by Betsy Poole
I walked to the TV, which was playing an episode of Breaking Bad at top volume. It was the episode where Gus gets blown up, and Jesse’s foster kid gets poisoned by Walt, so there was no reason the kids should have been laughing the way they were, other than the fact that they were high as kites. I switched off and turned around and faced them. They knew something was up because they stopped laughing right away and stared at me glassy eyed and slack jawed.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked, putting a little extra steel into my voice so they knew I was here to conduct serious business.
“Ummmmm, the taffy man?” said the kid who let me into the apartment.
“What?”
“Yeah, I mean, you’re all blue and pink and yellow and all rubbery, so you got to be made of taffy, or Now-n-Laters or some shit like that.”
I was off my guard because of the kids speech, and I hadn’t noticed that his buddy had gotten off the couch and was standing right next to me. I only noticed him when he ran his tongue up my face. His breath smelled like a dirty diaper filled with cigarette ash, and I shoved him off of me hard.
“Hey, man,” he said, “I just wanted a taste of you. Don’t be a bogart with the candy, man!”
He came at me again and he came at me quick. Before I knew it, this skinny little hippie was licking my face and trying to get his hands down my pants, and he kept saying, “Gimme a taste, man! Just gimme a taste!”
I slammed him hard against the flat screen TV mounted to the wall and shattered the screen with his face. I pull his right arm behind his back and pushed to the point of it practically breaking.
“Hey, man!” he yelled, “That’s not cool! How am I supposed to eat you with my face in the TV?”
I jerked his arm up and felt it snap at the elbow. I thought that would get his attention. I thought it would at the very least it would illicit a scream or a yelp, but all it did was make him start laughing again. By this time, the kid who had let me in was behind me, licking the back of my neck and massaging my chest. Despite the lack of crap in his pants like his buddy, he somehow managed to smell worse. Didn’t these kids ever think of showering?
I gave him a quick elbow to the face and I felt his nose explode. I gave his buddy’s face another hard shove into the television hoping it would persuade him not to try anything funny while I dealt with his roommate. I let go and turned around and the kid’s face was a horror show. I’d obviously hit him with my elbow a lot harder than I intended to, because it looked like he didn’t have nose anymore. His face was slick with blood, and he was flicking his tongue out at me like he still wanted to turn me into a human lollipop.
“Tastes like Twizzlers, man! Just like Twizzlers!”
I didn’t give him a chance to come at me again, and threw a couple of hard punches at where his nose was supposed to be. I leaned hard into them and felt more bones in his face crack and a few teeth shatter. It was ugly, and usually the kind of punches I reserved for hard asses who fight like they have nothing left to lose. It took him down though, but now I had his roommate on me again. More licking, more fumbling with my crotch.
I gave him the same elbow I gave his buddy and bounced him off the TV. Right when he was getting ready to come at me again, I picked up a small, cluttered coffee table that had somehow managed to not get trampled in the struggle and slammed it hard into his upper body. To my surprise, he stayed up on his feet, so I gave him another hard whack and broke the thing in half.
With both of them out for the count, I doubled over, breathing hard, retching a little bit from the smell of their silva that was still slick on my face and neck. Goddamn, neither one of those kids should have been able to take that kind of beating. I mean, these kids combined maybe only weighed two-hundred-and-fifty pounds combined and looked like they’d never been to a gym in their lives. But yet, they fought like a couple of bruisers jacked to the gills on steroids and meth.
Standing there catching my breath and staring at the filthy carpet, I noticed a little gram baggie filled with deep green rocks. I picked up and took a closer look at. Was it some new kind of speed? Or something that I’ve never seen before? I pocketed the stash and straightened up and headed out the front door. Somebody had to have called the cops during the fight, and I didn’t want to be around when they showed up.
I walked into Junior’s office, and the minute he saw me he started laughing, his body jiggling sloppy like a half thaw bowl of jello.
The thing is after his old man’s trial and his release from jail, Junior decided to go the same rout as his old man used to. No boozing, no drugging, no whoring. The difference between Junior and Senior was that before he decided to get straightened up, Junior had some real problems. First and foremost, he was a two pack a day man. He smoked like a fiend from the time he was fifteen and like most smokers, he was deep down addicted to coffin nails. So when he gave them up, he replaced them with twinkies and quarts of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. Within a year of quitting smoking, he ballooned from two-hundred pounds to three-twenty, and he kept on gaining weight. He was now close to four-hundred pounds, and if he kept going at this rate, he wasn’t going to be able to get out the front door of his house without a forklift.
But don’t get me wrong, despite all the blubber, Junior was a dangerous dude. Before the weight gain he’d studied a few different martial arts to expert class and he was really fond of using a knife. On personal level, Junior was not someone you wanted to screw with. The unfortunate part is that too many people did. When the guy went out in public, he’d have stupid morons making fun of his girth. Of course most of the guys who did this would end up getting a chop to the throat and a broken larynx for their juvenile behavior. I may not have liked Junior—as a matter of fact, I flat out hated the Jaba The Hut looking son of a bitch—but I respected him because I knew what he was capable of.
After he had his chuckle, I sat down across from him.
“What the hell did you send me into?”
“I sent you over to talk to a couple of kids. Did you meet up with a couple of pro-wrestlers instead?”
“No, they were kids alright. But something wasn’t right about ‘em. They kept laughing and trying to lick me. I almost thought they were going to try and rape me.”
“Jesus …”
“Yeah, I had to beat the hell out of them to get them off me. I had to brake a coffee table over one of them to get them off of me. I think I might have killed him.”
“You didn’t check?”
“Hell no I didn’t check! With all the noise we were making I thought for sure someone would have called the cops.”
“Nah, I doubt it. I own that place.”
“The apartment? What were you having me do, serve an eviction notice?”
“No, I own the whole building. I’ve got legitimate renters on the top three floors, the rest of it is all crash pads, porn sets, and discrete labs. I make a nice little profit off the renters, and the downstairs is kind of my nucleus for my action around the college.”
“So what were those kids doing on the ground floor? Didn’t they interrupt business down there?”
“I had to move ‘em. Their parents rented the place out for their kids a couple of years ago. They were great tenants. They paid their rent on top, sometimes they got a little loud and smoked a little too much pot, but they were good kids up until a month ago and then they started in on the laughing, and the other renters started complaining about the noise and the smell.”
“Yeah, I can understand both. They stunk like they hadn’t showered in a month and they had the TV at top volume when I walked in on ‘em.”
“So you understand why I had to move ‘em? I mean, I ain’t going to kick them out, they pay four grand a month for that place. I’m not going lose that kind of dough because of some noise complaints.”
I rummaged around in my pockets and dug out the little baggy I’d picked up at the apartment and tossed on Junior’s desk.
“Do you think that’s what’s causing
them to act so nutty?”
Junior picked up the bag and stared at the green crystals inside of it.
“This is the other reason I sent you over there. When my maintenance guy, Doug, went in to clean out the place he found a few hundred of these, but empty with just a little rids in each.”
“What is it?”
“That’s the thing, we don’t know. I had the chemists working in one of the labs run some tests on it to see if we could identify it. They came up with squat. But then I put the word out to a few of my street guys, and they found out what it was. They’ve heard it called Leprechaun, Green Eggs And Ham, and a few other stupid street names.”
“What does it do?”
“See, that’s the thing, we don’t know. All we know is that it’s popular as hell with the college crowd, and that as soon as some of it hits the street, it’s gone, and I mean gone as in people buy it up in the pounds and don’t resell, they just use it.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, and the eggheads have tried breaking it down with the crumbs we’ve found, but it’s never enough to replicate it. And I’ll be blunt with you, Larry, I want in on this. This thing could end up being a real money maker. Something that could maybe put the family back on the map.”
Ever since his old man ended up in jail, Junior had been pining to make the family what it used to be. Sure, he said Chicago was enough for him, but everybody in the life knew that was a load of crap. Once you have the kind of power Junior had, it’s practically impossible for them to size down. I always wonder how the guys in witness protection did it? Of course, guys like Sammy The Bull and Henry Hill couldn’t and got back into the life even while they were in protective custody.
“Do you have any idea where it’s coming from?”
“Yeah, well, those kids you tuned up were most likely suppliers. Both of ‘em are from Phoenix, and from what Doug was telling me, those two were making a lot of trips home in last few months they were living in the top floors. So I figured they were muling it in. I put my cartel contact, Juan, on trying to find it, but just when he thought he was getting close to tracking it down, he dropped off the face of the planet.”
“So I guess you’ve been on this for a while. Do you think another cartel other than your guys are in on it.”
“They might be? But the thing is if they were into, don’t you think the mid-west would be flooded with it right now? Hell, as soon as those guys started cooking meth, you couldn’t turn around without bumping into some toothless clown who hasn’t slept in a month. But checking in with the other cartels might be a good place to start looking.”
I didn’t like where this conversation was starting to go. Junior was dropping itty-bitty hints, but to me they were great big bombs of danger that I didn’t want to touch with a ten foot cattle prod.
“What d’ya mean by ‘start looking’?”
“Look, Larry, I know how good you are this investigation stuff. Before you came and started working for me, you had a solid reputation. You’re just like your dad with being able to track down clues and all that other crap.”
“And…”
“And I was thinking maybe you could head out to Arizona for me.”
“You want me to go out to Arizona and deal with the freaking cartels? The cartels, Junior? Those guys are freaking maniacs!”
“Ah, man, come on, so much of that stuff is just rumors. They’re business men, just like me.”
“Yeah, the only difference is you don’t behead people who screw you over and then post it to YouTube.”
“Well, posting crap like that to YouTube will only get an American put in the slam for the rest of their lives, or get the needle. Like I said, it’s for show, they’re business men.”
“I don’t know, Junior.”
“Look, Larry, don’t make me remind you how much money you owe me. And yeah, you’ve been doing a good job for me, but it’s still a lot of money.”
“And I appreciate what you’re doing, I really do,” I didn’t appreciate it one damn bit, and if I had any real balls, I’d tell Junior where he could stick my debt. But I knew if I did that, I’d be in a world of pain. “But, seriously, I don’t want to become just another statistic.”
Junior sighed and blew out a huge breath. I could tell he wanted nothing more than to light a Camel and think for a few minutes. But instead he popped a half pack of fruit flavored Life Savers in his mouth and munched.
“Okay, I get it. I get it, so how’s about I sweeten the pot a bit. How about if you go out to Arizona on my dime, stay at a swanky hotel, find out which cartel is making this stuff, and maybe set up a connection, I’ll wipe out half your debt to me.”
“Half. Even if you don’t set anything up, you just go down there and do a little digging for me and then I’ll set up a connection. So what do you say?”
“You don’t think you’d go for clearing the whole thing if I go? I kind of like the idea of not being into you anymore.”
“You’ll always be into me, McGee. One way or another, so don’t push your luck.”
But before I headed out to Arizona, I had one last piece of business to attend to, work I’d agree to take on to keep a roof over my head.
I don’t care who you are, nobody says to themselves when they’re a kid: You know what, when I grow up, I want to be a private investigator. Most kids want to be firemen, an astronaut, a movie star, a fairy princess, a superhero (You know, because they’re little kids haven’t quite figured out that neither of those last two things are real.). But none of them say: I want to work at a fast food restaurant, I want to be a certified public accountant, I want to be a garbage man, I want to be a private detective. Because at their impressionable ages, the world is wide open, their’s for the taking. Reality has yet to crash in on them yet and punch them right in the nose and laugh at their dreams.
Me, I wanted to be Police just like my grandpa and my dad. Whenever I said this when I was 5 or 6 years old, dad and grandpa would light up with huge smiles and dad would ruffle my thick head of curly red hair and say:
“You keep dreaming, Laurie-girl. Keep dreaming and that’s just what you’ll be.”
Of course, at the time dad was God and so was grandpa, and I had no idea either one of them was so dirty that it would completely queer my chances of ever becoming a police officer. Hell, their reputations soiled the Morris name so much that there was no way I could even become a meter maid.
But here’s the reason why no kid will every say I want to be a private detective when they grow up. Picture this scene:
You’re sitting in your piece of crap 2003 Toyota sedan—which, by the way, you’re sitting in because you can’t afford a newer more comfortable car—and you’ve been sitting in it for the past 12 hours drinking cup-after-cup of bad gas station coffee, puffing on your e-cigarette wishing it was a real one—it’s been 2-years-3-months-and-6-days since my last one, and since smoking was my only vice, I come at it like a booze hound would, one torturous day at a time—and you only ever leave your crappy Toyota to use the bathroom (And if for some reason you can’t make it to the bathroom, you have 4 empty large gatorade bottles waiting. Yeah, I know, you probably didn’t need to hear that.) and to buy refills of the crappy coffee. As far as food is concerned, you have a cooler full of PB’n’J’s and a half a bag of generic, store brand potato chips. You eat like this for the same reason you’re driving the crappy sedan, you’re broke and don’t have enough money to buy a terrible pre-made deli sandwich from the gas station.
The reason you’re doing this is because a weepy suburban wife came to your offices clutching a wad of tissue, her face teary and gummed up with dried snot. You can tell at one time she was quite beautiful. In fact, when she was in high school and college, she was probably the type of girl who made fun of girl’s like you because you weren’t stick thin and had real curves like a woman is supposed to have. But, now that she’s approaching middle age and has popped a few kids out, that once pristine size 2 waist has now
ballooned to a size 12 and she’s sagging and aging just like the rest of us. You can’t help but gloat a little bit even as you hand her more tissue.
She’s in such a state because her former college sweetheart and husband of 15 some odd years has been coming home later and later every night over the past couple of months. Which, at first, didn’t bother her all that much because he had accepted a promotion at work that gave him a significant pay bump and would require him to work some extra hours. She didn’t mind this because all of their kids were in private school, the mortgage for their McMansion is $3000 a month, and their credit cards were maxed to the hilt because of retail therapy and the suburban sport of keeping up with the Jones. So, obviously, the promotion was more than welcome. At least until the reality of the extra hours set in, and she ended up never seeing her husband.
He worked until well after 9 PM on the weekdays—sometimes even later—he worked weekends, and the job had him out of town and traveling at least 1 week a month. Yes, the money was nice, but she didn’t have a husband anymore, their children didn’t have a father. Plus, all the extra hours he was working were starting to worry her. How was all this extra responsibility affecting his health and mental well-being? But the fact was, she really wasn’t too concerned about his health and stress levels, she was worried about how his promotion was affecting her, and how it was most affecting her was that he hadn’t touched her in months. And because of this, she was starting to wonder if he really was working all those extra hours? She started wondering if maybe, just maybe, he was having an affair? Maybe with one of his co-workers, maybe his personal assistant, who knows? But she wants you to find out no matter the time or cost.
You take the job—insisting on a $2000 retainer in cash because you know her credit is an absolute wreck—and here you are, sitting in your crappy 13-year-old sedan, noshing stale sandwiches, slurping cold coffee, and contemplating relieving yourself in one of your Gatorade bottles because you know that the possibly cheating husband is due to leave work and you don’t want to miss him pulling out of the underground garage you’re parked in.