by Lee Child
People tell me I know too much about this crap, that the way I stick my nose into things is gonna get it cut off. I figure a man has to make a living somehow. In the realm of criminal endeavor, I’m what you might call a knowledge worker. A dangerous business to be sure, especially since when presented with foreknowledge of Frank Pounder’s unscheduled early release, I do something only the first little pig would do. I nail his girl.
II
Even from prison, Frank means to keep Dahlia on a short leash, but she’s not some compliant lap dog. Before she knew Frank she was a busy girl: stripper, high-priced call girl, roller derby queen. With him behind bars she figures she’s got some elbow room. Her only problem is one of coinage. The allowance he provides isn’t enough for her live in the style to which she’s accustomed.
I catch up with her not long after Frank got shivved. She’s standing at one end of the rail at the High Tail Inn, the titty bar in the Flats. Typical joint. Central catwalk, three poles, smoke-dimmed stage lights on the ceiling. Twenty, thirty horn dogs nursing pickling gin or industrial beer and staring slack-jawed at the jiggling silicone on stage. Vinyl booths that smell of diluted pine cleaner in the back for private dances. Dahlia is arguing with Biff Steele, the joint’s own er of record. She got her start right there on that stage, and she wants another run. Just a few nights shaking her rubber boobs for sweat-drenched tips, little something to buff the bank account. Biff wants nothing to do with it. Being the owner of record doesn’t count for much when Frank Pounder is the owner of benefit.
“No way, Dahlia. Frank’d feed me my nuts.”
“Don’t be a pussy, Biff. I need money.”
“You wanna drink, I’ll set you up from the top shelf. But I ain’t going against Frank, no matter that he’s up to Little Liver.”
Top shelf at the High Tail is barrel scrapings most anywhere else. Pissed, Dahlia spins and stalks off. Even angry, she’s worth a second look. A floor-to-ceiling beauty, just enough curves, blond hair from an expensive bottle and indigo eyes from Aphrodite’s paintbrush. I watch her take up a post at the other end of the bar and yell for a bottle of champagne. Biff winces. He’s going to have to order in.
Given a choice, most folks would take sliding down a razor blade into a vat of alcohol over crossing Frank Pounder. I choose to sidle up to her, nudge her ass. “Hey, baby. Sounds like you got a problem. Maybe I can help you out.”
She looks me up and down like she’s inspecting road kill. “I’m way outa your price range, pipsqueak.”
Dahlia Miller can have her pick if looks are all she’s after. Tall, dark, and handsome I’m not. But I have something your typical boy toy can’t offer.
“You’d be surprised at my price range.” I lean back, show her the round edge of a roll of green in my pocket. “It might be even bigger, but Frank lived through the shank . . .”
Her indigo eyes flash. I have her attention. Dahlia Miller might be Frank’s plaything, but it’s no secret the two have a volatile relationship built on a foundation of antagonism. Everyone knows she was basically a peace offering from Miller so Frank would let the old man keep his book after he lost the war for control of Felony Flats.
“You shivved Frank?” Dubious.
I show her a saucy grin. “You can hardly expect me to make an admissible admission in a public place like this.”
“One phone call and you don’t live to see outdoors again, admissible or otherwise.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?” I make a frowny face. “Besides, who says the Incandito Banditos don’t have some reach outside Little Liver themselves?”
She looks around the bar, tries to figure out which of the drooling slam-hounds might be my cover. All eyes are either glazed over or fixed on the pole grinders. I see no percentage in letting her know it’s none of the above.
“You’re taking a big chance, no matter who’s looking out for you.”
“Hey, if you’re not interested—” I slip the wad of cash back into my pocket.
She puts a hand on my forearm, wavering. “How long were you inside?”
“Coupla years on a cook-and-book. Got busted trying to move some meth. My buyer didn’t show and I tripped over my dick into a sting looking for a backup sell.”
She’s thinking about my roll of cash, thinking I ain’t seen a woman who wasn’t in halftone for two years. Thinking she can lead me anywhere she wants to go by my ugly duckling. And she’s bored. That may be what finally sells it. She’s a bored, broke ex-stripper more in love with provoking her man than the man himself. “What’s your name, sailor?”
“Call me what ever you like, Dahl.”
“That’s the way it’s gonna be, huh?” She laughs, puts an arm around my waist. One of her nipples pokes through fabric into my right ear. “Let’s get out of here, find somewhere with a little class.” And so we’re off. On the way out, I see Biff Steele giving me a look, and I know this little scene is going to get back to Frank. I’m fine with that.
III
Dahlia and I head downtown, hit a string of gold-plated joints where she can dance and inhale expensive hooch bought with my green. I’m not drinking as much as she is, but then she’s got a couple of stones on me. By the time we catch the last cab of the night from Old King Cole’s she’s barely walking. We go back to her place, a leather-and-lace doll house in the neutral zone between Miller’s Crossing and the Flats. The first bang is quick, which pisses her off, but I have a couple more in me. We both get my money’s worth, and the next morning I’m gone before she even realizes she’s hungover.
Sure, I’ve given in to my baser instincts. Man in my line of work gets few enough perks. But in the days and weeks that follow, I avoid the Flats and stay on the move, one eye cocked over my shoulder, ear to the rails. I have no illusions Dahlia has any interest in me personally, but given the bankroll in my pocket and my hints about the shank in Frank’s back, I’m sure she’ll come looking for me.
Takes her a while though. Long enough for Frank to recover and achieve his epiphany.
Meanwhile, folks living in Newcastle’s underbelly gossip like lady-bugs at a house fire. By the time I get a call from this simpleton I know who works at Leech and Humors Medical Testing, I’ve already heard the broad strokes of Frank’s seminal conception. Simon sorts test results for the courier, then files the lab copies. He knows just about everyone on staff at clinics and medico offices around town.
“Doc Ciconi has Dahlia Miller scheduled to come in for weekly prenatal vitamin shots,” he tells me.
“And I’m supposed to care because . . . ?”
“Well, I heard you got a sniff of that blossom. Thought you’d be interested.”
“Street talk. If you believe that I got some magic beans to sell you.”
He giggles, then says, “Did you hear about Dingus?”
Dale Dingus is something of a legend around Newcastle, the super cop who first put the squeeze on Old Man Miller’s operation, weakened him enough that Frank was able to push him out. Then Dingus up and takes Frank himself off the street after catching him in the act of dispensing a little Pounder justice on the leader of the Red Riding Hoods over a demand for a piece of the meth trade. Dingus followed up on a tip that took him to a riverfront foundry just as Frank was dipping the errant biker boss feet first into molten lead. At least the poor bastard still had his boots on.
I already know the poop, but I let Simon tell me anyway. Dingus is local law, but his knowledge of the Flats is such that the Crabs brought him on board the task force targeting all the top guys in Frank’s operation. When they learn he’s been presenting paper trail evidence cooked up in his own office to the grand jury, the whole case collapses.
“Kinda like how your lungs will collapse,” Simon adds, “once Frank finds out about you and his sweetie.”
Maybe he’s not so simple after all. I hang up. Frank’s legal situation is still sorting itself out, but I know he’ll be released back into the wild soon. It’s time to make an appear
ance in the Flats.
IV
I’m sitting alone at the bar in the Sugarplum Haus, brooding on the dark walnut and the smell of wood smoke, when Dahlia finally tracks me down. She slips onto the stool next to me, grabs my bourbon and tosses it back. She must not have read the brochure on what to avoid while heavy with child. Not that I say anything. For now, I’m content to let her think it’s her little secret.
“Where you been, sailor? You haven’t called.”
I’m sure she can guess why, so I order another bourbon, and one for her so she’ll leave mine alone. When the bartender sets us up, I sip my drink and watch Dahlia in the mirror over the back of the bar. She strokes her long neck like she’s got something on her mind. I keep my yap shut, figuring sooner or later she’ll need to fill the silence.
“Remember when you told me you got sent up for that meth thing?”
“What about it?”
“I was thinking maybe you could help me out.”
I look at her like she’s a pockmarked street gretel, not a statuesque blond rapunzel. “What, you wanna score some speed?”
She rolls those big indigos like she thinks my wit matches my stature.
“So what then?”
“Well, it might be I got a line on a truckload of decongestant. The real thing, not that fake crap they sell over the counter nowadays.”
“Sufa-Dream, something like that?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Where the hell did you get a truckload of Sufa-dream?” I make my voice sound dismissive, like I think she’s full of shit. But I already know such a truck exists. The news criers on teevee glossed over it, no doubt because Drugs and Vice doesn’t want to trouble Newcastle’s citizenry with facts. But the street has been buzzing about the truck that never arrived at Pharma-City’s central ware house. A mixed shipment, everything from eye drops to recreational lubricants. And barrel after barrel of Sufa-dream. Her father boosted the truck, and now the sweet flower beside me has her hands on a hundred thousand packs of sinus medicine, one-point-two million doses of name-brand pseudo-ephedrine. She wants me to cook it for her.
I tell her there ain’t enough bourbon in all of Kaintuck for this conversation. “Besides,” I add, “I can’t believe you don’t know someone else for this. With your connects?”
She swirls her bourbon and I watch her, curious what’s going on behind those eyes. She tosses back the hooch at last. “Everyone I know Frank knows.”
And there it is.
When her pop boosted the truck, all he figured on was a big payday, something to reset his fortunes now that his nemesis was in the can. What Old Man Miller didn’t count on was Frank already had his sights on the pseudo. Had a team and a plan. Cops on the come would divert the truck off the I onto surface streets and Frank’s boys would take it under the Billy Goat Bluff Bridge. Frank was already the biggest supplier of meth on the coast. This much pseudo would keep his distributors in crank for a year.
Old Man Miller worked the deal from the other end. He knew the truck driver, or more precisely he knew the driver’s son. The kid had lost enough bullion betting the ponies at Miller’s book that he gave the kid’s father a choice: give up the shipment or give up his boy’s hands. So when the night of the delivery comes, the pseudo never makes it onto the I for Frank’s pet cops to divert. Next day, the driver turns up in the river. No one has seen the truck or its contents since.
“I don’t know, Dahl. This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I want to get into the middle of.”
She leans into me, presses her double-barreled acorns into my back. “Come on, baby. I’ll make it worth your while.” I feel her hand run along my thigh. Stroke by stroke, I’m warming up to her touch. But I need to keep my focus.
“Answer me one question.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“How does the gingerbread man baking in your oven fit into all this?”
She catches a handful of testicles. It’s all I can do not to squeal. She’s got a grip like a tin woodsman.
“Who told you that?”
I can’t answer until she eases off a little, but when she does I gasp, “You think it’s some kind of secret? In this town?”
She ponders that, her face a chart of unexplored territory. After a moment, she withdraws her claw and sighs. Looks away. I cross my legs and take a chance.
“It’s not Frank’s, is it?”
I can actually see the anxiety in her plasticine countenance, but she only shrugs. “Could be yours for all I know.”
I don’t think she really believes it’s mine. Or at least, she doesn’t believe it’s any more likely to be mine than any number of other fellas. An active young woman, our Miller’s daughter.
“Tell me,” I say. She orders another bourbon and runs it down.
She explains that Ciconi couldn’t artificially inseminate her because she was already expecting. Not for long, but hormones don’t lie. So she’s scared, because if Frank finds out, molten lead will be the least of her troubles. Unless the kid is late, Frank could get suspicious of the timing and demand a paternity test. So she wants me to cook the meth. Even wholesale, she’s thinking she can make enough money to escape with her father, who won’t survive long himself once the truth about the Sufa- Dream truck gets back to Frank.
“I suppose you’re in a hurry,” I say.
“They won’t be able to keep him in for much longer. Another week, two at most, before his conviction is vacated. I need this done.” She looks at me, and now her indigos have gone all dim and watery. “Can you help me? I’ll split the sell with you. That’s some serious bullion.”
I let my own eyes soften and give her a smile. “Okay, bring me the pills.”
“And you can work fast?”
“Don’t worry. I have a tight operation.”
I ask for a number where I can reach her. She writes it on my hand. I think we’re done, but she leans in one more time, whispers in my ear. “So, sailor, you gonna tell me your name now that we’re partners?” Hand on my thigh again.
I shake my head. “All things considered, I think I’ll stick with anonymous.”
She pulls back, lips a thin line, and I realize she knows what I’m thinking. “Frank will find you if he wants to.”
She leaves me there, balls aching and stomach on fire. I know she’s right. But in the short run, keeping my identity under wraps is the one thing I got going for me.
V
The next day I call Dahlia from a clean pre-pay cell and we meet at a pub out on the edge of the Old Forest. I expect her to bring the pseudo, but that’s not how it’s going to work. Old Man Miller doesn’t know about me, and she wants to keep it that way. He’s so skittish with Frank on his way out of the slam he’ll never let a stranger near his boost. Once upon a time he’d have had his own people to do the work, but between Frank and the Crabs, his operation is down to two twigs in the wind. Apparently he’s been angling to just sell the pills and be quit of the whole mess, flee Newcastle before Frank returns. Dahlia insists she can cook the crystal herself, make them some real bullion, but he’s unconvinced.
She tells me I’ll start with one case of Sufa-dream only. I’m to make a batch overnight and get it back to her first thing so her old man can check it out. I’m not thrilled and tell her so. “I’m taking a chance every time we meet. I’m not gonna do this piecemeal.”
“He says I have to prove I can do it before he’ll give me the rest.”
“I’m surprised he’s willing to let you near this stuff, a lady in your condition.”
The look she gives me makes it clear what she thinks of her condition.
I insist Dahlia provide the red phosphorus and iodine too, but that stuff’s easy enough to get, and cheap. I don’t even have to explain I don’t want a chemical trail following me into the Flats. She delivers everything in the back of a stolen wagon. Next morning, I drop the jar of crystal in a locker at the bus livery, then wait to hear how good my work is.
Dahlia and I meet in the courtyard square, lunch time. Lots of citizens around. She’s pleased as Goldilocks with a bowl of perfect porridge, and brings us each a container of kung pao mutton to celebrate. “Dad’s alchemist says it’s super clean. He says we can step on it all day, it’ll spread like butter.”
“So you’re happy.”
“We’re gonna be end of the rainbow rich.” She chopsticks a chunk of meat into her mouth and bats her eyes at me. To add cream to the pudding, her blouse is unbuttoned almost to her waist. “What do you say I come along when you make the big batch, help you out?”
“I work alone.”
“How are you gonna cook that much crystal in two days?”
“I have my methods.”
“And you can’t use some help?” She leans forward so I can see all the way to the bottom of her golden valley. I figure she’s not nearly as interested in helping me as finding out where my lab is.
“Not gonna happen, Dahl.”
“What if I insist?”
“What if I walk away?”
“What if I tell Frank I’m carrying your baby?”
I gnaw mutton. Neither one of us would live through that confession and she knows it. She’s not worried about my fate, but self-preservation runs strong in her genes. She stands abruptly and drops her lunch on the cobblestones at my feet. Greasy sauce splashes across my shoes. She heads off across the square, ass hard as stone.
“Don’t dawdle, Dahl,” I call after her. “The wheels of justice are turning.”