“No, no it’s fine.”
“Weidman asked if I’d checked on you. He doesn’t know I’ve come. He said something about thoughts and prayers.”
“Yeah, like that jackass ever prays. For goodness sake, come in.” Steele pointed at the chair next to the window.”
“How’s she doing?” Flynt stepped into the room and his eyes briefly wandered over to Jacki. He looked to the floor as if he were ashamed and asked: “I did pray for her all the way here.”
“That’s very kind.” His partner was genuinely concerned. “It was a breathing issue. But she’s fine now.”
“You know…you’ve told me about her accident, but not the aftermath. Steele, I’m very sorry. I had no idea.”
Steele waved the comment away. The last thing in the universe he needed at that moment was to be reduced to tears in front of Flynt. “What’s going on, Flynt?”
“Six of the seven men have been found and brought in. The seventh, as it turns out, was already arrested last week. Parole violation. He’s back in prison up in Cochran.”
“Already? That was fast.”
“Yeah, I know. The Drug Unit guys knew where you were and sort of stepped it up. I arrested one of them myself.”
“No kidding?’
“First time for everything, right?”
Who is this guy, Steele thought?
“So, Ducky is off the streets then?”
“Yes. Well, maybe not. But…just not right now. I just wanted to give you the update and let you know everyone is thinking about you.” Flynt started to stand.
Steele motioned for him to sit. “It’s okay, Flynt. I could use the distraction. I can’t really…I don’t know. I’m not accustomed to all of this.” He gestured all around the room as he spoke. In doing so, he saw that their talking woke Jacki up. “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
She shook her head and blinked the slumber away. She gave her new visitor an uncertain smile. She nodded to him and in a croaking voice, said: “Flynt?”
“Yes,” Steele answered softly.
“Yes, and it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Steele. But I’ll leave you two alone now.”
“No,” Jacki said. “He needs…”
“She thinks I need work to stay sane,” Steele finished for her. What he thought but did not say was: and she might be right.
“Well then, I should go ahead and tell you the rest, then.”
“Which is?”
“One of the guys we arrested says we were wrong. Seems Reeding didn’t have his facts quite right. This guy says there’s at least one more guy out there selling it. He said if there was Ducky at that rave, this other guy’s probably the one that was selling it there.”
“Does he know where it came from?”
“He says it most definitely came from Reeding’s batch. Reeding has admitted to making a lot of it. Like, a lot.” Flynt gave a slightly exaggerated nod.
“Did your guy give a name?” Steele asked.
“No. But he’s willing. He says he has a ton of information he’ll give us if we let him walk. That’s why I came to you. I say we make the deal.”
“That’s a good call…for now.”
Steele looked to Jacki and saw that she was pointing towards the door. “Go.”
“You sure?” Steele felt guilty leaving her.
She nodded and made a puckered motion with her lips. Steele went to the bed and kissed her. He looked for a long moment into her eyes. “You really scared me,” he whispered to her.
“I know. Me, too. Sorry. Love you.”
He kissed her again and said, “I love you, too. You get some rest. I’ll be back later.”
When he turned back around, he saw Flynt looking awkwardly at the TV, which wasn’t even turned on.
“Ready?” Steele asked.
“Yeah.” He glanced back at Jacki and said, “It was nice meeting you. You get well. I’ll take care of this guy.”
Steele smiled. This guy just might be human. He was so kind, thoughtful, and dare he say it? Normal.
Steele exited the room with Flynt behind him. “Thanks for coming, Flynt. I think most partners would have sat it out because it would be too awkward.”
“Oh, it was awkward. But everyone says I am, too. So…” Flynt gave a self-deprecating giggle. “She’s very pretty. You’re a lucky man.”
There were about a hundred things Steele wanted to say to his partner at that moment. He wanted to tell him that maybe the people that called him awkward were right, but they didn’t know his heart. They didn’t know his work ethic and unique way of thinking. They were all speaking out of ignorance and that was their loss.
But he said none of that. Steele felt a strange wave of his own awkwardness sweep over him. He made his mind focus on the case. He watched Flynt head out of the elevator and towards the parking garage. For the first time in a long time, he felt that things just might work out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Steele walked into the interrogation room and saw the man sitting at the table. He paused for a moment, closed his eyes, took a deep calming breath, and tried to center.
Why am I the one that always gets stuck with the strange ones?
The guy sitting cuffed to the table made Flynt look normal and well-kempt by comparison. He, at first glance, could have been a good-looking young man. Then the details started to come in focus and it all got weird. His hair was slicked back in a way that reminded him of John Travolta’s in Grease. Steele could not recall the character’s name because he always despised the movie. Not that it mattered; the fact that the man’s hair was dyed Smurf-blue shot the comparison out the window. Large red hoops set in his wildly stretched earlobes. On his right cheek was a large, colorful tattoo. It was of a turntable, sort of, but instead of a record in the center, there was a woman’s cartoonishly large breast, the nipple being the spindle. To add the last bit of the insanity, his eyebrows were shaved off, and he painted on large black eyeliner replacements.
Flynt passed by Steele and looked at the suspect as he closed the door behind him.
“Cool hair,” Flynt said.
“Thanks.” The man sensed Flynt was serious.
Steele slowly walked to the table and looked down at the man. “What’s your name?”
“Q.”
“I’d ask if you were kidding, but I think I’m safe in assuming you aren’t.”
“Nope. Q. That’s my name.”
Flynt chuckled at this and then seemed to notice the subject matter of Q’s tattoo for the first time. He got red in the face and went quiet.
“You know why you’re here?” Steele asked.
“The dude that brought me in said you guys needed to question me about drugs.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“No. Not my first rodeo, my man.”
“What do you do for a living, Q?”
“I’m a DJ. As of a few months ago, I was in the list of California’s top ten DJs.”
“I assume you don’t mean like a radio DJ?”
“Nah, man. Parties, raves, clubs, that sort of thing.”
So that explains the style, I suppose, Steele thought.
“Look, man, I hate to be rude or whatever, but I got stuff to do. I got a sweet gig tonight, you know? I need to set up. Get my head in the right place. So, if we can get to this deal or whatever…”
Steele wanted to take away whatever deal Q was promised right then and there. But he knew it would be costly. For now, they would play ball with him. They could always come back and bust him for something else later. With his appearance, it wasn’t as if he’d be difficult to find.
“You know what Ducky is?” Steele asked.
“I do.”
“You ever take it?”
“Twice. I honestly don’t know what the big deal is, though. I mean, it’s a fun trip and all but the headache afterward isn’t even worth it.”
“Have you ever had a violent reaction while taking it?”
“
Yeah! First time I took it. I came out on the landing outside my apartment and went downstairs and started chasing my neighbor’s car around. If I’d have caught it, I was going to kill it.”
“How long did that little outburst last?”
“I dunno. Maybe two hours or so.”
“Q, have you ever sold Ducky to anyone?”
“Just one person. My manager.”
“So, you aren’t widely distributing it? We have your word on that?”
“For sure. Man, if you knew how much cash I make as a DJ, you’d know it would be stupid for me to waste my time dealing drugs.”
“But we’re told that you are willing to offer up names?”
“Certainly. You let me get out of here without any charges, and I’ll spill like a Hoover Dam.”
“Go ahead, then.”
For the next five minutes, Q gave the more than twenty names of people he knew that dealt drugs. He only knew of two for certain that were dealing Ducky. Steele listened intently while Flynt took the names down in his notebook. Of the two names, he linked to the distribution of Ducky, one of them was already under arrest. He was picked up while Steele was at the hospital.
The second name, though, was new. Steele watched as Flynt circled it in big exaggerated circles in his notebook: Pete Heeley.
“What else do you know about Heeley?” Steele asked.
“Not much. He’s like twenty-four or twenty-five, right around my age. I only know him through raves. He’s at almost every one I play at.”
“Would he be at the one you’re playing tonight?”
“No way. My gig tonight is for A and B-listers only. Pretty sure at least one of the Kardashians is gonna be there.” He puffed his chest out at this but when he saw that neither Steele nor Flynt cared about this, he deflated. “Oh, but you know, there’s a pretty cool rave going on not too far away from here tonight. I bet Heeley would be there.”
“Does he sell at raves?”
“Oh, for sure. If he gets high enough, sometimes he just gives it away. That’s how so many people know who he is.”
“Any idea how much Ducky he might have his hands on?”
“No clue. But from what I hear, that stuff is getting pretty popular. I bet Heeley won’t be the only guy dealing it there tonight. If you’re looking to bust people for dealing it, this rave would be the place to look.”
“You know where it is?”
“Never been there myself, but I got the directions on my phone. Someone texted them to me, told me to come by later tonight if my gig ended early.” He chuckled and said, “Like I’m going to leave an LA event to come hang out in the sticks.”
“Give us that address and you’re free to get out of here,” Steele said.
“Sure thing. Get my phone from the dude that brought me in and it’s yours. And you know, it might do you some good to get there early. It’s not scheduled to start until ten but sometimes, out at these isolated in-the-middle-of-nowhere raves, people start showing up as early as six or seven to start the party early.”
Steele eyed Q for a moment longer. He was pretty sure the guy was being square and truthful with them. He was far too involved in his career and status to jeopardize it by misleading the police.
As he left the room, he caught Flynt starting ay Q’s hair again. When they were both back out in the hallway, Flynt eased up next to Steele as they went looking for Q’s phone.
“Hey, Steele, do you think it’s okay for a man to have blue hair?”
“No.”
“Pink?”
“No. Not by any means.”
“Not even a musician?”
“Q is not a musician. He programs things into a computer, presses some buttons, and knows how to use a turntable.”
“Let me ask you something. Band or DJ?”
“Band.”
Flynt nodded approvingly.
Steele thought about this exchange for a moment. Is he considering dying his hair? And just like that, Steele felt as if this is where he belonged. Yes, his wife was still in the hospital but she was already improving. And Flynt, as strange and eccentric as he might be, somehow made him feel that everything was back to normal—that everything was going to be okay.
* * *
Flynt felt a little awkward as he and Steele climbed into the undercover sedan fifteen minutes later. At the hospital, he walked in on Steele in a very intimate, vulnerable moment between him and his wife. Steele acted as if it was perfectly fine, which was cool, but Flynt still felt weird about it. At the same time, it made him want to know his partner better. It made him want to have a beer or pizza or tacos with his partner. It wasn’t something he felt about many people and that, too, made him feel a little awkward.
Q texted directions to the rave straight to Steele’s phone. Steele was behind the wheel, driving there now, as dusk started to settle over the city. The Joe Pesci voice told them that if they drove like that old lady upstairs on the third floor, they could get to the location in under one bleeping hour and that wasn’t too bleepity-bleep bad.
“It’s great your wife is going to be okay,” Flynt said. He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to comment or not, but he was happy about it and it came out before he could filter it. Besides, he was sure it was on Steele’s mind and it should be addressed.
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Because she’s paralyzed, she sometimes has difficulty breathing. So, what might be a common cold to us, could really put her at risk.”
“Oh. So…she doesn’t—”
“Look, Flynt, I don’t mean this to sound rude or anything, but she’s never going to be fine ever again. Let’s just focus on getting to the rave and see if we can stem the flow of Ducky onto the streets.”
“Roger that.”
Still, uncomfortable with silence, Flynt needed to say something to erase what awkwardness that remained.
“Oh!” he said suddenly. “Get this. So, I went and talked to Leik for a bit while you were gone. He was still in the lab, trying to figure out what corners were cut in the meth-cooked version of Ducky. He showed me how he used the rubber ducky to slurp the D710 up into it. Check it out.”
That said, he reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out an evidence bag. Leik’s little rubber duck sat inside, grinning through the plastic.
“Flynt, what are you doing with that?”
“Huh?”
“You know you can’t take evidence from the station!”
“Well, actually it was never cataloged as evidence. It’s been in the lab this entire time. Now, I might have forgotten to give it back to Leik…”
“Put it away, then. Don’t contaminate it!”
“Oh yeah, sure. But check it out.” He dug the duck out of the bag and gave it a little smile. “It is a cute little duck. But hey, did you know they have these little holes in the bottom of them? Not sure why. Leik said he thinks it has something to do with air getting in and helping it float or something.”
“Nice, now put it away.”
“Yeah, okay.” Flynt was a little upset that he wasn’t able to diffuse the situation with the sight of the duck or his fun new fact. He sighed and prepared to return the duck to the bag. The car hit a pothole and Flynt unintentionally squeezed the duck.
He felt the drops hit right away. It got him right below his Adam’s apple, and a bit hit him squarely on the chin. He knew the responsible thing to do would be to wipe it off, but he didn’t want to admit to such an idiotic mistake in front of Steele. So, acting as if nothing happened, he placed the duck back in the bag and returned it to his inner coat pocket.
Then, slowly and as nonchalantly as he could, he rubbed at his neck and chin, trying to get the remnants of the D710 away. He then realized that he was doing it with his bare hands, so it made no difference. He bent his head hard to the right, wiping his neck with his shoulder. He was well aware of how crazy it must look.
“You okay?” Steele asked.
“Oh yeah, for sure. Just…just got an itc
h.”
Flynt squinted his eyes as Steele frowned. The frown then became one of concern, the sort of look a distressed teacher might give a problem student. “Flynt did you…”
“Well maybe, but just a little bit.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I think I’m fine. It was hardly any at all.”
Steele rolled his eyes. “You keep me posted, okay? Let me know if you start feeling strange.”
“Will do.”
As they drove on, the Joe Pesci GPS told them they were only ten more fricking minutes until they arrived. It was here that Steele turned off of a two-lane road onto a thinner strip of blacktop. There were no lines or a sign. It looked like some sort of maintenance entrance to a building that wasn’t there.
“Steele, do you think it’s okay for a grown man to still do recreational drugs?”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on why they use them. I’m all on board with the use of medical marijuana and maybe even some of the stuff Leik was talking about with using micro-doses of psychedelics for mental disorders. But I don’t think a grown man should be a pothead or anything.”
“Interesting. Have you thought about—”
Before the question could finish coming out his mouth, the words were taken from him. Flynt felt the words fall into his gut like little balloons and for a moment, it was hard to breathe. In front of him, the dashboard dissolved into something resembling Jell-O. It was goopy and shiny and Flynt found himself reaching out for it.
“Flynt?”
“Hmmmmm?”
The Jell-O flattened out and seemed to roll out ahead of them like some weird red carpet. Only it was not red, it was yellow, or was it? It was unrolled at the speed of light, unrolled ahead of them forever and ever with no end. Little streaks of white and silver appeared in that strange path ahead of him. The streaks became circles, then diamonds, and then the coolest geometric shapes he never saw.
“Flynt!”
He knew Steele was calling him but he couldn’t seem to work his tongue or push air from his lungs to form a response. He was pretty sure there was no need for that stuff anymore. His body was gone. His mind was gone. They became one. Right now, there were only shapes and colors. Coming in along the edges of his vision, something else was melding with his mind. Many, many somethings, all formed and flowing like ghosts made of chalk.
Dead Duck (Flynt & Steele Mysteries Book 2) Page 13