Later

57

We drove through downtown Renfield, which must have had a big population of college kids, judging from all the bars, bookstores, and fast food restaurants on its single main street. On the other side, the road turned west and began to rise into the Catskills. After three miles or so, we came to a picnic area overlooking the Wallkill River. Liz turned in and killed the engine. We were the only ones there. She took out her little bottle of special blend, seemed about to unscrew the cap, then put it away. Her duffle coat pulled open and I saw more smears of dried blood on her sweatshirt. I thought about her saying her septum was gone. Thinking about how the powder she was snorting was eating into her flesh was worse than any Final Destination or Saw movie, because it was real.

“Time to tell you why I brought you here, kiddo. You need to know what to expect, and what I expect of you. I don’t think we’ll part friends, but maybe we can part on relatively good terms.”

I doubt that was another thing I didn’t say.

“If you want to know how the dope biz works, watch The Wire. It’s set in Baltimore instead of New York, but the dope biz doesn’t change much from place to place. It’s a pyramid, like any other big-money organization. You’ve got your junior street dealers at the bottom, and most of them are juniors, so when they get popped they get tried as juveniles. In family court one day, back on the street corner the next. Then you’ve got your senior dealers, who service the clubs—where I got recruited—and the fat cats who save money by buying in bulk.”

She laughed, and I didn’t get why that was funny, either.

“Go up a little and you’ve got your suppliers, your junior executives to keep things running smoothly, your accountants, your lawyers, and then the top boys. It’s all compartmentalized, or at least it’s supposed to be. The people at the bottom know who’s directly above them, but that’s all they know. The people in the middle know everyone below them, but still only one layer above them. I was different. Outside the pyramid. Outside the, um, hierarchy.”

“Because you were a transporter. Like in that Jason Statham movie.”

“Pretty much. Transporters are supposed to know only two people, the ones we receive from at Point A and the ones we turn the load over to at Point B. Those at Point B are the senior distributors who start the dope flowing down the pyramid to its final destination, the users.”

Final destination. There it was again.

“Only as a cop—dirty, but still a cop—I pay attention, okay? I don’t ask many questions, doing that is dangerous, but I listen. Also, I have—had, anyway—access to NYPD and DEA databases. It wasn’t hard to trace the pyramid all the way to the tippy-top. There are maybe a dozen people importing three major kinds of dope into the New York and New England territories, but the one I was working for lives right here in Renfield. Lived, I should say. His name is Donald Marsden, and when he filed his taxes, he listed developer as his former occupation and retired as his current one. He’s retired, all right.”

Lived, I should say. Retired.

It was Kenneth Therriault all over again.

“The kid gets the picture,” Liz said. “Fantastic. Mind if I smoke? I shouldn’t have another bump until this is over. Then I’ll treat myself to a double. Really redline the old blood pressure.”

She didn’t wait for me to give permission, just lit up. But at least she rolled down her window to let the smoke out. Most of it, anyway.

“Donnie Marsden was known to his colleagues—his crew— as Donnie Bigs, for good reason. He was one fat fuck, pardon my political incorrectness. Three hundred ain’t in it, dear—try four and a quarter. He was asking for it, and he got it yesterday. Cerebral hemorrhage. Blew his brains out and didn’t even need a gun.”

She dragged deep and shot smoke out her window. The daylight was still strong but the shadows were getting long. Soon the light would start to fade.

“A week before he stroked out, I got word through two of my old contacts—this would be Point B guys I stayed friendly with—that Donnie received a shipment from China. Huge shipment, they said. Not powder, pills. Knockoff OxyContin, a lot of it for Donnie Bigs’s personal sale. Maybe as a kind of bonus. That’d be my guess, anyway, because there really is no top of the pyramid, Jamie. Even the boss has bosses.”

This made me think of something Mom and Uncle Harry used to chant sometimes. They had learned it as kids, I guess, and Uncle Harry remembered it even when all of the important stuff had blown away. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum. I supposed I might chant that to my own kids. If I ever had the chance to have them, that was.

“Pills, Jamie! Pills!” She sounded enraptured, which was mondo creepy. “Easy to transport and easier to sell! Huge could mean two or three thousand, maybe ten thousand. And Rico—one of my Point B guys—says they’re forties. You know what forties go for on the street? Never mind, I know you don’t. Eighty a pill. And never mind sweating out a run with heroin in plastic garbage bags, I could carry these in a fucking suitcase.”

Smoke slithered out between her lips and she watched it drift away toward the guardrails with their sign reading STAY BACK FROM THE EDGE.

“We’re going to get those pills, Jamie. You’re going to find out where he put them. My guys asked me to cut them in if I got a line on the stuff, and of course I said yes, but this is my deal. Besides, there might not be ten thousand tabs. There might only be eight thousand. Or eight hundred.”

She cocked her head, then shook it. As if arguing with herself.

“There’ll be a couple thousand. A couple thousand at least, got to be. Probably more. Donnie’s executive bonus for doing a good job of supplying his New York clientele. But if you start splitting that, pretty soon you’re stuck with chump change, and I’m no chump. Got a little bit of a drug problem, but that doesn’t make me a chump. You know what I’ll do, Jamie?”

I shook my head.

“Make it out to the west coast. Disappear from this part of the world forever. New clothes, new hair color, new me. I’ll find someone out there who can broker a deal for the Oxy. I may not get eighty a pill, but I’ll get a lot, because Oxy is still the gold standard, and the Chinese shit is as good as the real stuff. Then I’m going to get myself a nice new identity to go with my new hair and clothes. I’ll check into a rehab and get clean. Find a job, maybe the kind where I can start making up for the past. Atonement is what the Catholics call it. How does that sound to you?”

Like a pipe dream, I thought.

It must have showed on my face, because the happy smile she’d been wearing froze. “You don’t think so? Fine. Just watch me.”

“I don’t want to watch you,” I said. “I want to get the hell away from you.”

She raised a hand and I cringed back in my seat, thinking she meant to give me a swat, but she only sighed and wiped her nose with it again. “How can I blame you for that? So let’s make it happen. We’re going to drive up to his house—last one on Renfield Road, all by its lonesome—and you’re going to ask him where those pills are currently residing. My guess would be in his personal safe. If so, you’ll ask him for the combination. He’ll have to tell you, because dead people can’t lie.”

“I can’t be sure of that,” I said, a lie which proved I was still alive. “It’s not like I’ve questioned hundreds of them. Mostly I don’t talk to them at all. Why would I? They’re dead.”

“But Therriault told you where the bomb was, even though he didn’t want to.”

I couldn’t argue with that, but there was another possibility. “What if the guy’s not there? What if he’s wherever his body went? Or, I don’t know, maybe he’s visiting his mom and dad in Florida. Maybe once they’re dead they can tele-port anywhere.”

I thought that might shake her, but she didn’t look upset at all. “Thomas was at his place, wasn’t he?”

“That doesn’t mean they all are, Liz!”

“I’m pretty sure Marsden will be.” She sounded very sure of herself. She didn’t understand that dead people can be unpredictable. “Let’s do this. Then I’ll grant you your fondest wish. You’ll never have to see me again.”

She said this in a sad way, like I was supposed to feel sorry for her, but I didn’t. The only thing I felt about her was scared.