The Exiled

by Christopher Charles

  “Want to slip me a percentage?”

  “What, I’m not paying you enough?”

  “I don’t know what that would be.”

  Dunham grinned, looked at his watch. “When’s this guy gonna show?”

  “Any minute.”

  “Remind me how you know him.”

  “From inside.”

  “Cellie?”

  “Bible school.”

  “Bible school?”

  “It helps with parole.”

  The bodybuilder’s head took a double bounce off the canvas. The crowd jeered, stamped their feet.

  “Nice one, Spike,” Dunham called. “These fuckers all bet against you.”

  Spike stepped over his opponent, stared down at Raney.

  “I’m waiting on that rematch,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Raney said. “I retired.”

  “Smart,” Spike said.

  The emcee announced the next fighter—a scrawny teenager from Bed-Stuy.

  “Jesus,” Dunham said. “The stripper I fucked last night weighs more than this kid.”

  He stepped up on the edge of the ring, scanned the back wall, pointed.

  “I swear to God, Cobra,” he said, “if you don’t drop this stick inside a minute you’re finished.”

  The undercover sidled up next to Raney, tapped his shoulder. He was over six feet, between 230 and 250, his dull-brown hair streaked silver and pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a black leather jacket open in the front, his gut spilling over his jeans. Raney nodded, waited for Dunham to hop back off the canvas.

  “This is Doug Farlow,” Raney said. “Doug, this is Joey Dunham.”

  They shook hands. Farlow smiled, held Dunham’s stare.

  “You’ve got a good thing here.”

  “Thanks,” Dunham said. “You want to go a few rounds? You look like you could handle yourself.”

  “Maybe if you’ve got a senior division.”

  The bell rang. Dunham looked up at Cobra.

  “What the fuck is this asshole bobbing and weaving for? Knock the kid out! Christ, I can’t watch this shit. Let’s find somewhere quiet.”

  He led them through the crowd and into a windowless side room furnished with a minibar and a long folding table. He turned to Farlow.

  “You just got out, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you know the drill.”

  “Which one?” Farlow said. “There were a lot of drills.”

  “The one where you strip.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Dunham shook his head, locked the door from the inside.

  “Your boys already patted me down.”

  “The totem poles are mostly for show. It’s not personal.”

  “Joey, come on,” Raney said. “I vouched for the guy.”

  “So maybe you should join him.” To Farlow: “You can say no, and we’ll all just go about our evening.”

  Farlow kicked at the floor.

  “Don’t worry,” Dunham said. “I won’t stick my finger up your ass. Deadly’s going to do that.”

  Raney and Farlow swapped looks.

  “It’s a joke, fellas. Don’t be so serious.”

  Farlow tossed his jacket onto the table, followed by his jeans, T-shirt, boxers. Dunham made a spinning motion with his index finger. Farlow held his arms out to the side, turned in a slow circle.

  “A sight to behold, I know.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” Dunham said. “Deadly, give his clothes the once-over.”

  Raney emptied Farlow’s pockets, felt inside his pants legs, shook out his boots.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Let me see his wallet.”

  Raney tossed it over. Dunham checked the billfold, flipped through the glassine windows.

  “Your parole officer’s a woman?” he said.

  “How do you like that?”

  “What’s her name? I can’t quite make it out on the card.”

  “Jesus, you’re careful,” Farlow said. “I call her Pamela Polack. I don’t know how you say the last name. It starts with W-R and ends with ‘zinski.’”

  “Is she nice-looking, at least?”

  “With a name like that?”

  Dunham grinned. Farlow zipped up his fly, pulled on his T-shirt.

  “No hard feelings,” Dunham said.

  “It’s just business, right?”

  “Speaking of which…”

  Dunham and Raney sat on one side of the table, Farlow on the other. Dunham lit a cigarette, slid the pack over.

  “So what are we talking about?”

  “It’s simple,” Farlow said. “I’ve got a connect in DC. He’ll deliver up to twenty kilos, at twelve thousand dollars per, plus a ten-percent handling fee. This stuff is as close to pure as it gets. You step on it three times over, sell it to some hillbilly dealers I know in Maine for whatever price you want. Fiends up there can’t get anything better.”

  “How do you know these hillbillies?”

  “They’re blood. Two cousins and a half brother.”

  “And what about your connect?”

  “He’s sixty-four and never served a day. No flash, no conflict. Lives in a one-bedroom apartment over a dry cleaner’s and steers clear of street sales. He keeps a small crew of guys he came up with.”

  “The senior citizen brigade.”

  “Watch it, son,” Farlow said. “I’m not so far off myself.”

  “Why do you need me?”

  “Funding,” Farlow said. “I’m cash poor. Not to mention my front-line days are behind me. I told myself if I ever got busted again I’d tie it off right there. I don’t want to die in a jumpsuit surrounded by COs calling me Pops. A one-bedroom over a dry cleaner’s would suit me fine. Minimal risk, just enough reward. That’s all I’m after.”

  Dunham rocked back in his chair. Farlow held his cigarette between his middle and ring fingers, pawed at the smoke with his free hand. He was steady, deliberate. Dunham seemed to like him. Raney wanted to ask how he’d lasted so long.

  “One thing bothers me,” Dunham said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I thought hillbillies ate tree branches and bathed in mud puddles. How’d they come by this kind of cash?”

  “You can make money anywhere,” Farlow said, “as long as you know how to cook meth and film little girls touching themselves. It ain’t pretty, but that’s what it is.”

  “No, it ain’t pretty,” Dunham said. “But green is green.”

  “We have a deal, then?”

  “Give me a day to think on it. I’ll have Deadly send word.”

  24

  Luisa Gonzalez was screaming from somewhere behind a burlap curtain when the phone woke him. The nightstand clock read 5:00 a.m.

  “I’m sorry if you were asleep,” Clara said. “I’m watching the news. What in the hell is going on?”

  Shit, Raney thought. They would have broadcast the same mug shot she’d been passing around the casino. Why hadn’t he thought to warn her?

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “No, I’m not okay.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  She came to the door wearing a long nightshirt and ankle-high socks. Her hair was disheveled, her skin mottled. Raney reached out to touch her arm. She spun away, ran up the stairs. He found her sitting in front of the television, hunched forward, mechanically grinding a metal whisk through a bowl of thick batter. He sat beside her, let his hand rest on her back. Her skin felt cool through the thin cotton fabric.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I thought I’d get a head start on Daniel’s breakfast.”

  The early morning news ran footage of the crime scene: forensics hoisting the Jaguar onto the flatbed, Raney and Bay crossing the arroyo, the ME and her team following with the body. A voice-over ID’d the victim as Kurt Adler, said the Jaguar belonged to Jack Wilkins. The police were as yet unaware of any link betw
een the “Boston mobster” and the killings at the Wilkins ranch.

  “What will it be tomorrow?” Clara asked. “Why stop at family? Why not kill her only employee? And her employee’s ‘child’?”

  “Because you have no connection to the drugs.”

  “For God’s sake, who’s doing this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook his hand from her back.

  “Then why are you here? Why aren’t you out looking for him? How was he able to find Mavis’s son before you did? How did he even know she had a son?”

  “He’s been planning this for a long time, Clara. We’re playing catch-up.”

  “You don’t even know who you’re looking for.”

  “I have an idea,” he said. “An idea you gave me.”

  “What’s that?”

  The news switched to a commercial break; the jump in volume startled her. She turned off the TV, set the bowl and whisk on the floor.

  “You told me Mavis was seeing someone online,” Raney said.

  “The schoolteacher. She mentioned him a few times. Why?”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “She never used his name,” Clara said. “The more I think about it, the more I realize she hardly told me anything.”

  “She thought of you as a daughter,” Raney said.

  Clara dropped her head on Raney’s shoulder, took his hand.

  “I’m fucking hungry,” she said.

  “Why don’t I finish making you breakfast?”

  He reached for the bowl and whisk.

  “I have a better idea,” she said.

  She took his face in her hands, brushed her cheek against his, let her lips rest on his chin.

  “Before Daniel wakes up.”

  He left with Bay for Albuquerque at a little after 11:00 a.m.

  “I told the tech we’d be there at two thirty whether he was ready for us or not. I said if he wasn’t ready, we’d sit with him in his cubicle until he was. I told him you had halitosis real bad. I probably should have mentioned you were county Homicide—might have carried more weight.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You do smell different today,” Bay said. “Not bad, unless you think it’s bad for a man to smell like flowers.”

  He’d showered at Clara’s.

  “Hotel shampoo,” Raney said.

  “You really ought to come stay at my place. I’ve got a nice A-frame by the creek. Wouldn’t be any hassle at all.”

  “You lonely, Bay?”

  “Ain’t you?”

  Raney shrugged. He still felt Clara pressing against him.

  “I guess you wouldn’t be,” Bay said. “You’re the type to get lost in your own head. But too much of that’s no good for a man. Shit, you’re still young, Raney. A year or two younger than I was when I met you. Now, there’s a swift kick in the pants. We both been alone more or less this whole time. You get past a certain age, it’s hard to find a woman out here. At least one that’s not already found.”

  “Are you going to run that siren all the way to Albuquerque?”

  “You mean the siren or my mouth?”

  Raney gave another shrug.

  “All right,” Bay said, “I’ll switch it off. Not much traffic here anyway. But if you want to shut me up, you’re going to have to talk some yourself. You’re too damn quiet, Raney. You could put a man to sleep at the wheel. Try being companionable once in a while. You might find you like it. It might even stick.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’ve got to choose the topic now? You were undercover in New York City. Why not start there?”

  “I didn’t last very long.”

  “Long enough to have one goddamn story worth telling.”

  “You’re a bull in a china shop, Bay.”

  “Meaning you’re the china? Shit, Raney, if there’s a PTSD thing here then I’ll shut my mouth and drive. You can nap if you want to.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Raney said. “Just give me a minute to get started.”

  Brooklyn, June 1984

  25

  He leaned against the hood of his car, watched a bivouac of homeless men congregate under the awning of an abandoned supermarket, drinking and smoking and sniffing from a tube. They’d sized him up, decided he wasn’t a threat. Otherwise, the lot was empty, dark. Someone had shot out the streetlights on the north.

  A middle-aged black man in a dusty Toyota pulled up beside Raney at exactly 10:00 p.m. He rolled down the driver’s-side window, smiled. He was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans.

  “You said no flash, right?”

  “Yeah, you look the part,” Raney said.

  “I hear you’re working a real solid case.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So where’s our next stop?”

  Raney handed him a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.

  “Dunham’s playing it tight. We’re supposed to wait here twenty minutes. Then you pull out and I follow. Once we get there, we wait another twenty.”

  “This is a good spot he picked. You can see who’s coming and going in three directions.”

  “He’s smart when he needs to be.”

  “You’ve got him now, though. All you got to do is outlast him. When’s the drive north?”

  “We step on the shipment tonight,” Raney said. “It goes out tomorrow morning. He doesn’t want the shit in his possession more than a day.”

  “Long hours for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wanna head out?”

  “Let’s wait the full twenty.”

  The undercover grinned.

  “Dunham ain’t the only one who’s careful.”

  “I’ve got a lot riding on this. What should I call you, by the way?”

  “Dizzy.”

  “Dizzy?”

  “Like Gillespie.”

  “You and Dunham have something in common. He’s a lunatic for jazz.”

  “Yeah, well…I don’t plan on getting cozy with the man.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Just hang in there, son. You’re almost home.”

  Dizzy stuck to the speed limit, slowed at yellow lights, drove like a man with dope in his trunk. Raney stuck a car’s length behind, followed him down side streets from East New York to Howard Beach. They pulled in front of a one-story warehouse with a side staircase and a bright-orange roll-up door. Dunham sat on the metal stairs, smoking. He nodded at Raney, checked his watch, went inside. Twenty minutes later, Raney gave two staccato honks, and the orange door lifted. Raney drove in, parked behind Dunham’s Lincoln. Dizzy followed. The loading dock was large enough to fit two semis. Beyond the dock was a brick wall with a second roll-up door.

  “They make glass here,” Dunham said. “High-end stuff. One of my fighters is foreman.”

  He jumped down off the dock, his gun tucked in his front waistband.

  “That sure was a lot of driving and waiting,” Dizzy said.

  “Next year I’ll have you over to the house for Thanksgiving,” Dunham said. “Right now, I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  “Hey, I ain’t complaining. Cautious is good.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. Deadly, give the man our standard greeting.”

  Dizzy held his arms out to the sides. “Just don’t let your hands linger nowhere,” he said.

  “Normally I’d make you strip,” Dunham said. “But we’re short on time.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Wish you had it on film.”

  “He’s clean,” Raney said.

  “Last thing,” Dunham said. “You have a tape deck in that jalopy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dunham tossed him a cassette.

  “Pop this in and crank the volume. A little Coltrane to set the mood.”

  “At least you got taste.”

  There was a long solo before the band joined in. The sax came out tinny through the car’s old speakers.

  “All right,”
Dunham said, “let’s do this.”

  Dizzy opened the trunk. It was crammed full of brown paper bags teeming with canned and boxed food.

  “You hid the coke in shopping bags?” Dunham said.

  “Nah, these are honest-to-God groceries. No perishables. I don’t want nothing spoiling while you got me touring the boroughs.”

  “So where are the bricks?”

  “Underneath. You help me unload, this’ll go a lot quicker.”

  They cleared the trunk down to a spare tire and a flathead screwdriver, then lifted out the tire and set it beside the paper bags. Dizzy peeled the carpet back, used the screwdriver to pry up the metal flooring.

  “There she is,” he said. “Twenty keys, pure enough for you to fuck with all you want. You could step on this shit five times over and it’ll still kick.”

  Dunham pulled a knife from his back pocket, sprung the blade, took up a brick and poked a hole in the packaging.

  “That’s right,” Dizzy said. “Have a taste. I hope you got a ride home, though.”

  Dunham drew a small mound of powder up into his nose, threw his head back, wiped water from his eyes. He stood for a beat, listening to the music.

  “Was I lying?” Dizzy asked.

  “No, you told the goddamn truth. Deadly, let’s bag this shit.”

  “Hold on, now,” Dizzy said. “There’s a matter of payment first.”

  “I gave your broker friend half up front. You get the second half after I’ve been paid.”

  Dizzy waved his hands.

  “You got it wrong, chief. Second half on delivery. I just delivered.”

  “Check with Farlow. That ain’t the agreement.”

  “Shit, man, I knew this was too fuckin’ smooth.”

  “You’ll get the rest in forty-eight hours. What could be smoother than that?’

  “Putting the goddamn cash in my hand while I’m standing here would be a fuckload smoother.”

  “Here’s the problem,” Dunham said. “You and your DC pals are only half the picture. What if I get up north and the hillbillies don’t check out? What if they snatch the shit at gunpoint and disappear into the woods?”

  “That shit’s between you and them. We got nothin’ to do with those Marlboro Men.”

  “Farlow’s your broker, not mine. I need assurance. You’ll get paid when I get paid. You have my word. If that’s not enough, all you have to do is give me back what I already laid out. We’ll just hang on to the product in the meantime.”