by Michael Lion
“Now, is that any way to talk to an old friend?” I started. He grunted. It would be a one-sided conversation for a minute or two. “Word on the street is you ain’t never been caught, Double F. Didn’t seem like all that neat a trick to me.”
“Fuck you,” he managed again. “Lemme sit down, ya fuckin’ prick.”
I let go of his jacket, and he dripped back to the pavement and sat there with his head between his knees. I stayed standing up in front of him. “Tell me when you can see again. Then I’ll tell you how much longer you’ll be able to.” That got a look. He practically turned his head like an owl to give it to me. “This doesn’t look good, man. You should’ve ditched this over three hours ago.” I kicked the Nike bag. It was heavier against my foot than it should’ve been. Double F came alive like a cat.
“What da fuck, Birdy? Why you hasslin’ me? Shit, you don’ need to be goin’ like dis!”
“Apparently I do, motherfucker.” I put my hands in the air in mock surrender. “You know me, man. You knew I’d just be after a little information.” We both looked at the Nike bag. “But it looks like you’re carrying a little more than that tonight.”
A wry smile started to curl the corners of Double F’s wide mouth. He looked down at my hand, spread out open on his chest, and said, “Dass OK, Birdy, I got it now. Jus’ lemme get my breath back, homey. Gonna fuck you up.”
“You don’t want to do that, my man. See, I’m not the only one wants a word with you. I visited a mutual friend of ours about an hour ago. He’s going to be very concerned about your whereabouts.”
“Aww shit! You went to da King? Aww, fuck, Bird! What’d he say?”
“Nothing, yet. I don’t think he’s missed you. But he will when his man shows up with an empty trunk. And guess who’s gonna tell him everything he saw?”
Double F stared at me for a long minute. Then he resigned himself with a sigh and said, “All right, white boy, whatchoo wanna know?”
“Not what...who.” I pulled the morgue photo out and held it about an inch from his face. He moved a hand from his stomach and used it to grab the print and push it away to a viewable distance. I let go so he could hold it all by himself. He didn’t recognize her, then he lied.
“Yeah, I know da bitch. Seen her ’round Scream before. Healthy fo’ a white ho.”
“How long ago?” I asked. I wasn’t even paying attention to his answers. Some guys can’t lie well about the color of their underwear. He kept checking the Nike bag with his foot. There was something in it he didn’t want me to see.
“’Bout two weeks, maybe three.”
“She use?”
“I jes drop da shit, homey. Sellin’ it somebody else’s job.”
“I think you’re lying to me, D.” I shrugged. “That’s all right. Where you gonna be in about two hours? I need to let Kingfish know. I owe him.”
His hands started to shake and his eyes got large and white in the darkness. They skipped over my face, begging me to be joking. “You would turn in a brotha, wouldn’t ya, muhfuh?”
“You better fuckin’ believe it.”
“Man, I ain’t lyin’ to ya, I swear! I seen her aroun’!”
All I could do was shake my head. “D, you think I’m stupid? What color’s her hair?”
He stared hopelessly at the black-and-white photo.
“Not much help, is it?” I was tired of messing around. “Look, man, I was gonna just ask nice and go on my way, but when you walked in with a bag that should have been on its way to Kingfish, I figured you wouldn’t be in a talkative mood.” I took a second to look at him, hard. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “You might be crazy, D, but I know you’re not stupid. Therefore, I know you’re not trying to steal the Kingfish’s spot. So...what’s in the bag? Crack? Or cash?”
His eyes glanced at something over my shoulder. It was the oldest trick in the world, and I fell right for it. In the split-second it took me to realize there was no one behind me, his fist crossed my cheekbone and pain washed through my head in a wave. As I went down I threw out a foot and caught him in the knee. He yelped and curled up against the wall, never letting go of the bag. I stepped back to him, shaking off the punch, and said, “All right, I’ll let you have that one. I deserved it. Try it again and I’ll make sure even surgery won’t fix your knees. Now how about you stand up and we talk like men?”
He stayed on the ground, rubbing the knee. I picked up the morgue photo of the redhead and sat down next to him instead. After a pause I said, “So you’ve never seen her?”
He didn’t look at me, shook his head. “Naw.”
“Well, D.F., I’m in kind of a tight spot, now. See, Kingfish was real nice to me tonight, tellin’ me where you were and whatnot, and, well, he’s gonna expect a little something in return. You get me?”
He nodded again. “I been runnin’ shit ona side, babe. Slant muhfuh over in Little Tokyo. He come up with some new shit.” Double F reached out and unzipped the bag. A rubber-banded roll of hundred-dollar bills fell out. He grabbed it and tossed it back in casually. Then he rummaged around inside for a minute, and came up with a small wax paper slip envelope, maybe two inches square. I took it. He talked.
“You innerested inna little info, Bird?”
“Always, babe.”
He pointed at the packet. “Don’ ax me what iss called, man, ’cause it don’ got no name yet. Iss chemical tag longer’n my dick.”
“Try crack,” I said indifferently. “So what?”
“Synthetic crack, my man,” he went on. “Little Jap uptown jes figure it out. He take a bond outta some fuckin’ chemical and whack! You got dat li’l crumb.”
I studied the open wax paper in my palm. The crystal in it was about the size of a frozen pea. It looked just like rock cocaine or crack, except it was as clear as glass. Normally, crack crystals look smoky. “Keep going.”
“Iss simple, babe. You holdin’ da future a da street!” He was squatting next to me now, excited, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Bullshit. What makes it better than crack?”
“Y’all ever done dope?”
I shook my head.
“Da sky on pure shit like twelve, mebbe fi’teen minute. Two hits a dat little scrap in yo’ han’, and you be up for a hour, hournahaf.”
Double F was slowly starting to make sense. And slowly starting to be very important to the Kingfish. “All right,” I said, “so what’re you carrying? The cash or the shit?”
He wordlessly unzipped the bag and held it out to me, open, so I could see inside. It was full of money. Kingfish’s spot of tens, twenties, and fifties were all bundled with rubber bands. At a glance it looked like about forty thousand bucks. It was all crowded into one end, with a few more of the little wax packets mixed in, and a cell phone. The rest of the bag was filled with neat stacks of treasury-banded hundreds. There were a lot more of those.
“Jesus, you crazy motherfucker,” I said, shaking my head and almost laughing. “You’re playing both ends against the middle! I was wrong, man. You’re crazy and stupid.”
The fear returned to his eyes and he put a hand on my shoulder as I stood up. “Whadda you mean, Birdy? I’s jes doin’ some personal invesment, you know, an’ I needed a li’l, uh, you know...uh...”
“Capital,” I helped him.
He looked at me like that wasn’t the word, then went, “Yeah, dass it! Anyway, homey, dis li’l JTown dude, he wanna make hisself a li’l profit off da shit, but don’ wanna get capped fo’ it, right? So I—”
I waved my hands at him, almost in hysterics. “So wait, wait. You dumb piece a shit.” I started pacing back and forth in front of him. “Let me get this straight. You took what looks like about forty large from Kingfish, right?” He opened his mouth to protest and I said, “Excuse me, man, borrowed it from Kingfish. And you used it as a show of good faith to a manufacturer in Little Tokyo. Not just a dealer, mind you, but the actual chemist himself, right? Oh, this is rich, this is tremendous!
So he sticks in what, a couple of crumbs of crack?”
“Yeah, muhfuh, plus about a G an’ a half.”
“A hundred thousand dollars?!! For fucking what?”
“To keep da King from cappin’ his slant ass!”
“So tell me this,” I said, getting very quiet, like a kind and understanding uncle. “Kingfish runs, what, ten, maybe twelve runners like you?”
Double F nodded suspiciously.
“And they all run about as much shit as you, give or take?”
“Yuh.” Realization was crawling across his eyes in a slow leak.
“And your plan is to go tell the baddest ass man in south L.A. that you bought off this producer for a hundred grand, and then go back and tell this chemist that Kingfish is OK with it, and make yourself a little jack on the side running synthetic crack, in direct competition with The Man, to the same fuckin’ customers you deliver to now?”
He nodded. His face was raw with fear. He’d suddenly realized that men with guns and cold hearts were probably fanning out right now, looking for him all over the streets of Los Angeles.
“Man, Double F, you think a hundred grand is gonna satisfy Kingfish? He’s gonna be losing three times that a night after this stuff hits the street! Tell me this, moron: how are you gonna run for some cheesedick Asian chemist after Kingfish pulls both your kneecaps off with pliers and stuffs them in your fucking mouth!?” I was laughing almost hysterically. “And, when the Asian mobs figure out what you’re doing, do you know they’re not just going to kill you, but your whole family and as many of Kingfish’s people as they can find? Your pain will never end!” I had his lapels in my fists, my face in his.
He started bawling and looking down both ends of the alley like Death himself was going to leap out and take him to the Man. I let him cry for a minute, and then let go of his jacket and picked up the Nike bag. He groped for it helplessly, like a semi-conscious drowning man grasping for a rope he doesn’t have the strength to hang onto. I propped him back against the wall. “Yep, buddy, you’re screwed nine ways from Sunday. I think it’s deal time. How about you?” I reached in the bag and pulled out a cell phone. I hit the R/S button and said, “Which one of these speed-dials the King?”
Double F held up a single finger.
The call rang through and Kingfish’s gravelly voice said, “Who dis?”
“The Bird. Guess what I got sitting in front of me?”
There was a long, very uncomfortable silence, and then, “One dead motherfuckin’ runner, I ’spect.” Hate and malice dripped from his words.
D.F. stood up suddenly and tugged anxiously at my sleeve. Through clenched teeth he whispered, “What da hell you doin’?”
I wrapped a palm around the mouthpiece and said, “Saving your fuckin’ life.”
I told the Kingfish everything except that D.F. was going to lie to him and keep running the synthcrack on the side. When I was done, he said, “Put dat little scrap a shit onna line.”
I handed the phone to D.F. “He wants to talk to you.”
All I got was Double F’s side. In a voice that never stopped quivering he said, “No. No...unh-unh!...I swear to God!” Then he started crying again. Then he gave a bunch of street directions to a building in Little Tokyo. He described the security the place had on it. My stomach got hollow as I realized with a dawning sickness that in less than thirty minutes that Asian chemist would be dead. Then Double F was quiet for a long time. Right before he hung up, a large patch of urine stained the concrete around his feet, tingeing the air acrid.
“You owe me. Ready to give it up?”
He nodded, staring at the ground, at the dark circle slowly growing larger around his shoes. Then he wiped his nose on his sleeve, reached in the Nike bag and pulled out a thousand dollars in hundreds and pushed it at me. “Here, mothahfuckah.”
“I don’t want money, D.F.”
“It’s from the King!” he hollered suddenly, and threw it at me. The outburst sent him into tears again.
I picked up the bundle and gave it back to him. “Then use it,” I said.
He wiped his nose on his sleeve some more and looked at me with what might have been a little hope.
“Here’s the deal. You get this,” I said, placing the picture of the dead redhead in his palm. “Ask around, and I mean everywhere. Spread the cash around. Hit all your west side connections, you got me?”
He was in some weird stupor. He nodded without looking up from his hands, which held the photo and the money about a foot apart, like opposing magnets. “You either call me or be back here in three days and tell me what you got. Kingfish won’t hurt you.” I thought about that. “Well, he might hurt you, but he won’t kill you. You’re taking that dough to him right now, right?”
He nodded again, violently. His chest hitched in and out with stifled breaths.
“Good. So, back here in three days or give me a call.” I put my hands on his shoulders and made him look at me. “Remember, you’re an investment. Kingfish puts money into you, and he expects to get more money out. He’s a businessman, just like me. So buck up, pal. You’re still in business.” I zipped up the bag and handed it to him. “Now go. I’ll see you later.”
He stood there for a second, in a daze. “Go!” I yelled, pointing down the alley. “Go!”
He looked at me a little crazily, then started to stumble off, careening from one side of the alley to the other. I watched his feet go from the kicking, stumbling motion of a drunk, to a light canter, to the churning, pumping rhythm they were so accustomed to—the beat of the street that kept him alive.
In three days he would be back, like a ghost. Strung out, a little edgy.
And full of information.
I lit a cigarette as my feet carried me the other way. I had a debt to pay.
Chapter 8
The sun was shining. It was morning. That was two strikes against the day.
I was sitting in the client’s chair in front of Rick Cane’s desk, squinting. Two of the four walls in his east-facing corner office are glass, and the sunlight was not just shining in, it was shouting, jostling, and elbowing its way in, searching out corners and undersides and trying to wake up the dust. Not even the darkly conservative mahogany wainscoting could dim the intrusion, and I remembered the sunglasses in my pocket and got them on my face just before a headache could really take hold.
The rest of the furniture in the office follows the lead of the walls: the carpet is a deep green; a short, thickly shelved bookcase is solid, dark mahogany; the client chairs, smaller versions of Rick’s that don’t rock back, are mahogany and brass with linen upholstery that’s a slightly lighter shade of green than the carpet. His desk sits in the exact center of the room, a solid block of ebony three feet thick, with a top big enough for two midgets to play tennis. Not a square inch of it was visible underneath piles of manila folders, legal pads with scribbling all over them, and forgotten newspapers.
Rick had his back to me, talking in low tones through a black enamel phone buffed to match the finish of the desk, trying to get a tan through the windows. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but didn’t care enough to try. I was tired, hungry, and sore. Double F’s right cross was a tender memory beneath my eye. Cane hung up, turned around and looked at me in silence for about ten seconds. Then he hit a button on his intercom and said, “Elizabeth, could you please bring in a cup of coffee for the deadbeat you let into my office?”
I smiled slightly and pointed at the spot on the desk where I had thrown the tracings from Denise’s diary. He looked down at them the way he might look at a squashed bug, then unfolded them slowly and read them beginning to end. Elizabeth brought me the coffee, and it was kind to me. When he finished reading, he took a sip of coffee from a black enamel mug and said, “What you got is very comforting. How you got it is not.”
“You want to lecture me now or fax it to me?” I said. I was in no mood.
“You wouldn’t listen either way. Where’s the money?”
I pulled the roll out and laid three hundred and fifty dollars on his desk, counting out loud.
“A C-note and-a-half for expenses?”
I nodded.
“You want to itemize them?”
“You said no questions. I’ll tell you if you want, but you’d be aiding and abetting a felon. I got you what you needed, and you’d’ve never found it yourself.” I stretched until my back popped. “She’s a fine, beautiful young lady, Rick, if a little immoral, and she’s only bopping with her boyfriend. She’s also a little behind-the-back entrepreneur. I don’t know how much of that you want to tell Bob.”
He looked at the tracings in front of him, smiled, and then bent over beneath the desk. The sound of a shredder came briefly, and his hand returned empty.
“How’re you going to tell Waterston?” I asked, slurping the last of the coffee. It perked me a little.
“Good news is never a problem. And the bearer only had to get into one police blotter to bring it.” He wagged his finger at me femininely. “No more questions.”
“Right.”
He pulled two hundreds out of the cash on the desk and handed them to me. As I rolled them up and tucked them into my jacket, I said, “Funny, though.”
“Hmm?” He had picked up one of the legal pads and was looking at me over the top of it.
“Something about this just doesn’t sit right, Rick. Why would Waterston hire you to tail his daughter?”
“Because I’m his friend. He trusts me.”
“Trusts you to what? You’re no peeper, man, c’mon.”
He placed the pad carelessly on one of the stacks and picked up his coffee cup. “What’s bothering you?”
I sighed and tilted the chair back until the legs creaked and Rick winced a little. “Well, needless to say, working for you isn’t the only thing I’m doing right now. I’m also looking for a dead girl.”
He gave me an odd look.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret: Waterston came in on me while I was in Denise’s room. But—”
“He fucking saw you?!” Rick coughed coffee back into his mug. Tiny spots settled on the papers all over his desk.
