Emmelia smiled. “She’s lovely.”
“You asked for it,” Bump muttered. “Just so you know, she stabbed Aubrey.”
“Did what I should’ve done.” Emmelia went back to the cooling tray and picked out some underdeveloped pale beans.
“What car does White drive?”
Emmelia crunched down a fully roasted bean, checking its quality. “Not sure. He walks over from Fitger’s.”
“You know what room he’s in?”
Emmelia shook her head. “You’ll have to figure that out yourself.”
“Call me when he’s here next.”
“You’re not fucking shooting him here.”
“We’ll see.”
“You shoot him anywhere that’s public and you’re not getting out of the city.”
“Uh-huh.” Bump pulled a thick envelope from his back pocket. “Your finder’s fee.”
“Avispón pay you already?”
“No. Just want us settled so I can get out of here when I’m done.”
“You’re confident.” She took the bundle of money.
“I’m good.”
Emmelia smirked. “Not lately.”
“Just call me when he’s here next,” Bump said before leaving.
VIII.
Day Eight, Thursday
One Dead
Jacob’s routine had been bringing him to the Coffee Princess every morning at 9:00 a.m., but the next day, he was a no-show. That was because at 8:00 a.m. he, Missy, and Quincy had gone out for a walk along the shore, and they’d encountered a little trouble.
Duluth had a paved walking path that wound from the lift bridge in downtown to Lester Park seven and a half miles to the north. Where it passed the inn, the three of them stepped on and headed south.
After a couple of minutes, at Quincy’s insistence, they detoured into an empty half-acre park where he was let loose to dart and dash around, his poop bag dangling from his collar. (Jacob hadn’t been able to find a garbage can, so he’d tied it to the pug.)
As Jacob and Missy went drifting along in Quincy’s wake, Missy said, “I really thought I caused that fire. I was just sick.” She touched her stomach.
“Bad day to forget if you’d left a candle lit,” Jacob said.
“I just couldn’t remember.”
“Can you imagine when the fire hit all your blankets?” He lifted his hands to the air. “How many were there? Twelve?”
“Twenty.”
Quincy reached the edge of the grass, a concrete parking garage before him, and turned around. Jacob and Missy did the same, retracing their steps back through the half acre.
Jacob asked, “You think they’ll let us have another apartment there?”
“A couple units are available,” Missy said. “Same layout, just lower floors.”
“I don’t like being close to the street.”
“Me neither, but I’d take it to stay in the area. The neighborhood’s nice.”
“You’re welcome,” Jacob said, alluding to what he’d done to chase the drug users and dealers out of Gold Medal Park. He kicked at an empty ziplock bag. “Think this was from a drug deal?”
“This is Duluth,” Missy chided as she glanced out at Lake Superior.
“Duluth can’t have drugs? Some girl OD’d on fentanyl a few days ago, so—”
“So nothing. Should I ask if we can get one of the available units?”
“Starting when? And shouldn’t we be looking at two-bedrooms? For Morena?”
“I guess. Possibly.”
“Do you really want to stay there, though?” Jacob asked. “How safe can it be?”
Missy gave it a moment’s thought. “So where, then?”
“Across the river? Downtown?”
“Warehouse District?”
“I can go wherever. I’m a writer now. No commute for me.” Jacob grinned.
“Where’re you with the book?”
“It’s coming together. I’ll head to the café after this.”
“Tina and Simon are getting antsy.”
“Tina and Simon have been antsy since day one.”
Missy shrugged. “You going to finish on time?”
“Probably. But even if I don’t, with all this stuff happening, what’s the rush? It’s just more drama to add to the book. And people love drama. That’s what you said, remember?”
Missy snickered. “You little drama bitch.”
Jacob crinkled his nose and pointed at the park’s solitary bench. “What’s that purple thing?”
“Ew. It’s that dog.”
Quincy, chasing a bumblebee, didn’t notice the snarling purple animal until it barked. The pug skidded to a stop, then barked back. With no hesitation, the hairless dog launched itself from the bench.
“Quincy! Come,” Missy shouted as she and Jacob ran to stop the dog drama.
Jacob lunged for the leash dragging behind the purple dog, just barely snagging it with the tips of his fingers.
The dog turned.
“Shit,” Jacob squealed as the nuclear sewer rat came for him. Leash in hand, Jacob sprinted to the iron fence along the park’s edge and dropped the looped end over a post before dashing away.
The rat-dog continued after him for a second, but then the fence snapped the leash tightly and the naked, wrinkled grape was yanked backwards into the air.
Missy, with Quincy cradled in her arms, rushed over to Jacob, all of them breathing hard, and stared at the creature going ape shit along the fence. Jacob pulled out his phone and snapped a photo, then looked up Duluth’s animal control number.
Before any search results could load, the leash snapped.
Missy screamed.
Jacob cried, “Oh, God!”
The hairless menace had had enough of them, though, and ran off down the walkway, a fleshy purple monster tracing the shoreline before veering away and disappearing into the parking garage.
Jacob sighed. “Holy hell.”
“Going to put that in the book?”
“No kidding. Never had that in Gold Medal Park.” Jacob scanned Missy up and down. “You okay?”
“Fine. You?”
Looking himself over, Jacob said, “Seems that way.”
Missy set Quincy in the grass and clipped on his leash. The dog stood at attention, his eyes fixed on the parking garage.
“Kinda afraid to go back that way now,” Missy mumbled.
“You want to just keep walking? Maybe down to the bridge?” Jacob pointed to the south.
“Still have to walk back.”
“It’ll be gone by then, or we can just Uber.”
She nodded. “Come on, Quincy.”
Jacob patted his chest. “My heart’s racing.”
~
Gregory was sitting in his Nissan, parked in a corner of the garage. He caught sight of the purple flash in his rearview mirror, but by the time he turned around, the thing was gone. A flush of goose bumps came over him. Parking garages had some of the weirdest things roaming their corridors.
Besides that, though, this one was nearly empty, with only a dozen or so vehicles. It was a new meeting spot for him. The last place had been at the other end of town outside the library, but Gregory’s buyer had gotten paranoid, convinced the Radisson across the street was full of eavesdroppers, so they’d settled on this quiet garage for today’s exchange.
The bag of Oxy in Gregory’s glove box wasn’t enough to get either of them jail time, but for the buyer, even a misdemeanor would prove disastrous. His little accounting business already was struggling after he’d been caught fishing nude on three separate occasions over the Fourth of July holiday. The guy apparently liked his mushrooms as much as his Oxy.
At the entrance, the parking arm lifted, and a dusty Ford Escape drove in. It paused for a moment, then came over and backed into the spot next to the Nissan. The buyer, Jim something (Gregory couldn’t recall his last name), had been a star athlete in high school and gone on to play football at a D2 school in Kenosha
, Wisconsin, but the O-line had taken its toll. Jim was now forty years old and had the knees of a geriatric.
Gregory tossed his phone aside—the screen showed his Robinhood account losing 99 percent of its value from the previous day because of a bad option—and grabbed the little bag of pills from the glove box. He rolled down his window. “Let me know what you think of this batch. It’s a little different.”
“How so?” Jim extended his hand but didn’t take the bag. The stone in his 1999 class ring was the same blue as the meth in Breaking Bad.
That was a good show, Gregory thought. If he was just a fraction of the chemistry genius that Breaking Bad’s main character was, he could really amass a fortune. Unfortunately, he was just mixing powders, but still, he had an opportunity to make some major bank. He told Jim, “It’s just different. I don’t know.” He shook the bag. “Here.”
Jim grunted and took the pills, slipping Gregory several folded-up twenties as a child’s voice came from the back of the Ford.
“Are we going to my game now?”
Jamming the Oxy into his pants pocket, Jim said, “Yep. We’re going,” and pulled out of the spot.
Gregory glanced at the kid wearing a soccer jersey in the backseat. Little Timmy had been coming along on these pickups for a few years now, and while it hadn’t bothered Gregory in the beginning, he was starting to get nervous. Kids had cell phones; they had social media accounts—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok—and they posted with abandon. He’d have to say something to Jim. No more Mini-Me. He wouldn’t be ratted out by a five-year-old.
Gregory shut the glove box and waited until the opioid-addicted, mushroom-loving soccer dad left the garage. Then he headed to his next meeting at Enger Hill.
As he drove, he made sure to keep a vigilant eye on the traffic behind him. Who changed lanes when he changed lanes? Who turned when he turned? Who was the tail? It wasn’t easy.
His problem was that every couple of blocks, he forgot who’d been behind him. His short-term memory was atrocious, as was his attention span. No one ever had diagnosed him as such, but he knew he had ADHD. He also had self-diagnosed himself with ASPD, GAD, and a touch of OCD. He was a real mess, but he wasn’t letting any of that stop him as he chased the dollars. He just had to constantly tell himself to check his rearview mirror.
Enger Hill, just south of the downtown waterfront, was a favorite among hikers, both local and visiting. Gregory circled the hill twice, making sure he was free of any tails. He would’ve gone around a third time, but a cop had pulled over to help someone who’d stalled, so he covered his face with a casual sideburn scratch and turned onto the entrance road.
Certain that the police already were on high alert after that girl had OD’d, he’d definitely want to keep this exchange short now and followed the road up to the trailhead parking lot. At the top of the hill stood the old 1930s stone tower he’d once used as his primary meeting spot, but climbing all those stairs to the observatory had quickly become much too tedious. He’d moved down to the weed-filled parking lot.
Thinking how especially appropriate that time-saving move was now, he squeezed between two SUVs, grabbed another bag of Oxy, and got out.
Gregory’s buyer was sitting atop a picnic table near one of the trails that disappeared into the woods, winding its way up and around the hill before regrouping with the others at the base of the tower. The man, Craig, was basking in the sun even though he was fully clad in black except for his Packers cap and muddied brown hunting boots.
“Aren’t you hot?” Gregory asked, climbing up to sit beside him.
Craig adjusted his cap. “Doesn’t bother me.”
“How long you been here?” Gregory was already feeling the heat on his shoulders.
“Couple hours.”
“Jesus, man.” Gregory looked him over. The back of Craig’s neck was bright red.
“Just soaking it in,” Craig mumbled. “Soaking it all in.”
“Gonna get skin cancer.”
“Probably. Had to make sure nothing weird was going on here. Heard a bad hombre had come up from Chicago.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Maybe you did and just forgot.”
“I write the important shit down.” Gregory scanned the lot. There didn’t appear to be any bad hombres.
Craig asked, “Ever hear of Bump Williams?”
“Don’t know that name.”
“My buddy, the one who used to live in Chicago, saw Bump downtown yesterday.”
“What was he up to?”
“My buddy?”
“No. Bump.”
“Not sure.”
Gregory shrugged. “Eh. Whatever.”
“No, man. Listen.” Craig gave Gregory’s shoulder a backhanded slap. “Bump’s one of the top guys down in Chi-Town. And he’s connected. He works with the cartel. Bad hombre.”
“That’s kinda racist.”
“Bad hombre?” Craig said.
Gregory nodded.
“It’s the truth. Bump works for the cartel.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Pfft. In your dreams.”
“I know a guy—”
“Ha!” Craig scoffed. “You know a guy who knows a guy. Bump’s the real deal. He’s got direct channels to the shot callers down in Mexico. He cleans up their problems. And now he’s here? Shit, man. Something’s going down. Spooky shit. I’m laying low. Gonna stop tagging for a bit. I hit some spots around the lift bridge last week, and that’s it. I don’t need to get caught up in anything.”
Gregory’s face flushed. The fentanyl he’d been lacing into the Oxy wasn’t exactly an approved alteration. Do they know it’s me? There’s no way. They can’t know. But even if they did, he could handle himself. Send the bad hombre, my way. He was always training, always getting better.
A Jeep parked near the table, and Gregory rested a hand on the picnic table, ready to bolt.
“You know what a hollow-point bullet is?” Craig asked.
“Of course.” Gregory’s fingers wrapped around the edge of the wood.
A young woman climbed out of the Jeep and opened the back to pull out a stroller; Gregory let go of the table.
“So my buddy said Bump likes to use hollow-points. Maximum damage. He gets right up to your head”—Craig tapped a finger against his temple—“and blows it right off.” His hand mimicked an explosion.
“Let’s see him try it.” Gregory wiped the sweat from his palms onto his jeans. “You still want your order? We should wrap this up.”
“Yeah, man. Without a doubt.”
Craig and Gregory made their exchange.
IX.
Day Nine, Friday
One Dead
Bump was sleeping when Emmelia called the next morning. He answered with a sea lion croak of “What?” and rubbed the scar across his neck, forever thankful the knife hadn’t gotten his face.
“God. I’d forgotten how bad you sound in the morning.”
Bump coughed loudly, waking up Tiff beside him. “What’s up?” he asked.
“He’s here,” Emmelia said. “Just got his coffee.”
“He alone?”
Tiff groaned and rolled away, pulling the covers over her head.
“He’s always alone,” Emmelia answered.
“And he walked over?”
“He walked over.”
Bump gave a grunt and climbed out of bed.
Emmelia asked, “You still sleep in your clothes?”
He did. He was fully clothed right then, a subconscious habit born of a single visceral moment in time.
Emmelia said, “I just can’t even imagine what must’ve happened to you.”
He’d never talk about it, but the bloodletting had been a real eye-opener. One day he’d been a normal, deep-sleeping ten-year-old, the next he’d been a bona fide insomniac.
“How can you even get comfortable like that?” she asked.
Because it was so much worse otherwise.
> Years ago, his brother (trying to get into the AVL) did a drive-by on the Black Disciples, and the very next night, while Bump was sleeping as he always had, in nothing but his underwear, a Black Disciple broke into their house looking for revenge. The intruder mistook Bump for his brother, tore the covers off, held his head down with one meaty hand, and slit his throat with the other.
Coincidentally, as the knife was slipping across his chicken neck, Devon was sneaking into the house, trying to avoid waking their mother after another night of ignoring curfew. When Devon crept up on the scene, Pop! Pop!, he shot the Black Disciple dead.
Between Bump’s own leaking neck and the gaping holes in the Black Disciple who’d fallen over him, young Bump was covered as red as the cherry-dipped DQ cones he gobbled up in those days.
It wasn’t the blood or the flap in his neck that concerned young Bump the most, though. It was his nakedness and the vulnerability of it. After that, the only way he could ever manage to fall asleep was by being fully clothed.
So now, standing over the hotel bed, he gave the crotch of his pants a routine tug and twist and adjusted his sleeves out from his armpits. He had slept just fine.
“I talked to him some more,” Emmelia said.
“Yeah?” Bump slipped on his sneakers, then went to the bathroom to relieve himself. “He edgy?”
“He looks pretty comfortable.”
Bump laughed. “Moron.” He flushed the toilet. “Be right over.”
He grabbed the 1911A1 pistol, clip full of the .38 Special that Martin, the Sureño, had told him to use, and left.
Downtown Duluth was mostly quiet, just some suits heading into law offices and a jogger making his way to the lake. Bump parked kitty-corner from the café. While he waited for Emmelia’s next text, he imagined the stack of cash about to come his way. His mother could have her surgery without having to wait for the insurance company; his brother could get a decent lawyer for his next shot at parole; and he could have whatever the hell he wanted. Maybe a new girlfriend who doesn’t threaten to shoot my balls.
But not so fast, he reminded himself, because even after he killed White, he still had to find the asshole who’d made him look like a fool. Once that was done, though, he could get the hell out of Minnesota and start spending his money.
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