I went back to Daddy’s bathroom and searched under the sink until I found a pack of latex gloves. I pulled on a fresh pair and opened the package. It was plastic baggies of black pills. I left it on Benji’s bed, retrieved a Ziploc from the kitchen, and bagged the entire package. That was way easier than trying to orchestrate a buy.
“So, boys, have you caught up?” I leaned against the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen.
“We’re sure trying,” Nate said.
“Cash, listen, dude, I’m so sorry,” Benji said.
“For what?”
“For umm, ripping you off. That wasn’t cool. But it wasn’t my fault. I had a problem. A real addiction, you know?”
I turned to Nate. “Drugs are addictive?”
“According to this guy.” Nate pointed at Benji. We laughed. We were funny.
“So you had a problem? Like past tense?”
“I’m doing a lot better now. I have focus, you know. Friends.”
“I want to believe you, buddy. I do. But you’re playing video games in the middle of the day and I just found a package of drugs on your bed. So…” I weighed my hands up and down. “You can see why I’m having trouble here.”
“I can pay you back. I swear. Just give me till the weekend.”
“What’s on the weekend?”
“It’s this coding event. I’m going with a bunch of my boys. We are starting a company. A friend of mine was supposed to sell those pills, but like he dropped out and moved home. So if I sell those, our debt will be gone.” He snapped his fingers. “And we will get some startup capital.”
“And if you pay me the two grand, you’ll still have enough startup capital?” I asked.
His eyes bugged out. “Two grand?”
“I’d say that’s fair interest. What do you think, Nate?”
“Two grand is downright generous. You’re so kind, Cash. I’ve always admired that about you.” Nate smiled dreamily at me.
“Thanks, man.”
“You betcha.”
Benji whimpered. “I can’t afford two grand. My boys are counting on me. Please, cut me a break here.” This kid had no stamina. I was a little ashamed that we hadn’t managed to catch him.
“Why would I cut you a break?”
“Because I just need one.” And Benji started to cry. “I finally got clean, dude. It was hard and my dad was so nice to me and we’re just starting to really, you know, get along. And I got these friends. Real friends. They like me. They get me.” He gave a long, wet sniffle. “We met playing games, you know? And we just got a plan together to start our own gaming company. How cool would that be?” Another sniffle. “And then Will just disappeared. Like gone. And he had spent our money and we didn’t even know it.” He started to rock. “It was so good and then it got so shitty. You gotta believe me. I just need a win.” He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
Nate patted his shoulder awkwardly and mouthed, “wow.”
“Hey, Benji, calm down. It’s cool. We’re going to figure this out.”
“There’s nothing.” He gasped for air. “There’s nothing to figure out.” More rocking.
I went back to the bathroom and brought out a box of tissues. When I handed them to Benji, it just made him cry more.
“Just take some deep breaths, okay?” Nate said calmly.
“You’re being so nice,” he wailed.
This was getting us nowhere. Nate shrugged at me. I decided to try a new tactic.
“Benjamin Nelson, you need to calm the fuck down. Right now.” I used my most authoritative voice, which wasn’t saying much. But Benji responded to it. He stopped sobbing and took a long, deep breath.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” More shuddering breaths.
“Don’t be sorry. I need you to focus.”
He started nodding and didn’t stop. “Yeah, okay. Focus.”
“If I open that package, what will I find?”
“Pills.”
So far so good. “What kind?”
“Fen—Fentanyl,” he stuttered.
“Are they black?”
He stopped gasping, stopped rocking. “Yes.” It apparently hadn’t occurred to him that I could have opened the package already.
“And your friend Will. Is that William Seldin?”
The rocking was back full force. “Yes.”
“When’s the last time you heard from Will?”
Benji shrugged. “A couple months ago.”
I really didn’t want to tell him. But someone had to. I glanced at Nate. He nodded once. “Benji, Will died.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. I’m really sorry.”
He started crying again. I hadn’t handled that well. Nate put his hand on Benji’s shoulder again, but the kid didn’t even notice.
“Maybe it’s time to call your girl,” Nate said.
“Yeah, are you okay here?”
Nate shrugged. “We’re good.”
I stepped out of the room and called Laurel.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We were forty-eight hours, seven vehicles, and five bodies into our stakeout and I was infinitely bored of the spectacle.
Monday had suggested that Alyssa at least had a plan. But Tuesday, she didn’t even go out. The Hirsches lived lives of tedium. Or maybe I became less tolerant the more time I spent sitting in a car staring at a tract house.
It had been thirty hours since we brought in Benji. Ionescu had blocked Gibson from the interrogation, which hadn’t gone over well. Michelson had spent fifteen hours interrogating Benji and the only thing he learned was Benji was absolutely terrified of Alyssa Hirsch. Enough that he was willing to take a distribution charge over immunity. So all we had done was suck a scared kid back into the system he had finally escaped. All of the cops seemed stoked that we’d gotten black pills to test. But that wasn’t enough to feel like a win for me. And it hadn’t gotten us out of this stupid stakeout.
Nate continued to check the clock compulsively. He must have been aiming for every fifteen minutes because he had checked at exactly fifteen for the last hour.
“What time do you want to go for it?” I asked.
“I’m thinking midnight. The Hirsches are obviously asleep and have been since seven o’clock.” That was untrue, but only just.
“These two give drug dealers a bad name.”
“It’s disgraceful,” Nate said.
“So Duarte and Reyes went home already?”
“Right before you got here. And Kallen is taking over for me at three. You think you can manage to share such a small space without ripping each other’s clothes off?”
I rolled my eyes. “I think we will manage.”
“Did you see that?” Nate asked.
I watched the house. There was nothing. “No. What am I looking for?” I studied the windows for movement.
“Four houses down. They just turned off the light in the front room.” Nate tipped his chin toward the house.
“What about it?”
“That’s the last one on the street. And it’s almost midnight.” He would know.
“Suburbia is weird,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Shall we do this?”
“Sure.” Nate reached behind the seat and grabbed his duffel bag. He rummaged and pulled out a tracker. A small green light on it blinked periodically. “Is your phone reading it?”
I pulled out my phone and launched the app. It used to have six little dots on the map to track Jerome St. Maris and his merry band of idiots, but the batteries on those trackers had died a while back. Now there were just two dots. Why was my business partner such a geek?
“Do you want to install it or do you want me to?” I asked.
“I think we both know I’m your bitch.”
I shrugged and laughed. “I’m not going to dispute that.”
“Asshole.” He climbed out of the van, then leaned back in. “If I don’t make it back,
tell my mother I love her.”
“Mama’s boy.”
He grinned and jogged across the street. We were a couple houses down. Nate slowed to a stroll. He glanced over his shoulder at me when he got to the Hirsches’ driveway. I gave him a thumbs up out the open window. He took a single step off the sidewalk and bent to tie his shoe. I didn’t even catch him sticking the tracker to the minivan’s undercarriage. And I was looking for it. He continued his walk until he was at the end of the block, then crossed the street again and circled back. That seemed unnecessary. Anyone watching him might have missed the application of the tracker, but his behavior was still weird.
“How did I do?” he asked.
“You’re basically a spy. The CIA will recruit you any day now.”
“My teenage boy life dreams have been fulfilled.”
“So we have a tracker on Tyler, who might be the most boring person I’ve ever witnessed.”
“So that we can watch him go to class and come back home,” Nate said.
Oh, good. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed. “What about sister Alyssa? Wouldn’t it have been better to put the tracker on her?”
Nate smiled. “Remember how I’m smarter than most people?”
“I think about it constantly. Some nights, I just lie awake wondering what it’s like to be so smart.”
He nodded sagely. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“It’s nice to know you understand me.”
He put his hand on mine and stared deeply into my eyes. “I do understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so you’re smart?”
“Right. Well, I ordered three trackers. As soon as we get another chance, sister Alyssa will also be on our radar. Literally. Get it? ’Cause they are GPS trackers.”
“Terrible jokes aside, you’re my favorite employee.”
“I know.”
I gasped. “Who told you?”
“I’m just intuitive.” More wise nodding. “Plus you just paid my tuition. It’s one hell of a bonus.”
“Oh, yeah. How did that go? You just texted and said everything was good.”
“Not much to tell.” He pulled his bag into the front seat again and started digging again. “Patricia is a good actor. I almost believed we had never met. And I was there when we met.”
“The checks went through fine? And you got tuition paid?” I waited to see whatever he was about to take out of the duffel to back his narrative, but he pulled out a bag of jelly beans.
“Yeah, everything went just like it was supposed to. Except sweet shopgirl Natalie asked me out.” He poured a handful of jelly beans into his mouth.
“Aww, sweet shopgirl Natalie.”
“She’s confident, I’ll give her that. And gorgeous, but also she is about twenty. Once you pass twenty-five that just seems skeevy.”
“It is skeevy. And, you know, you were there to launder money.”
“Okay, yes, there’s that too. Anyway, I had to tell her no and I felt terrible.”
“Such a heartbreaker.”
“It’s the burden of beauty,” he said. I reached over and took his jelly beans. “Hey.”
“Sorry. This sugar is clearly going to your head.” I ate a handful of jelly beans.
“It’s what makes me sweet.”
I groaned. “Okay, moratorium on talking.”
“You’ll be so bored without me talking.”
I checked the time. “I think I can survive two and a half hours of silence. In fact, I’m looking forward to it.”
Nate huffed and took back his jelly beans.
*****
Laurel brought coffee when she took over for Nate. If I’d had any doubts about being in love with her before, that kinda cemented the whole thing,
“I love you. You’re like snuggles and happiness. When I hold you, it’s like nothing is wrong in the world.”
“Stop talking to your coffee, you freak,” Laurel said.
“I’m trying to express my feelings.”
“You’ve been expressing your feelings for five minutes. Besides, I’m the one who brought you the coffee.”
“You want me to express my feelings to you?”
“Will it get you to stop expressing your feelings to your coffee?”
I shrugged and turned to Laurel. “I love the gift you brought me. It’s like snuggles and happiness, and when I hold it, it’s like nothing is wrong in the world.”
“You are the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met. And that includes my sister who spit up on me every Christmas morning for the first four years of her life.”
“She spit on you?”
“No, spit up. Like babies do.”
“Like vomit?”
“Yeah. I’d unwrap exactly two presents and then my mother would hand me baby Lane so she could take pictures of us. And baby Lane would proceed to spit up on me. Every year. For four years.”
I started laughing. “That’s tragic.”
“No, the sad part was I’d go clean up and change clothes, and by the time I came back downstairs, the boys would have finished unwrapping their presents. Lane would be asleep. Dad would be making breakfast. So Mom would awkwardly sit there and watch me open presents.” She lowered her voice. “Quietly, so I wouldn’t wake the baby.”
“That’s so bizarre.”
“Is it? Everything was chaotic growing up. I forget that it isn’t normal.”
“No, I mean, I think it is normal. I’m the one who had the strange upbringing.”
“How is Clive?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, okay.” She leaned back.
“I don’t mean it like that. I really don’t know. Last time we spoke was weeks ago.”
She furrowed her brow. “What happened?”
I stared out the windshield and willed movement from the dark house. “I think Henry is entitled and misogynistic. He thinks Henry is a misunderstood good guy. We are at an impasse.”
Laurel said nothing. I finally looked at her and she was staring at me intently. Her lips were pursed and her brow had moved well beyond furrowed. “Misunderstood?” She rubbed at her bicep. It looked involuntary. She was wearing a navy baseball shirt so I couldn’t see her arm, but I knew it was still healing.
“Sorry. I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“What?” She looked down and realized she was massaging her bullet wound. “Oh, no. I’m fine. I’m just thrown. I didn’t think Clive was one of those guys.”
I shrugged. “Same.”
She reached across the seats and squeezed my shoulder. I caught a whiff of crisp cedar. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is.”
“Okay, new subject. How’s this stakeout going for you?” she asked.
“It’s not bad. I’d give it an eight out of ten right now.”
“Only a eight? I’m hurt.”
“Reyes was probably a six. I was only with Duarte for a few hours after that, but he was a solid, neutral five. That kid needs a personality.”
Laurel laughed. “In his defense, you terrify him.”
“Because I’m a scary drug dealer?” I asked. She nodded. “I’ll take it.”
“What about Nate? Tell me I rank higher than Nate.”
“With Nate it was a two. So an eight is quite a bump.”
She smiled. “My company pushed it up six points? I’ll take it.”
“You did bring coffee. You don’t appear to want to talk about how good-looking Nate is. And you smell really good.”
“I do?”
I waved her off. “Don’t get cocky. It’s biological.”
“The way I smell is biological?” She pulled her foot up on the seat and set her chin on her knee. The movement stretched her pink chinos tight.
“Yeah. You just smell good because I’m attracted to you. It’s not like you did anything to earn it.”
Laurel grinned at me. “Yeah, don’t try to argue your way out of this one. Just let me have it
.”
“Fine. But you’re attracted to me too.”
“Cash?” Her tone shifted.
“What?” I looked around, but then I saw Tyler. He pulled the front door closed and walked purposefully toward the minivan.
“Don’t start the engine yet.” Laurel slowly put her foot down and buckled her seat belt.
I also pulled on my seat belt. “I think I know how to follow someone without them seeing me.” I reviewed what I had just said. “Or something less creepy.”
Laurel chuckled. Tyler backed out of the driveway. I waited to start the van until he turned down the next street. When we got out to the main road, I dropped back. He got on the freeway. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to just rely on the tracker, but Nate and I had agreed to give the detectives plausible deniability if at all possible. The best way to do that was not tell them.
“He’s definitely going to the college,” Laurel said.
“Yep.” I changed lanes and did my best to be as unobtrusive as possible. We got off the freeway in Davis. He reversed the exact directions he had used to leave the college on Sunday morning. Tyler made it way too easy to follow him. The hard part was not being seen. Other than Tyler, we were only sharing the road with one other vehicle. Apparently, college students didn’t drive much at four in the morning midweek. “If he parks in the same structure, do you want to follow him on foot? Or do you trust that he is probably going to the lab?”
“How close are we to the parking structure? Is that it?” Laurel pointed out the garage.
“Yeah. That’s where he parked last time.”
“Just pull over here and I’ll follow him. Didn’t you say both the exits are on the same road?” she asked. I nodded. “So if you follow him all the way there, he will see you.”
I pulled to the side of the street. “All right, Detective. You are the expert, after all.”
“I’ll see you in a couple minutes.” Laurel hopped out and went around to the back. She pulled Nate’s bike toward her.
“You got it?”
“I’m good.” She closed the back door and kicked off.
I didn’t watch her ass as she rode away.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Tyler had probably parked already. I didn’t want to risk him seeing me. And I wanted to have already parked by the time he got to the lab. I flipped a bitch and cut through the school. The other car on the road followed me through campus. I imagined I was being followed until they turned toward the dorms. It took under five minutes for me to get in place. I cut the engine and watched the break in the trees where I expected Tyler to appear. He didn’t disappoint. He strode to the building and slid his keycard like before. If nothing else, he was confident. Then again, why wouldn’t he be? He’d likely been doing this for months. There was no indication of resistance.
The Price of Cash Page 23
