“I got it, I got it,” Will muttered, slumping down in his seat in defeat.
The whole way out of the station, his brain had been scrambling for a way to beat Korigan’s latest move. Now that he was actually out here in the cold, though, all he felt was tired. It was finally catching with up him that he’d been working almost nonstop for over thirty-six hours, and that, for all his effort and risks, he was no closer to solving the case than he’d been when he’d first interviewed Lauryn in the hospital. For all he knew, this Z3X business wasn’t even related to what had happened in the burn ward or the green stuff the fake Dr. Black had tried to throw in Lauryn’s face. It could be he was reading way too much into all of this. That maybe there wasn’t a giant conspiracy, and Korigan was just burying this case for the mundane, petty reason of not wanting to look like an incompetent idiot.
Considering Korigan’s high opinion of himself, that was more plausible than Will wanted to admit, and he reached up to rub his tired eyes with a sigh. Maybe it actually was time to go home. Or better yet, swing by and check on Lauryn.
Will knew that was a terrible idea the moment it occurred to him, but that didn’t stop him from seriously considering it anyway. Scary as it had been, the time he’d spent with Lauryn had been a pointed reminder of just how good things between them had been before he’d thrown it all away by acting exactly like this. He always got obsessed over cases, chasing the truth until he’d worn himself down to the rivets and wrecked everything else that mattered in his life. Six months ago, it had been his relationship with the best woman he’d ever met. Today, it might have been his job. And while part of Will believed that it would always be worth it—that he did good work and kept people safe when no one else gave a damn—the rest of him was just tired. Tired of getting burned up, tired of pushing so hard all the time, tired of chasing shadows. It wasn’t even like he made a difference. No matter how hard he worked, crime didn’t stop. The city was never truly safe. Even now, people were out there running after the trucks that were handing out pallets of drugs like candy without a care in the world for the consequences. Why should he kill himself trying to save them when they couldn’t even be bothered to save themselves?
That was a bitter line of thought, and Will decided with a sigh that it was time to get some sleep. Actual sleep, not the halfway kind where he lay on his couch clutching his phone. Because as big a liar as he might be about everything else, in one area at least, Korigan had the truth pegged: Will was exhausted, and that made him a danger to himself and others, especially when he started getting maudlin like he was now. So, with that, Will started his unmarked car and pulled out of the station, promising himself he’d revisit all of this tomorrow morning when he wasn’t half-dead. But as he was turning out of the parking lot, a black limo turned in, cutting him off.
At the end of his patience already, Will leaned out his window to call the driver an asshole, but the angry words died in his throat. The limo was pulling up to the front of the station, and who should be getting in but Chief Korigan himself.
Will froze, brain racing. This could be perfectly innocent. Korigan had gotten his job by schmoozing with the sort of people who took limos everywhere. Maybe there was another party, and he was just . . .
His train of thought derailed as the limo door opened, and the light came on inside, outlining a profile Will recognized even through the tinted glass. It was the scary guy from the burn ward. The fake doctor who’d thrown the green stuff in Lauryn’s face.
Lincoln Black.
And just like that, all of Will’s plans for sleep went to hell. “Got you,” he growled as he whipped his car around. “I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.”
Adrenaline coursing through him, Will didn’t waste a second. Leaning low over his steering wheel, he circled the lot and pulled out after the limo, following from a safe distance as the luxury car made its way through the pre-rush-hour traffic toward the river.
Robert’s phone would not stop ringing.
After years of pretending he didn’t exist, Lauryn had been blowing up his phone for the last half hour. The only reason he didn’t just turn the thing off was because he was waiting on texts from his crew. He supposed he could have blocked her, but annoying as the constant buzzing in his pocket was, the satisfaction of knowing that perfect little Lauryn was throwing a tantrum over him was too good to miss. If he’d been less busy, he would have fucked with her good—picking up only to hang up, giving her to someone else, that kind of thing. But Robbie had much better things to do than harass his stuck-up sister tonight, so he shifted his phone to his outside jacket pocket where he wouldn’t feel it going off every ten seconds and turned his attention back to what was really important here: his business.
“You done?” Angelo said, leaning on the railing of the stairs to the riverside warehouse where he’d asked Robbie to meet him. “I ain’t got all afternoon.”
“Sorry,” Robbie said quickly, smiling apologetically at his supplier as he shoved his phone—which was already buzzing again—even deeper into his pocket. “I’m done. What did you want to show me?”
The dealer said nothing. He just shoved the door open and motioned for Robbie to follow. Robbie did so eagerly, chest thumping. Given how crazy this morning had been, he had no idea what to expect, but he was betting big. Like Scarface big. Cartel-lord-feeding-his-enemies-to-lions big. His imagination had been running wild ever since Angelo had called him in, but as he walked into the brick warehouse, the sight waiting for him made Robbie realize that he hadn’t been dreaming nearly big enough.
“Holy . . . ”
The scene inside the warehouse looked straight out of the movies. All along the cement floor, giant vats were set up like a grid of indoor swimming pools, each one filled to the brim with bubbling green liquid. At the bottom of each tank, a spigot poured the liquid into large drying racks where it quickly changed from liquid to the fine, black powder Robbie had come here to get. It smelled awful.
It smells like money, he thought greedily.
“That is a lot of Z3X,” he muttered, trying and failing to count all the vats in front of him before turning back to his buddy Angelo. “And you’re in charge of all this?”
“Damn straight,” Angelo said, grinning wide. “I run this whole place from the top—” he pointed up at the metal grate ceiling of the warehouse’s second floor, where armies of guys were loading huge buckets of the gray-black powder into baggies “—to the bottom.” He nodded down toward the shipping bay, where the bundled baggies of Z3X were being loaded into trucks for delivery all over the city.
Robert nodded, trying his best to look pro. “How much are you shipping out?”
“All of it, man,” Angelo said. “We been running at full capacity since orders came down to get this onto the streets last night. We’ve pushed half of it out already. This is just what’s still left to go for tonight. That’s where you come in.” He looked Robert up and down. “How long you been working for me? Three months?”
Robert nodded, and Angelo smiled, slapping him on the back. “You done good, kid. Made a lot of money. I’m real proud. That’s why I called you in today. I think it’s time you moved up in the world.”
That was exactly what Robert had been hoping. Angelo had been hinting that something big was coming for weeks now. Then, out of nowhere, he’d appeared in the club where Robert worked as a dealer and handed him a bucket—no joke, an actual orange hardware store bucket—of Z3X with the promise that if Robert sold it all, there’d be much more where that came from.
Including opportunity for Robbie’s growth.
This was the break Robert had been waiting for. Angelo was the dealer who supplied half the pushers on the South Side. He was a big deal, and when Angelo took personal interest in a person, their career took off—or they disappeared. Given how hard he’d been pushing this new Z3X crap, Robbie was confident he was about to get his invitation to the big leagues.
He deserved it, too. Most of Robert’s c
lients didn’t even know what Z3X was. Honestly, Robbie didn’t, either, but that didn’t matter. He’d sold it like it was candy, emptying the whole damn bucket into the party-mad crowd. He’d called his boss the moment he was out, and then Angelo sent over another batch. It had taken him all morning, but Robert had pushed that one, too. When he called in for a third, Angelo had given him the address for the warehouse and told him to come in person.
It was the chance he’d been waiting months for. When he’d first started selling, it was supposed to be temporary, just a way to make some quick cash until his music career took off. But his demo had been making the rounds for weeks now and he still hadn’t gotten a single call. His drug business, on the other hand, had been exploding. He’d already made more cash in the last month than his dad made in a year, and that was just the money. There was also the part where bigwigs like Angelo got to sell to the really famous people, the big-time producers and rappers with the connections to get Robbie the break he needed. That was why he’d busted his balls selling whatever Angelo gave him, including this new Z3X stuff. It was funny, too, because Lauryn had always accused him of being a slacker. But Robbie didn’t mind working like a dog when the reward was good enough, and from the way Angelo was smiling, tonight’s was gonna be aces.
Speaking of, Angelo was still grinning down at his operation when he motioned for Robbie to follow him along the metal walkway. “It’s a big day for us,” he said, nodding to the giant thug with the gun who guarded the glass door to the factory’s main office. “Big things coming. Whole city’s gonna change. I need guys I can rely on more than ever, which is where you come in. You’ve been a minor player so far, but you’ve been a damn good one, and I think it’s time for you to move up in the world.”
By the time he finished, Robbie was grinning so wide it hurt. Jackpot. “I can do it,” he said without missing a beat. “Just tell me what you need sold, and it’s done.”
“That’s the attitude I like to see,” Angelo said, sitting down on the leather couch that overlooked the production floor. “Then let’s get you to work. You see all that?” He nodded through the window at the endless pallets of Z3X waiting by the loading bays. “Big Boss wants it on the street by midnight.”
For all his big words, Robbie nearly choked. Being a low-level pusher, he didn’t even know who the Big Boss was, but that order was enough for Robert to guess that he was crazy. “All of it? By midnight tonight?”
Angelo nodded, and Robbie bit his lip. He usually wrapped up his business when the clubs closed at dawn, but it had taken him longer than usual to finish selling Angelo’s second batch of Z3X. Between that, lunch with his boys, and his drive over to the warehouse just now, it was almost three in the afternoon. That still left nine hours, including the evening, which was prime selling time, but . . . that was a lot of Z3X.
“Now you see my predicament,” Angelo said with a “we’re screwed” laugh. “But orders are orders. We got permission to do whatever we want on price. Hell, we can give it away for free if we have to. Whatever it takes to get every druggie, drunk, pothead, and pill popper in Chicago on Z3X before sunrise tomorrow.”
“But . . .” Robert said, still confused. “Why?” ’Cause none of this made a damn bit of sense. “I thought it was supposed to be some kind of additive. It doesn’t even do anything on its own, right?”
“It can if you take enough,” Angelo said with a shrug. “But that’s not the point. We’re pushers. Our job is to sell it, not brand it. I got my orders same as you, and word from the top is flood the streets. I don’t even care how you do it. Hell, tell ’em it’s a new kind of black cocaine. Druggies will take anything if it’s cheap enough. I don’t care if you give it away. Just get it out of here so I can make my quota, and it’s all good.”
He finished with a confident smile, but Robbie was more confused than ever. He’d only been in the serious pusher game for a few months, but even he knew the game was all about money, and there was no money for anyone when you were giving away your product.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” Angelo said. “I thought the same thing. When the order came down to put it on trucks and drive it around the South Side like we were the damn ice cream man, I thought the boss was crazy. I still do, but with money like this, crazy don’t matter.”
“What money?” Robbie asked, pointing over his shoulder at the massive Z3X production floor behind him. “All that’s gotta cost bank to run, right? How do you make a profit on giving stuff away?”
Angelo spread his hands helplessly. “Not our place, man. That’s the boss’s call. But while I agree with everything you’re saying, I’ve been working this operation all year, and I’ve learned to trust our employer. His orders don’t always make sense at the time, but he always makes bank in the end. Always. And if you do your part, you will, too.”
He reached over to the desk beside the couch as he finished and opened a drawer, pulling out a huge stack of hundred-dollar bills. The moment Robbie saw the cash, his mouth went dry.
“That for me?”
“All for you,” Angelo said, wiggling the cash like he was taunting a dog. “Like I said, I don’t know what the boss is planning with all this, but it’s not our place to question. All you gotta know is that he’s ordered all hands on deck, and he’s put up the money to make that happen. So if you want the biggest payday of your life, here’s what you do. You go out there and you sell like your life depends on it. You go to all your friends and get them to sell it. I don’t even care if you give it away, but I want you to get everyone you know so high on this crap they can’t see straight, and I want you to do it before the end of the night. Pull that off for me, Robbie, and this—” he wiggled the wad of cash in his hand “—is gonna look like paper-route money. So what do you say? You in?”
Robert was already nodding. “Hell yeah.”
Angelo grinned and tossed him the cash. “Then get your ass out of here and get to it. Pull your car around to the loading bay and tell the guys on the floor I said to hook you up. I want your trunk so full—”
He cut off abruptly, his dark skin turning suddenly ashen, like he’d seen a ghost. Robbie was too busy stuffing the cash into his jacket to see why at first, but when he turned around at last, a man was standing behind him in the doorway. A tall, slender man with a—Damn, is that a sword?—strapped to his belt.
That was enough to send Robbie’s stomach straight to his feet. He’d never seen this man before, but he’d heard the rumors, and it wasn’t like there were that many scary giants with swords. This could only be Lincoln Black, the Big Boss’s enforcer and the scariest man in Chicago.
He wasn’t alone, either. There was a middle-aged man behind him who looked suspiciously like a cop. That was enough to make Robbie pause, but tough as the old cop looked, he wasn’t saying shit, and he was staying well away from Black, which proved he had sense. Everyone—from bigwigs like Angelo to pushers like Robbie—avoided Black at all costs. There was no avoiding him now, though. He’d already shut the door in the maybe-cop’s face, closing himself into the small office with Robert and Angelo with a smile like a panther shutting himself in with the mice.
As the man with the most to lose, Angelo recovered first. “Black,” he said, standing up. “I didn’t expect you here so—”
“I didn’t think I’d be coming,” Black said, his voice sudden and smooth as a backstab. “All the reports say you’re on target, which means we have nothing to discuss.”
Angelo relaxed visibly at that, though not by much. “If you’re not here about production, then why—”
“Personal business,” the enforcer said casually, turning his dark eyes toward Robert. “A little bird told me you had a pusher coming up through the ranks by the name of Robert Jefferson.” He looked Robbie up and down. “That you?”
Terrified, Robbie finally nodded, and Black’s thin lips split into an even thinner smile before he turned back to Angelo.
“I’m borrowing him.”
/> Robert’s boss began to sweat. “But you can’t. We’ve got a warehouse full of pallets to move. I need him for—”
“I’m borrowing him,” Black said again, hand falling to his sword.
“All yours,” Angelo said, sinking back to the couch.
Robbie shot him a betrayed look, and Angelo mouthed Sorry, but they both knew there was nothing to be done. In the underworld of Chicago, Lincoln Black was another name for God. Whatever he wanted, he got.
Robbie just hoped he wanted him alive.
Shaking so bad he could hardly stand, Robbie turned and followed the enforcer back into the warehouse. Since he’d said he wasn’t here about production, Robbie assumed they’d go outside, but Black made no move toward any of the doors. He just told his silent companion—the one Robbie was starting to think couldn’t actually be a cop no matter how much he looked like one—to wait as he turned and led Robbie up the stairs to the back half of the top floor.
Unlike the room full of packers Angelo had shown Robbie when they’d come in, this half of the warehouse’s upper story was empty, just a big open space ringed in with plastic-wrapped pallets of Z3X waiting to be shipped. It was also apparently Black’s private hangout, complete with a leather sectional couch in the corner, a wall of flat-screen TVs showing muted news feeds from across the country, a giant bar full of top-shelf booze, and a display of weaponry and old-school torture devices on the walls that would have put a museum to shame. The whole thing was arranged around a clear square of metal-grated floor from which Black could oversee the entire Z3X manufacturing operation below, though he didn’t seem to be paying it any attention as he walked behind the bar, lovingly petting one of the shiny metal pokers hanging on the wall before turning to grab a bottle of whiskey that probably cost more than Robbie made in a month.
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