “I don’t want Ann to hear what I’ve got to say . . . and I don’t want her wandering around back there alone, okay?”
“Okay,” the kid said, accepting the wisdom.
We watched them walk away. When they were out of sight, Clipper reached in his pocket. “Recognize this?” he asked me. “It’s a micro-cassette recorder. The fidelity’s pretty good. Just touch the button right . . . there.”
I did that, then put the little machine down on the tailgate, so I’d have both hands free.
The voices came out of the tiny speaker thin and metallic, but clear enough so there wasn’t any doubt.
“Jenn, are you sure?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said, her voice patient and gentle. “But I wouldn’t want you to trust only that. Daddy talked to him. A lot. And he found out some th
ings about him, too.”
“Like what?”
“Daddy wouldn’t say, Rosa. But Daddy said he’d never make you go back if you didn’t want to go.”
“Does he know what I really—?”
“Pretty much. Not everything, but almost. Daddy thinks, maybe, he could even help you get . . . the rest of it, too.”
“For real?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, Jenn! That would be so . . . I can’t believe it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what your—?”
“No! I can’t talk about that.”
“All right,” Jenn soothed her. “That’s all right.” A long pause, then, “I saw Daisy.”
“How is she?”
“A little fireball, like always.”
“She is.” Rosebud chuckled. “She’s always been like that.”
“I know.”
“Jenn?”
“What?”
“You’ll never know. You’ll never know what it means to me that you’re so . . . so loyal. So loyal and true.”
“You’d do the same for—”
“That’s not the point!” Rosebud said, harshness in her tone. “Plenty of people are good and loyal. But that’s not always a two-way street.”
“Do you want to—?”
“You’re just like your father,” Rosebud laughed. “No, Jenn. I do not want to talk about it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Jenn, you know what?”
“What, Rosa?”
“I’m . . . still not sure. And I don’t want to meet with this . . . man until I am. I need more time.”
“How much more?”
“A week. Maybe a little more. I have to . . . check some things. Then I’ll be ready.”
“Okay. You know where to—”
“Yes. I love you, Jenn.”
Then the sound of a phone being hung up.
“Voice-activated,” Clipper said.
“Uh-huh. This a wiretap?”
“No. On my line. In my house. Or where I’m staying now, anyway.”
“With Rosebud?”
“That’s right.”
“And what you’re saying is, if I do this . . . project, you’ll bring me to her, even if she decides she doesn’t want to go through with it?”
“Yes.”
“You’d sell her just like that?”
Pain Management Page 26
