Chasing China White

by Allan Leverone

  CHASING CHINA WHITE

  Allan Leverone

  PRAISE FOR CHASING CHINA WHITE

  “Chasing China White starts with a simple premise—a desperate junkie agrees to do a favor for his dealer—but with each page, Allan Leverone raises the stakes and turns the screws until you’re left holding your breath at the edge of your seat. This noir tale is impossible to set aside until you follow its spiral all the way down.” —Hilary Davidson, Anthony Award–winning author of One Small Sacrifice

  “As dark as the bottom of a well, this story clips along from one calamity to another. The real suspense here is whether Derek will see redemption, but Leverone makes us question if anyone really does. This is a strong dose that gets your heart pumping and will make you sweat, but like an addict, you won’t want to quit.” —Eric Beetner, author of All the Way Down

  “As poignant as it is bleak and violent, Allan Leverone’s Chasing China White is a powerful, expertly written slice of gritty, bare-bones crime fiction, and just like the addiction it explores, once it has you in its grip, all you want is more. Highly recommended.” —Greg F. Gifune, author of Dangerous Boys

  “Allan Leverone has a new one out—Chasing China White—a novel with a thrilling plot, evocative setting, deep characterization—suspenseful—you can’t put it down--this book has it all.” —Les Edgerton, author of Adrenaline Junkie, The Bitch, The Rapist and others

  Copyright © 2019 by Allan Leverone

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chasing China White

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Preview from 40 Nickels by R. Daniel Lester

  Preview from Crossing the Chicken by J.L. Abramo

  Preview from Tommy Shakes by Rob Pierce

  For Craig, who taught me the true meaning of the word courage.

  Part One

  Crowder and McHugh

  1

  The sun hadn’t even risen yet when Derek got tossed onto the pavement like a bag of yesterday’s trash.

  One minute he was dozing in the murky predawn grey, warm and comfy—more or less—in the back seat of an abandoned car. The next minute someone yanked open the door, grabbed him by the shoulders, dragged him off the bench seat and decorated the tenement building’s parking lot with the blood that leaked out of both elbows when he extended his arms to break his fall.

  He rolled when he hit the ground and covered his head instinctively. Even confused and drug-addled and barely awake, Derek had spent more than enough time on the streets to know no matter how painful an injury anywhere else on his body might be, it paled in comparison to the damage his attackers could cause if they took a pipe or a baseball bat—or just about any other weapon—to his face or neck or skull.

  Rolling didn’t work.

  He heard a snicker of derision from somewhere above, and then felt a steel-toed work boot slam into his ribs.

  Immediately all thoughts of protecting his head went out the window. Derek wrapped his arms around his midsection and tried rolling one more time, but there was nowhere to go. Apparently more than one attacker had decided to fuck with him, because he found his progress impeded by another asshole wearing—of course—work boots.

  He mewled, whimpering like a drowning kitten, knowing how pathetic he sounded but unable to stop himself. The way things were going he was in very real danger of getting beaten to death, of becoming just another statistic, one more dead junkie no one would mourn.

  Or even remember by this time next week.

  So he whimpered and pushed himself onto his hands and knees, expecting at any moment to have his skull bashed in, wondering whether he would feel anything when it happened or if consciousness would disappear as if someone had pushed a button on a TV remote.

  When a few seconds passed by and the end of the world didn’t come, Derek took a chance and squinted up at his tormentors. As he’d suspected, there were two of them. They stood on either side of him, shaking their heads and chuckling. Look what we’ve done to the helpless loser.

  For some reason that little humiliation pissed Derek off even more than the attack itself. Even more than the lightning bolts of pain currently flashing through his rib cage.

  “The fuck is wrong with you guys?” he said when it became clear the men had no immediate intention of ending him.

  One of the men raised an eyebrow in surprise and shared a brief glance with the other. Then he drew back his foot as if to bury his boot in Derek’s ribs again, and both attackers erupted in laughter as Derek collapsed onto the ground and tried to cover up.

  “You’ll speak when spoken to, dickwad.” Derek wasn’t sure which guy had issued the edict but he supposed it didn’t matter much. They’d demonstrated pretty conclusively they were in charge.

  He nodded wordlessly this time and pushed himself back up onto his hands and knees. His ribs hurt and his bloody elbows throbbed and all he wanted to do was crawl back inside the old broken-down Caravan and go back to sleep, although he suspected that if any loss of consciousness was in his immediate future it would come at the hands of the two assholes currently working him over.

  The men grabbed him, one under each armpit, and hauled him to his feet. He stumbled and nearly fell and neither guy seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn’t waste any energy worrying about it.

  “We own your ass, understand?” The one that had pretended to kick him made that comment, and although it seemed utterly unnecessary given the circumstances, he nodded again, tiredly.

  Now that he wasn’t looking up at them from ground level, Derek realized he knew the two gorillas, or at least recognized them. They worked for the man who supplied his heroin dealer with product, hired muscle whose sole job description—besides kicking his ass, apparently—was to maintain a high profile around the areas where drug transactions occurred. The theory was their presence would minimize the chance of some desperate junkie shooting his supplier between the eyes and making off with the goods.

  Every once in a while the goons would bust a couple of heads just to maintain their street cred. But that scenario didn’t make sense here. What would be the point of administering Derek’s beating in a secluded parking lot with not a single goddamned soul around to see?

  The men pushed and shoved him around the back of the ancient minivan toward an idling black Lexus parked maybe twenty feet away. They had obviously not wanted to awaken Derek by driving any closer. It wasn’t like he could have gotten away if he’d heard them coming—where the hell would he go?—so the whole point of sneaking up on him had been so they could kick him around a little bit and fuck with him before they got down to the
ir real business, whatever that was.

  And then the other shoe dropped.

  He felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner, although in his own defense he had been awoken out of a more or less deep sleep, and after shooting up yesterday. Anyone would be a little slow on the uptake under those circumstances.

  He owed his dealer money.

  A lot of money.

  Derek had been fired from more jobs than he could count, and had given up working months ago. He’d had moderate success stealing and pawning items from a series of local stores, but that sort of thing was hit or miss and lately there had been a lot more misses than hits.

  The point was he was into his dealer for well over a thousand bucks. The kid had become more and more agitated about the amount of the debt recently and last week had threatened to drop a dime on Derek to the regional supplier, a man named Crowder who was not known for his patience.

  It wasn’t like Derek had ignored the threat. Not exactly. But at the time it was issued he’d been dopesick, on the verge of puking, and the seriousness of the situation had gone right over his head in his anxiousness to stick the goddamned needle into the goddamned vein.

  Obviously the threat had not been an idle one. Now Crowder’s goons were forcing him into a car, in which they would drive him somewhere he was certain he would not want to go, and do things to him he was certain he would not want done.

  “Uhhh, guys, you don’t need to do th—”

  The asshole who had pretended to kick him a moment ago buried his fist in Derek’s gut and the breath left him like air out of a balloon.

  He crumpled to his knees, wheezing and gasping, but managed to spit out, “Please don’t kill me.”

  “We’re not gonna kill you, dipshit.”

  “You’re not?” He coughed weakly as the goons dragged him to his feet again and continued moving him inexorably toward the Lexus.

  “No, we’re not. You might die from terminal stupidity, but if we wanted to kill you we would have put two slugs in your head while you were sleeping. Quick and easy, no witnesses, in and out. Bing-bang-boom.” The goon made a pistol out of his thumb and forefinger and pulled the fake trigger on the last word.

  “If you’re not gonna…you know…then what do you want with me?”

  “Just shut up and get in the car. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  They had arrived at the Lexus and the goon looked at Derek appraisingly. He didn’t seem to like what he saw, because he said, “Remember what I told you about not killing you?”

  Derek nodded.

  “You better not puke all over my carpeting. You puke on my carpeting and all bets are off.”

  2

  Derek still wasn’t convinced his escorts weren’t taking him somewhere to off him.

  Sure, they’d told him otherwise, but what the hell difference did that make? Guys like the two who had rousted him typically felt no particular need to treat guys like Derek with truthfulness. Even basic human dignity seemed a bridge too far.

  But at this point—jammed into the back seat of a luxury sedan with blacked-out windows and a muscle-bound gym rat holding a gun on him—there wasn’t much he could do about it either way. So he tried to ignore the pain in his elbows and ribs while concentrating on keeping his rising panic under control.

  He was successful at neither.

  The car snaked through the city, moving relatively quickly thanks to the early hour. Only the most dedicated of corporate drones had hit the roads at 5:30 a.m., even in a city the size of Boston.

  Despite the fact that Derek had spent most of the last five years on the streets of various local neighborhoods, he had no idea where they were by the time Goon #1 nosed the Lexus into a parking spot outside a crumbling brick building. The area appeared blighted, run-down, the sort of place he should have been most familiar with, but he was certain he’d never been here before.

  The building looked as though it had been empty for a long time, and the fear began to rise again as Goon #2 made a flicking gesture with his gun, indicating the ride had come to an end. The windows were boarded up and the area seemed deserted and it occurred to Derek this would be the ideal place to execute a hapless drug addict, the goons’ previous assurances notwithstanding.

  “Get out of the car and walk straight to the door,” Goon #2 said, and Derek swallowed heavily.

  He slid across the seat and stepped onto the pitted sidewalk and tried to calculate the odds of success should he take off sprinting down the alley they’d just entered. Decided they weren’t favorable.

  “Uh, any reason why we can’t conduct our business out here?”

  “Shut up and walk,” Goon #1 said. Derek began trudging toward the abandoned brick building as the guy muttered, “Conduct our business. Jesus.”

  The goon—Derek didn’t know which goon, but again, what difference did it make?—shoved him through the door and after he’d taken three steps across the floor Derek was so surprised at the interior he forgot to keep walking. The goons stumbled into him and swore, and Derek barely noticed.

  The place was unbelievable. Where the outside of the building had suggested a structure in desperate need of an appointment with a bulldozer, the inside resembled a high-end office complex. Clean and beautifully appointed, with something that looked exactly like a long reception desk located maybe fifteen feet inside the door.

  On the other side of the desk was a dude with a shaved head and forearms covered with prison tats. He was standing up, doing nothing that Derek could see other than acting like he belonged. His eyes were lidded and his expression sullen, and surrounding him was an aura of violence so strong it was palpable.

  The goons grabbed Derek by the arms and began propelling him toward the rear of the lobby. He winced as the pain in his elbows flared. He deliberately avoided looking into the eyes of the guy with the shaved head, not sure why other than a vague notion that he didn’t want to provoke him.

  Then they walked through another door and into an office.

  Crowder’s office.

  Derek had never met Crowder. Didn’t have the slightest clue what the man looked like. He also had no doubt it was Crowder sitting behind the huge desk.

  But why the hell would a guy like Crowder want to talk to a guy like him?

  Derek’s two tormentors pushed him in front of the desk and then disappeared. They retreated out the way they had come and pulled the door closed and Derek was left alone with Crowder, who had yet to say a word. Hell, he hadn’t even glanced at Derek yet.

  He just sat behind the desk thrumming his fingers. Over and over. It sounded like a miniature horse galloping across a field. If the field was made of highly polished walnut.

  There was only one seat in the whole damned office and Crowder was using it, so Derek stood in front of the desk wondering what to do with his hands. He wondered also whether Crowder was ever going to say anything or if each of them would just continue pretending the other didn’t exist, on and on, forever.

  Eventually Derek couldn’t stand it any longer. He cleared his throat to speak, but then he stopped as Crowder raised one finger. His left pointer finger. With his right hand he continued to ride the goddamned miniature horse across the goddamned walnut field.

  After another excruciating moment of silence, Crowder finally spoke. “I understand you’re suffering a bit of a cash-flow problem.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re having trouble paying your bills.”

  “I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch, I admit that, but I’m sure I’ll—”

  “You owe more money than an unemployed homeless heroin addict can repay, and that’s only considering the principal. It doesn’t even take into account the interest, which has been compounding steadily.”

  More silence. Derek didn’t bother trying to reassure the man that he would pay his debt. It was plainly evident Crowder didn’t want to hear that, and Derek knew the notion of a junkie living in an ab
andoned car and dressed in clothes that hadn’t been washed in who knew how long promising to pay anyone anything was so ridiculous he wouldn’t be able to make the statement sound remotely believable, anyway.

  “How do you suppose we might rectify the situation?”

  Another pause, and another point in the conversation Derek decided there was little to be gained by speaking. He couldn’t imagine one single thing he could say that would steer the conversation in a positive direction. He now realized the goons had told the truth when they said they weren’t going to kill him, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t going to die today.

  He began preparing to beg for his life, exactly as he had done with Crowder’s men, but things didn’t quite seem to have reached that point.

  Yet.

  “Perhaps,” Crowder said, “we could negotiate a debt relief schedule that would satisfy both our needs.” He had finally stopped thrumming his fingers on the damned desk, and while the sudden silence was a welcome relief, the fact that Crowder was now fixing Derek with a baleful gaze was most certainly not.

  “Uh…debt relief?” Derek knew he sounded like a moron, but this was the very definition of an unexpected development. Plus it was still early, his elbows and ribs were still smarting, and he was still confused and more than a little afraid.

  “Yes, debt relief. You know, you do a little favor for me and in turn, I show my gratitude by shaving a percentage off the amount you owe me.”

  “A percentage.”

  “That’s right. A significant percentage. Like everything.”

  “What…what’s the favor?”

  Crowder leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Are you familiar with the concept of diversification, as it applies to the business world?”