But this whole operation isn’t about killing DJs. It’s about killing snitches, and to Ringo, that’s the next best thing.
El Jefe keeps the big picture vague, but Ringo is a smart enough man to figure it out. If you want to push your way into a castle, first you grab the lookouts. You force them to tell you everything about the castle’s defenses. Then you rip out their eyes.
Early. Real fucking early. That point where it’s pretty clear that last night slipped away but it’s not exactly morning yet, either.
Ringo just wants to get it on already.
The DJ guy took forever at the club. The set ended at 2:00 a.m., but he sat around for another hour drinking vodka tonics and snorting blow with some asshole buddies in the back of the club. Frankenstein had binoculars and could see the whole thing from the roof of a nearby house. Ringo was spread out on the cold, sticky roof, looking up at the stars. “What’s the good word, Frankenstein?” Frankenstein coughs in a pointed way. Almost a fuck you behind his tightened fist.
“What?” Ringo asks.
“Look, I know you don’t know, because we don’t really know each other, but don’t call me that, man.”
“El Jefe calls you that.”
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“Because he’s your boss.”
“Yours, too.”
“Nah. I swore to never have a boss ever again. I’m an independent contractor.”
“Whatever, man.”
“You should see yourself the same way, Frankenstein. Your days of skulking around the lab, doing someone else’s bidding, they’re long over.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? And don’t call me that.”
Frankenstein doesn’t know that politely asking Ringo to not call him something pretty much guaranteed that he would be Frankenstein all the time. From now on Ringo will go out of his way to use the name, even in circumstances where he might settle for the pronoun. Ringo knows he’s perverse that way. But it amuses him.
“Sorry, Frankenstein.”
“Come on, man … wait. He’s coming out.”
“You think I like being named after the lamest Beatle?”
“Then tell people to stop calling you that.”
“Nah, I’m just fucking around. I love it. What are my other options? John? Paul? Fucking George? No thanks.”
Frankenstein doesn’t know how to reply to that, so instead he turns his attention back to the target. “Come on, let’s climb down and get ready.”
“Why don’t you stay up here and take a nap, Frankenstein. I got this.”
“What do you mean?”
Ringo doesn’t answer; he shows Frankenstein what he means. The target is just a pale corpse with legs, stack of vinyl records tucked under a skinny arm, and Ringo is so tickled by the sight that he insists on doing the grab himself. Frankenstein protests; Ringo ignores him. He pulls the van up next to the DJ and honks the horn, which stops the DJ in his tracks. Ringo climbs out from behind the wheel—Frankenstein says, “Come on, man!”—walks around the front of the van—“Seriously what the fuck?”—and without a word punches the DJ in the face. BAM. The DJ folds like a table. Vinyl records go sliding out of their cardboard sleeves. Some lucky hipster is going to find this stuff later this morning. Frankenstein climbs out of the passenger seat and looks down at the DJ, who’s coughing and trembling and moaning. Ringo yanks open the side door, scoops up the bones of the DJ, then hurls him into the van like a sack of potatoes. “See? You could have taken a snooze.” Maybe it’s the coke, but the DJ apparently enjoys a surge of adrenaline and goes flying out of the van, but Ringo does a quarter turn and slams a meaty fist directly into his center of gravity. BAM, again. Not hard—too hard and he’d crush the guy’s rib cage—but hard enough to steal his air, temporarily stop his heart, and pretty much rob him of all ambition.
“Why?” he croaks as he drops to his knees.
Ringo looks at Frankenstein. Despite the scars, the guy has managed to screw up his face into an approximation of confusion. He turns his attention back to the DJ.
“Haven’t you heard?” Ringo asks. “It’s snitch season.”
THE BADLANDS
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7
Still no answer from CI #89. Wildey’s been trying all morning, since 4:00 a.m., but nothing. CI #89 keeps weird hours, but he always got back to him within ten minutes. There’s a sour feeling growing in Wildey’s belly. First the disappearance of CI #69 and now this.
Wildey eats a quick bowl of cereal, dresses, climbs into his peep car, and drives down to the bar in Northern Liberties, where CI #89 works weekends. The bar is locked up tight, but Wildey knows that the bartender (and part owner) lives in an apartment above the place. Some rapid pounding on the door brings the bartender out.
“Who’re you?”
“You remember me,” he says. “We’ve met a few times already. With Dana.”
Which was true. He’d met CI #89 a few times in the crowded bar. People assumed Wildey was a dealer. He liked people making that assumption, because it made him invisible and protected his informant.
The bartender nods, pursing his lips in understanding. “Oh yeah. Right. Sorry, man. I’m half-awake. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for Dana. Dana Cameron.”
“He left last night around three.”
Wildey gestures to him in a way that asks, Can we talk in private? The bartender, weary, looking like he’s been up for the past seven days straight, nods. They convene in the guy’s dirty kitchenette.
“Look,” the bartender says, “if he owes you money, you’re going to have to take it up with him. Dana’s just a DJ here, not an employee.”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I was supposed to hear from him first thing this morning.”
“Yo, man, still is first thing this morning. He’s probably asleep.”
Wildey ignores that. “Did he say anything about taking a trip?”
The bartender shakes his head. “No. He’s on tonight.”
“Is he hooking up with anybody? Maybe he’s crashing somewhere else?”
“Maybe, but he left alone. He was here late, like I said.”
“Huh.”
CI #89 is the source that tipped him off to Chuckie Morphine. Doesn’t make sense that Chuckie would send someone to take him out. Chuckie, far as Wildey knew, didn’t know his snitch. CI #89 was a scenester—a tall, cadaverous-looking white guy who probably looked like a suave punk vampire in the late eighties but had devolved into a pockmarked zombie in cheap sunglasses. CI #89 was Wildey’s first official snitch. Back when he was still at the Twenty-fourth, Wildey would see Mr. Zombie Sunglasses stop by the Badlands for a bundle or two. Wildey rousted him, told him to stick to his own neighborhoods, at which point an indignant Zombie Sunglasses told him: “The whole city is my neighborhood, man.” Which Wildey thought was kind of funny, but he still told him to get his white ass the fuck out of Dodge. The pouting Zombie Sunglasses wasn’t going to leave it at that. He walked over to a bright green newspaper box, pulled out one of those free newsweeklies (the City Press), flipped a few pages, and showed Wildey a column. Zombie’s column, as it turned out. He was a nightlife columnist. And his byline was “D.A. Cameron”—the initials stood for Dana Andrew. People, Wildey wanted to yell, do not give your son a girl’s name—it will make him hit the streets to score for drugs to take away the pain of being named Dana. “I’m not scoring,” his soon-to-be CI said. “I’m soaking up the streets.” Wildey told him to go soak his head instead.
Still, when the job at NFU-CS opened up and Kaz encouraged them to cultivate well-placed CIs, Cameron was the first person Wildey tracked down. The timing was excellent; City Press had just scaled back its operations in August, leaving Zombie Sunglasses without a column. More importantly, without the $350 he made each week on the column. Wildey came up with a solution: $300 a week to be his CI. “Imagine you’re writing the column for me,” Wildey said, “and it’s all about drug dealers.”
Zombie Sunglasses eagerly agreed, and seemed to have no moral quandary about ratting out his former party people. “Shit, they sold my ass out long ago. Fuck ’em.” Wildey thought that was funny, too. He liked CI #89.
And now he’s missing.
His next phone call is to Kaz.
FOX CHASE
Marty thinks a lot about the phone call, about the broken bottle that shattered their front window.
Marty checked caller ID not long after Sarie left Friday night and saw that the last number had a 570 area code. That was northeastern Pennsylvania. Sarie’s friend Tammy Pleece lived five minutes away, not in upstate PA. Even if Tammy were upstate, how could she manage to make it down to Philly to meet for coffee fifteen minutes later? She couldn’t. The caller was someone else. Someone who sounded enough like Tammy to convince Dad. (Marty conceded that to his twelve-year-old ear, all girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen sounded pretty much the same.) Someone who lived upstate would most likely be a friend of Sarie’s from school, but that was by no means a certainty.
Then the bottle against the side of the house. The explosion of glass in front had freaked both of them out. But it was the screamed threat after the bottle smash that worried Marty the most.
“Fuck you, Sarie Holland.”
Marty needs to find out who hates his sister. Part of him would like to go to Dad, but he’d just clamp down tight, and Sarie would respond by keeping her distance, putting her at greater risk. No, first he has to understand what’s going on, then bring Dad solid evidence.
DECEMBER 7 (early)
The upside of not being able to concentrate on studying for my final exams, Mom? I can always totally play the “get out of finals week” card by turning myself in to Wildey and getting arrested!
I kid.
(I think.)
D.’s left me seven Twitter DMs, two phone calls (on the house line, no less!), and even an email—the latter being him pretending to have a question about an honors program—like we’re total strangers. As if Wildey is tapping my email. (Then again, maybe he is.)
I ignore them all. I know I’m being a child, but I have to focus on my work. Five exams this coming week, all of them requiring me to process and master huge swaths of information so that I can somehow fill blue books with essays that will prove to my professors that, yes, I have processed and mastered huge swaths of information.
Except I can’t stop thinking about drugs.
There’s more on the Dr. Hill bust today. Police rounded him and Letitia up overnight. Dr. Hill claims he knew nothing about the drug stuff—that was all Letitia’s thing. Meanwhile, Letitia’s claiming that she didn’t know anything about Dr. Hill’s weird medical shit, that she was just hustling some extra scripts to make ends meet. Uh-huh. Not according to the feds (or “sources close to the investigation,” as the online stories have it), who claim that the Oxy ring was bigger and more widespread than anyone realized. Wildey should be fucking doing cartwheels right now. We did this. We stopped it. And we will receive none of the credit.
Why do I care?
I don’t.
Not really.
The thing with me is, sometime when an idea takes hold it becomes impossible to shake. This is why I can’t have a laptop open in front of me for very long, especially when I’m trying to study. It’s a rabbit hole, I tells ya … and right now all I’m seeing is Wildey dressed up as a White Rabbit, beckoning me to LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EXCITING WORLD OF NARCOTICS!
And why wouldn’t I? Sure beats Western Philosophy and The Greek Way and The Beats in American Literature and Psychology and Advanced Composition and everything else I’m supposed to be processing.
Maybe I should submit this journal as my Advanced Composition final exam. I have been writing up a storm …
Okay, back to work.
Kevin Holland spends a lot of time on this rainy Saturday morning near the front of the house, hoping against hope he’ll catch the punk who tossed the bottle last night. Because you don’t throw a bottle to hit a brick wall. You’re hoping to smash a window, right? Last night the little idiot missed, so maybe he’ll try again. Thank God you’re not here for this, Laura. This would freak you out. But don’t worry. I’m on it.
Never mind that this is the kind of dick punk move that a younger Kevin would have pulled (probably did pull) back in the day.
Ah, karma.
His attention is divided between the lack of activity on the street and the lack of activity on his phone. Sure, it’s Saturday morning, but Kevin was kind of hoping to hear from them yesterday. Discounting the holiday weekend, they had all week to decide. (Shit, he was actually hoping to hear from them last Monday, but decided to give them the week.) Should he call? No. Don’t call. A car whizzes down the street going too fast for a residential area. Kevin’s head whips around. The car disappears. He checks his phone again. Nothing.
And this more or less plays out and repeats all morning.
Until it doesn’t.
There. Some tall guy in a hat, across the street, looking up at the house. No, not a guy. A college-aged kid in a fucking hat and red pants. Way to be stealth. Wait a minute, Kevin thinks. I recognize this guy! When Kevin goes outside to take a look, the kid in the red pants starts moving in the opposite direction. And by the time Kevin yells, “Hey asshole,” he’s already bolted up the block. By “you fucking asshole” he’s already gone.
Okay, Mom, I confess: I haven’t been studying. But this time it’s not my fault. Dad’s crazy-ass yelling snaps me out of the tiny bit of concentration I’ve mustered up. No idea what’s going on until I run upstairs and see Dad hauling ass up our block, yelling YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE before slowing, panting, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. What the hell? Marty’s on the porch, too, and gives me a shrug. I race after him, and hear Marty following.
—Dad, you okay?
Dad, still hunched over, still panting.
—I want his name.
—Whose name?
—Your boyfriend. The guy who was here last Sunday night. Clearly the guy who doesn’t want to meet me.
—I don’t—
—Knock off the shit, Sarie. You know exactly who I mean. Did you break up with him? Is that why he threw a bottle at our fuckin’ house last night?
Marty’s jaw drops.
—Dad!
I put my hand on Dad’s back to try to calm him down. Just like you used to, Mom.
—What happened? Why are you asking me about him?
—He was just standing across the street, looking at the house. Maybe thinking about throwing another bottle.
Oh no. Is it possible Ryan Koolhaas showed up again?
—What did he look like?
—Hat. Stupid fucking red pants.
—Dad!
Okay; phew. Not Koolhaas. I’m unable to stop myself from blurting out his name as a question.
Dad’s eyes light up.
—Yes! Him!
Dad repeats the name, drawing out the single syllable and making it sound as sinister as possible. Like it’s the foulest name ever created. Like just speaking it makes my dad want to hurl.
—I want his last name, his number, his address, his parents’ names, everything. And then I’m going to kick his ass for being a psycho to you.
—Dad, I assure you, D. did not throw the bottle. I told him what happened. He’s probably just stopping by to check on me.
—Then why did he just run up the street?
—Because you called him an asshole and chased him?
Dad sees my point. His panting eases up a bit. Meanwhile I feel this second set of eyes boring into the side of my skull and realize it’s Marty, who has a weird expression on his face.
—What?
—Nothing!
Dad’s breathing returns to normal middle-aged levels. He’s tall and thin but clearly not in any kind of aerobic shape.
—Okay, Sarie, fine, your pal D. didn’t throw the bottle. Then who did? You have another boyfrie
nd lurking around?
—I’m not dating anyone. I would tell you, I promise.
Dad shakes his head quickly, like a boxer shaking off a jab. Then he stares off into the near distance, his shoulders sagging.
—Come on, let’s get back into the house.
I try to go back to studying but can’t help wondering why D. would show up in person like that. (In his red fucking pants, no less!)
My real phone buzzes. It’s Tammy, confirming for tonight. One upside of the whole mess last night was that I called her, just to cover my tracks in case she ran into Dad or something crazy like that, and she sounded ridiculously overjoyed, like I was her long-lost sister, back from the dead. Totally thrilled to hear from me! God, it’s been too long! Oh, so much to tell you! Let’s meet tonight for dinner! Downtown! Do it up!
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