by Martha Carr
“Come on, man.” Mikey sniffed and ran a soiled sleeve under his nose before he scratched the back of his neck. “You have no idea what you’re—”
“Where’d you get this?” The bounty hunter shook the baggie at him. Both addicts stared at the brown powder in the clear plastic. “You’re clear-headed enough to fight each other. I know y’all understand the question.”
“If…if we tell you, will you give it back?” The man’s eye twitched as he glanced at Janice.
“Sure. Tell me exactly where.”
“Back up that way.” The woman leaned toward the head of the alley and pointed left. “Toward 11th Avenue.”
“I said exactly, darlin’.”
“W-wait. Wait!” Mikey clenched his eyes shut and muttered to himself. “We got it from our regular guy but he moved. Now he’s up on…shit. He’s up on Park and Salmon.”
“Yeah!” Janice nodded vigorously. “That’s where he is. Every day. Big guy in a—”
“Shut up.” The man glared at Johnny. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Exactly what I wanted.” The dwarf sniffed. “Much appreciated.”
“So you’ll give it back now?” The woman stepped tentatively toward him and jolted when Luther growled softly. “Our stuff?”
“I lied.” With a grimace, he pocketed the baggie.
“Hey, you can’t do that, man.”
“Watch me.” He started to turn, then stopped and pointed at each of them in turn. “Y’all will thank me for this one day. Don’t go back to that corner, understand?”
Despite the terrified, deflated stares that were the only response from both of them, he nodded and headed toward the mouth of the alley.
“Shit. Fuck. Fuck!” Mikey rocked on the ground, not oblivious to the coonhound standing in front of him.
“We can’t go back!” Janice shrieked after the dwarf. “It took us two days to scrounge up enough for that bag, and you took everything we have!”
Johnny stopped beside Lisa and studied both ends of the street.
Agent Breyer bit her bottom lip, her hand still resting on her weapon, and frowned in sympathy at the addicts falling into despair at the loss of their stash. “We should help them, Johnny. Take them to get some help or something. This isn’t—”
“They gotta help themselves, darlin’. That’s the way it works.” He cleared his throat and headed down the sidewalk.
“Johnny.” She turned after him. “Aren’t you gonna call your dogs?”
He didn’t answer her.
“Don’t worry about us, lady,” Luther said as he paced in front of Janice when she sank to the ground and began to cry. “Johnny says we’re on ʼem, we’re on ʼem until he says stop.”
“Got ʼem right where you want ʼem, Johnny!” Rex yipped at Mikey. The man jolted where he sat but didn’t try to get away. Instead, he lowered his head and scratched vigorously through his greasy hair with both hands. “Damn. Gotta say, though, Johnny, these hamsters stink.”
“Yeah, no wonder you don’t want ʼem around.”
Johnny heard his hounds clearly enough in his head and didn’t bother trying to reply.
Lisa stared at him and her frown deepened when the dwarf stopped in front of the closest food truck and held up two fingers. When he returned to the alley, he had a curved paper tray of street tacos in each hand. Rex and Luther whipped their heads toward him as he stepped into the alley, their tails wagging.
“Yes! Way to go, Johnny.”
“I knew we’d start getting treats for doing what we already do anyway.”
He approached Janice first and extended one of the trays toward her. “Come on now, darlin’. It’s hard to eat when you’re cryin’ like that.”
“What?” She looked up, her dirt-stained cheeks smeared with her tears, and sniffed. “For real?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Quit playing this bad-cop, good-cop bullshit,” Mikey muttered where he continued to rock and scratch his head with both hands. “We gave you what you wanted. So either arrest us or leave us the fuck alone.”
“I’m givin’ you what you need, Mikey.” Johnny stopped in front of the man and held out the other tray of tacos. “So quit whinin’ and take the stuff that ain’t more likely to kill ya.”
The man finally stopped his nervous withdrawal tics and looked at the dwarf and the tacos. He licked his lips.
So did Rex. “If he doesn’t want it, Johnny…”
“Thanks.” Mikey took the food and didn’t touch it until the bounty hunter turned and headed out of the alley. When he did, he practically inhaled the food.
“Aw, man.” Rex sniffed at the crumbs falling around the man’s feet. “We were so close.”
Luther shifted keenly in front of Janice, waiting for her to spill something big enough to grab and run. “Come on, lady. No, no. Not that bite. It was about to fall—”
Johnny whistled shrilly. “Let’s go!”
With a final longing glance at the street tacos, the hounds turned and padded out of the alley.
Lisa forced herself to turn away from the homeless addicts eating a free meal and jogged to catch up. “I thought you said they have to help themselves.”
Johnny shrugged. “That ain’t the same as showin’ a little kindness. Hey.”
The couple looked quickly at him.
“There’s an inpatient rehab center on Washington. They got open beds and work with self-pay patients.”
“Uh…yeah.” Mikey shoved the rest of his last taco into his mouth. “Yeah, okay.”
Johnny nodded and continued down the sidewalk.
“How do you know that?” Lisa asked, glancing behind her as the hounds caught up.
“I saw it on a billboard. They’re all over town. Now, where’s my whisky?”
She scoffed and glanced at the half-full bottle in her hand. “Doesn’t that feel a little hypocritical?”
“Nope. I ain’t sold all my shit and put myself on the street for that. And I ain’t shakin’.”
With a shrug to concede the point, Lisa handed it to him. She smiled when he held the bottle at his side and didn’t open it on the street.
Chapter Fifteen
They ordered room service for dinner and Johnny had to order a second time because the portions were way too small. When he called the front desk to ask what the problem was, a woman with a perky voice told him, “We have two of the finest chefs in Oregon, Mr. Walker—”
“Johnny. And I ain’t talkin’ ʼbout the chefs. I’m talkin’ ʼbout the size of these meals.”
“We serve locally sourced, skillfully crafted artisanal fare at this hotel. You’re welcome to place another order for room service. If you’d like to sample some of our—”
“Nope. Thanks.” He dropped the hotel phone onto the receiver and snorted. “For nothin’. I’m ʼbout fed up with all this. Ar-tee-sinal. What is that?”
Lisa set her empty plate on the room service tray and opened an Old Town Brewery Pillowfist IPA she’d taken from his mini-fridge. “It means made in a traditional way.”
“Traditional? Any tradition bent on starvin’ a person and callin’ it food needs to die out with the rest.”
She took a long sip of beer and grinned appreciatively. “Hey, this is good.”
“Don’t even try it.” He lifted his coffee mug of whisky from the nightstand and took a sip. “I ain’t lookin’ for none of that.”
“You won’t know unless you try—” She caught his warning glare and shrugged. “Or not.”
“Johnny, where’d you hide the rest of the steak?” Luther licked the plate on the floor and pushed it inch by inch across the carpet. “There’s usually more.”
“Yeah, I’m all for saving some for later, but this is more like what we’d get later.”
“Quit yer whinin’.”
Lisa choked on her beer. “Excuse me?”
“Not you, darlin’.” He paused. “I’m talkin’ to the voices in my head.”
Rex snigge
red and stretched on his belly. “That’s one way to put it, Johnny.”
“Is this it? Huh? You finally gonna tell her?” Luther stared at his master and sat in anticipation.
Lisa set her beer down and turned to face the bed. “Do you…hear voices, or—”
“’Course not.” The dwarf waved her off and sucked what little remained of his already pitifully sized dinner out of his teeth.
“Nope.” Luther chuffed and slid his front paws forward until he stretched beside his brother. “No dice.”
“It’s a figure of speech, ain’t it?”
“Not for everyone.”
“Don’t start on all that with me now, all right? We got bigger things to turn our minds to.” Johnny shifted on the bed and reached into his pocket for the baggie of drugs with the red boar stamp on it. “Like this lil’ bastard right here.”
“That looks like heroin.”
“It probably is.” he stared at the red stamp on the small square of plastic, then dangled it toward Lisa for her to see. “Guess who?”
“No.” She leaned forward in the armchair and squinted at the baggie. “Is the same as those in New York?”
“Exactly the same, even down the type of bag.” He gritted his teeth. “The Red Boar has his distribution ring all over the damn country now. If it wasn’t already here two months ago, he has some damn quick circuits under his thumb.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t seem…likely.” Lisa picked her tablet up and tapped on it.
“But this shit made its way to Portland one way or the other, which means his operation’s a helluva lot bigger than your people knew fifteen years ago. Bigger than I estimated, too.”
“And that’ll make it even harder to pin him down. He could be anywhere, not only New York.”
“Uh-huh.” Johnny slid off the bed and headed to the bathroom. He flushed all the brown powder down the toilet, rinsed the baggie out in the sink, and returned to the bed as he waved the red-stamped plastic around to dry.
“Have you found anything in that fancy-pad?”
Lisa ignored the moniker and scrolled slowly with a scowl on her face. “I already knew the drug problem here was bad. There are many different dealers on the streets, and the bags with the red boar are merely a tiny part of it—only two mentions of it in a sea of…well, hundreds.”
He snorted and sat on the bed. “Merely another brand in a flooded market. That ain’t helpful at all.”
“Maybe not right now. But we know someone in Portland has connections to the Red Boar. It’s a start.”
“I have enough starts, darlin’. What I’m aimin’ for is to finish it.”
“We will.”
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, Lisa knocked on his hotel-room door at a quarter after seven and was greeted by a groggy, glaring Johnny, his auburn hair sticking up in all directions.
“What?” he demanded roughly.
She thrust the to-go cup of coffee toward him and studied him with a grin. “You owe me one.”
“Hold on now—” He grunted when she brushed past him into the room, then shut the door and ran a hand through his hair. “It ain’t even seven thirty yet.”
“It’s close enough. Take the coffee, Johnny.”
His scowl deepened. “Where did you get that?”
“The hotel bar brews its own coffee.”
“Uh-uh. Nope.” He gestured a vehement refusal. “I ain’t interested in anythin’ that mixolojackass did to a good ol’ cup o’ joe.”
“Trust me. You’re interested in this.”
Grumbling, he took the cup and popped the plastic lid off. He sniffed the steam, took a tentative sip, and widened his eyes. “Fuck.”
“Right?”
He slurped a little more. “There ain’t nothin’ fancy done to it?”
“It’s regular Portland java. Black.”
“That makes me hate him even more.”
Lisa snorted and took a white paper bag out from under her arm. “And I brought breakfast—or at least a start at breakfast. If we need to, we can go to one of the dozens of places here in the city.”
Johnny closed his eyes for his next sip of coffee, then muttered, “Is this you tryin’ to get me to like this place?”
“Why would I do that? You’ve made your mind up. Here.” She handed him a smaller brown bag.
“What’s this?”
“For Rex and Luther. I know to not even ask, so you can give it to them.”
Both hounds’ heads popped up over the far side of the bed. “Did she just call us by name?”
“Treats, Johnny?”
The dwarf ripped the bag open and shook out two smaller than average round biscuits. He frowned. “Biscuits.”
“Dog biscuits. Cute, right?”
“Sure. I’m merely missin’ the fried egg and sausage patty.”
Rex licked his muzzle. “Sounds good to me.”
“Darlin’, I could market my old shoes as top-of-the-line dog toys in this city and probably make three times what I paid for ʼem. You got ripped off.”
Lisa set the extra pastry on the desk and bit into hers. “You are even more cynical.”
“It’s bread.”
“Trust me, Johnny, it’s for the dogs. The hotel bakery outsources stuff from this baked good-for-canines company. I thought I’d offer Rex and Luther the same courtesy of eating with us before we head out.”
“It ain’t a courtesy.” Johnny wrinkled his nose at the biscuits. “They have to eat.”
“You know what I mean. Oh, you probably don’t want to—”
He bit into the biscuit, chewed once, then lowered his head toward his hand and spat it all out again. She almost choked on her scone at his disgusted grimace as he wiped soggy chunks of dog biscuit off his beard. “All right. I’ll give you that one.”
“So…Johnny.” Luther padded around the bed toward his master. “How about a little—”
“Snooze, you lose!” Rex yipped and raced past his brother to snatch up the uneaten biscuit Johnny dropped on the floor. “Oh, and you seriously lost out on this one, Luther.”
“Johnny. Johnny. You’re not gonna eat it all, are you?”
As he snatched his coffee to wash out the taste, the dwarf lowered the other biscuit in his hand absently.
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Luther’s rear end wobbled as he waited for the treat to drop within mouth range. He gobbled the whole thing in one swallow and licked Johnny’s hand until the dwarf finally pulled it away again. “You are the best.”
“These biscuit are the best.” Rex grunted and licked the crumbs off the carpet.
“Or maybe she’s the best. I don’t even care. This is the best.”
The dwarf wiped his palm briskly on his jeans and sat on the edge of the bed again. “Remind me which human nutjob we were gonna go see first.”
Lisa licked crumbs off her fingers. “You know you can’t say stuff like that when we’re there talking to them, right?”
“I can’t, huh?”
“No, Johnny, I didn’t mean it like that—”
“I’m yankin’ your chain, darlin’.” He pointed at the huge pastry on the desk. “Is this one mine?”
“Yep. I’m serious, though. Please try to be…you know, the opposite of brutally insulting.”
Johnny smirked at the hounds. “She thinks I’m all curmudgeon and no heart, boys.”
“Sure, Johnny.”
“You bet.”
“Got any more biscuits?”
Some loyalty. He bit into the pastry and squinted. Now this is a meal.
“I didn’t say that.” Lisa popped the last bite of scone into her mouth and nursed her coffee. “I know there’s at least one thread of compassion in you. I’m merely asking you to use it. Far more than normal.”
“I’ll be fine.” He shook the pastry at her. “Exactly like this—hey.”
Both hounds lunged for the crumbs at his feet.
“Y’all better git.” He waved them away and sca
ttered more crumbs. They only half-obeyed. “All right. The boys love the treats, I’ll give you that. But it’s wipin’ their brain cells out so that’s the first and last time.”
“No problem.” She stood from the armchair and retrieved her tablet. “They cost more than both our pastries anyway.”
“You shittin’ me?”
“Are you ready to go?”
He shook his head and took his duffel bag from the closet. “Let me get a few things together. Then we can go have a chat with…”
“Christopher Folsum.”
“Yeah. Him.”
Lisa’s eyes widened when he retrieved his utility belt strapped with at least a dozen explosive disks. “Oh, come on. Do you honestly need that?”
“You never know.” Johnny strapped the belt around his waist and fastened it. “It’s stupid to go in unarmed when you’re facin’ a demon, ain’t it?”
“Because of the demons. Sure.” She sipped her coffee and headed to the door.
Christopher Folsum lived twenty minutes away on foot, and Johnny finally consented to leave the SUV in the garage and walk there. After three minutes on the sidewalk, he wished he hadn’t.
“It never ends, does it?”
“What’s that?”
“All…this.” He gestured at the busy street as they turned the corner and headed up toward Goose Hollow again. “Look. You got artsy fartsies paintin’—what is that? Coffee beans? Then that dude in the clogs yodelin’ over there. Like full-on yodelin’, and he thinks that’ll draw folks into his shop.”
“It’s a good marketing tactic.”
“Yeah, for yodelers.”
Lisa perked up as they approached the next shop. “Hey, look at this. Bite the Bullet. That sounds cool.”
Johnny’s glance through the window told him all he needed to know. “That ain’t what you think it is, darlin’.”
“What do you mean? It’s a—” She pulled away from the window and turned stiffly to continue down the sidewalk. “Never mind.”
“Hey, Johnny.” Luther stopped beside the shop to lick a stain on the window. “What’s with all the underwear and strappy things in there?”
