Painkiller, Princess

by Chester Gattle

  “Says you catch cheating husbands?”

  “I do.” Gregory hadn’t. Ever. The pictures he’d put on the website of suspiciously cozy couples with their faces blurred were all stock images.

  “My name’s Tiffany.”

  Gregory introduced himself, then asked, “So your husband’s cheating?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He reached across the car and dug in for a Cheeto. They were damn addictive. “You want me to nail him when he’s nailing her, or maybe when he’s nailing him? Shouldn’t assume. My bad.” The crunch of a Cheeto.

  “I want you to tell me where he’s at.”

  “Like right now?”

  The bald man finally yanked the suitcase from his car, twirling and tripping over himself. Gregory smirked.

  “No. He said he was flying to New York for business, but I know he’s here. Find him.”

  “Here where?” Gregory asked. “In Duluth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm. Sure. Handle these all the time.” He didn’t. But still, he managed to deliver the next bit like it was an old routine. “I work on retainer. Plus a finder’s fee. Hundred dollars a day. Thousand when I find him. You’ll get photos and video to make your case to the courts so you can get whatever you want in the divorce.”

  “Just tell me where he is. I don’t need photos or video. And he said he’s coming back on Thursday, so be fast.”

  “I can work with that.”

  “So what do you need from me?” the woman asked. “A picture?”

  “I need a contract.” He’d have to find something official (and free) on the Internet. “I’ll send it over. Read through it; sign it; send it back.”

  “Forget the contract. Just get to work.”

  “I don’t work for free, ma’am.”

  “Not asking you to, sir. Contracts don’t mean shit. I’ll pay you. You got Venmo?”

  “Sure.” He didn’t. He was starting to realize how unprepared he was for the success of these AdWords. What else didn’t I think of?

  “I’ll send you the cash through Venmo. You get the photo I just texted you?”

  Gregory put the phone on speaker to take a look at what’d come through. His brow furrowed. He enlarged the picture, zooming in on the man who was sitting by himself in a coffee shop. “What’s your husband’s name?”

  “His name? Jacob.” A slight pause, then Tiffany added, “Norris. Jacob Norris.”

  “Jacob Norris.” Gregory zoomed in until the entire screen was just Jacob’s face. That wasn’t the man’s name. That was Jacob White. Or maybe “White” is the fake name? “Norris” is the real name? He grabbed another Cheeto, pondering it over. White or Norris? In the end, did it really matter? All he had to do was tell Tiffany that Jacob was at Days Inn, and he’d collect a cool thousand bucks.

  But the moneymaking gears in his head were turning. Not so fast. I could string it out. Why collect a thousand today, when every day that passed was another hundred dollars in his pocket? She’d given him until Thursday to find Jacob Norris. Why not take until Thursday?

  Tiffany made some comment he didn’t hear as the storm clouds of an even grander scheme were brewing in his head. But could he get something extra from Tina Turner? Could he play these two women off each other? He had no idea what was going on between them and Jacob, but there surely was a bigger opportunity here. Maybe Tina would pay him more than a grand to keep quiet? Possible.

  He needed to do some research on Jacob whatever-his-name-was. He needed to get a better handle on the situation before making a decision.

  Gregory popped another Cheeto into his mouth. “I’ll let you know when I find your husband.” Crunch.

  “I want to know the second you do,” Tiffany instructed.

  “Yep. Getting right on it.” Gregory tapped his phone, ending the call. The bald man had vanished into the hotel, and the Cheetos were gone. Doesn’t matter. He had plenty to keep himself busy with now.

  XIV.

  Day Twelve, Still Monday

  Three Dead

  (Three? The Mountain Meth Man. He counts.)

  Officer Breeland reached out to Jacob. Fitger’s had sent the police department a copy of their CCTV footage, and he wanted Jacob to hop over for a look at someone who appeared to be a prime suspect.

  The station, as it turned out, was indeed just a hop from the hotel. Jacob had barely pulled out of the Days Inn parking lot when he was then turning into an undeveloped wedge of land between two county roads. Several public facilities (the station included) were hidden within, tucked amid thickets of hackberry and spruce trees.

  Jacob gave a nod to a squad car on its way out for patrol. The officer would probably be cruising right by the hotel in a few seconds. Tina’s hiring of that pseudo-goth security guy to sit snacking in his car all day seemed rather silly now.

  Gregory was persistent, though. Jacob had to give him that. The man always set his food aside and followed him wherever he went. Like now.

  Jacob pulled open the station’s front door and spied Gregory backing into a spot on the other side of the small lot to keep watch.

  Inside, a barrel-chested man sat at a front desk. Jacob gave his name and stated his business, then showed his ID when it was requested. With a nod, the man rose, half-turned down a hallway, and called out, “Breeland?” When a shout of recognition came back (“Be right there.”), the man escorted Jacob to a meeting room. “You want some coffee or water?” he asked.

  Jacob took a seat at the table in the center of the compact room and said, “Coffee if you’ve got it.”

  What they had, though, wasn’t even enough to fully obscure the City of Duluth emblem at the bottom of the mug.

  “This was the last of it,” the man said, setting it down.

  “Oh. That’s fine. Appreciate it.” Jacob waited until he’d left before giving it a sip, then pushed the tepid, rancid coffee aside. Should’ve taken that detour downtown.

  A minute later, the door opened with a snap. “Mr. White. Thanks for coming over.” Breeland shook Jacob’s hand while glancing at the oily coffee. “Sorry about that.”

  “Eh.”

  “How’s Missy?”

  “Managing.”

  “And your dog? Quincy?”

  “We’ve got him wearing the eye patch now.”

  “That’s good.” Breeland circled the table and pulled a TV cart from the corner. “Give me a second.”

  “Sure.” Jacob took out his phone and read a new email: the adoption agency wanted to schedule a call. What’s that mean? He replied that he was relatively free and could chat at their convenience. Why don’t they just call? Why does it have to be scheduled? Because rejections are best scheduled.

  “Okay. Here it is.” Breeland grabbed the remote and sat.

  The TV flicked on. A fisheye view of Fitger’s lobby. In the bottom-left corner of the screen, the front desk peeked into frame. The main doors were across from it. The rest of the picture was the open lobby: the fireplace, the sofa, the high-backed chairs. Sitting on the sofa where he and Missy would end up thirty minutes later was a familiar sight.

  Breeland gestured at the TV. “That him?”

  The cap and hoodie were the same as Jacob remembered. The stature seemed to match. Jacob leaned across the table. The lower half of the sicario’s face was free of the bandana. The chin and cheeks were light and devoid of stubble. And the lips were femininely plump. “Looks like a woman.”

  “It does,” Breeland confirmed. “Think we should be looking for a woman?”

  “I don’t know. He…she didn’t say anything.”

  The stranger tapped her cell phone, waited a moment, then got up, walked across the lobby, and stopped at the elevator.

  The camera was right above her, not getting anything more than the top of her head. Breeland rewound the tape, and they watched the brief scene again. “If that’s not a woman, he’s got a very pretty face. You run into any pretty men lately?”

  “Don’t thin
k so,” Jacob said, adding, “And I’d admit it if I did. Not one of those kind of guys.”

  “Run into any pretty women?” Breeland pressed.

  “Sure. Maybe. Don’t pay much attention.”

  “Missy’s not here.”

  “Seriously. I don’t.”

  “How about you give it some thought?”

  “I can try.”

  “See what you can come up with,” Breeland encouraged.

  Jacob stared at the TV. “Can’t even tell how old she is. Early twenties?”

  “Maybe. That ring any bells?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “It’s fine.” Breeland glanced at his notes. “You got that text at 10:01 a.m.” He rewound the tape and stopped when the sicario had her phone out. He pointed at the timestamp in the upper-left-hand corner. It was 10:01.

  “Weird,” Jacob mumbled. He accidentally took a sip of the coffee. “Ugh.” Pushing the mug far, far away, he asked, “So she was the one who texted me?”

  “Timing’s spot-on.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question.”

  “I never changed my phone number,” Jacob said. “After Tijuana, I got a new phone but not a new number. They had my number.”

  Breeland set the remote control on the table and crossed his arms.

  Jacob added, “Just thinking out loud, but maybe they’re messing with me?”

  “Hard to say.” Breeland got up and pushed the TV cart to the corner. “I’m going to get you a printout. Wait here.” When he returned, he set a black-and-white image of the sicario in front of Jacob. “Let me know if anyone comes to mind.”

  Jacob studied it for a moment, got nothing, then twice folded the paper in half before sticking it in his back pocket. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to come up with a single person. His mind was blank. “I’ll show this to Missy,” he offered.

  “Great. Whatever comes to mind, let me know.” They shook hands, and Breeland walked him out.

  Gregory wasn’t there waiting for him. The man’s Nissan was, but someone else was sitting behind the wheel. Like much of what was happening, Jacob didn’t know what to think of that. Positive the cartel hadn’t pulled a switcheroo right outside the police station, though, he got in his Honda and drove off. Whoever the guy was, he didn’t so much as glance at Jacob as he passed; his interest was laser focused on whatever was in his lap.

  ~

  Gregory wasn’t at the station because his friend was there in his place. And Emmelia wasn’t trailing Jacob anymore because she wanted to see where Gregory was now headed in his friend’s massive truck.

  Perched high above the traffic, Gregory could surely see everything around him, but as he drove toward downtown, he gave no indication he noticed her behind him.

  Of course, maybe if she was also driving a mini monster truck instead of her ordinary CR-V, he’d spot her. But then again, maybe not. Such trucks weren’t all that rare in the city. Just another vehicle on the road. You tended to ignore them after a while.

  It was only when you were seeing one for the first time that you took a double take. She certainly had the first time. She’d been driving to Duluth, leaving Chicago for what was supposed to have been just that one year, when she came across an elevated truck parked outside a McDonald’s. She stood next to it, gaping at the tires as wide as Bump’s mother. The exhaust came up to her waist. She’d started to worry that Bump really hadn’t been joking when he’d told her she might not survive a Duluth winter. What kind of apocalyptic snowfalls made people raise their trucks so high that children could run underneath them?

  The owner had caught her peering at the axle. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

  “What do you need this for?” she’d asked.

  “Taking names and kicking ass,” he’d said, reaching up, opening the door, and tossing his fast-food bag across the cab.

  “No, seriously.”

  “Seriously? Nothing. It’s awesome. Look at it.” He admired the truck, then slapped the thick tire. Whack!

  In the Windy City, these kinds of men drove Chryslers with Bentley grilles and custom hubcaps. And kept them low. A clearance of just two or three inches was ideal. They didn’t care that they had to replace the underbody every spring after a winter-long beating from Chicago’s monstrous potholes. They had their machismo intact, and that was what mattered. It was the same thing for this guy pulling himself up into his truck in the north woods of Wisconsin.

  After that, the rest of the way up Highway 53 to Duluth, Emmelia kept spotting them. They couldn’t not be seen. Outside Walmart, trucks stops, Menards, Lutheran churches, Catholic churches, lake houses, and farms. Especially farms. They were just everywhere out there in the countryside. And later, whenever she dropped off some medication or supplies for the veterinarian clinic, one of those trucks was always parked in the dirt driveway.

  So now, it wouldn’t have surprised her if Gregory still didn’t pay her any attention if she was in a similar truck.

  What did surprise her was that Gregory didn’t just buy his own. He clearly enjoyed driving it, revving the engine at every stoplight, then roaring away. And he had the money. After some digging, she realized he was moving some serious product for her. He got it from one of her primary wholesalers, a guy named Hank Roberts, and pushed it all over town. He’d somehow flown under her radar, but he was a very good salesman, probably moving ten grand of opioids and marijuana a month. He had to be rolling in cash, but unlike most of her dealers, he never spent it.

  He lived with his parents. He had no hobbies. He never went anywhere for vacation. His clothes were garbage. His expenses were the bare-bones minimum.

  She could’ve asked her contact at Upland Bank to tell her the exact balance of Gregory’s accounts, but she didn’t need the confirmation. She had him pegged well enough. She also didn’t need to risk her contact. The banks didn’t take kindly to such indiscretions from their employees, and she didn’t have enough bankers on the payroll to potentially lose one on something like this.

  Ahead, Gregory sat at a traffic light, revving the engine again. When it turned green, the Ram took off. She caught up to it at the next light, and they repeated the dance several more times before they reached Enger Park.

  The possibility that the pills had been altered before they reached Gregory’s hands had occurred to her, but Gregory was buying from Hank, and unfortunately for Gregory, Hank was one of her most trusted associates. He’d been with her since the beginning (she’d found him working at a gas station near the port selling shit marijuana he claimed to be “imported” from Colorado) and there was no way Hank was lacing the opioids.

  But even though it was more than obvious that Gregory was the source of the altered opioids, she wanted to catch him redhanded herself, as it seemed she was about to do right now.

  At the trailhead parking lot, Gregory pulled into a spot and scanned the shadowy trails and scattered benches. He’d been similarly checking out his surroundings the entire way from the police station, seemingly watching for a cop or a tail, but he was terrible at it. He hadn’t seen her, and he hadn’t seen the squad cars sitting in the cross traffic at several of the intersections. And that told her something: even if Mr. Vitamin-D Deficient hadn’t been the one lacing the opioids with fentanyl, he needed to go. He was a damn fool. He would wind up in jail sooner or later, and when he did, he’d rat on everyone. While Gregory was nowhere nearly as handsome as Bump, he had the same rat eyes.

  The door to the Ram swung open, and Gregory dropped to the gravel. Emmelia, parked beside a small camper van some twenty yards away, lowered her head, and pretended to check her phone as Gregory went to one of the benches overlooking the harbor.

  He draped his arm over the back and looked around. No one was paying him attention (besides Emmelia), so he leaned over and stuck something on the underside of the bench. He didn’t even pretend to tie his shoe or scratch an itch; he just leaned over, dropped a hand, fiddled for a moment, then sat
up again. He was as subtle as Bump was in Chicago.

  Emmelia let the man leave and watched the bench for another ten minutes. When no one came to take what Gregory had left, she went over and found the plastic-wrapped pills tucked in a gap between the wood and iron supports.

  While the pills initially appeared unaltered, she got a better look when she got home and lined them up on the kitchen counter. Then it was obvious. The pills weren’t as compressed as they should’ve been, and there were dimples and gaps in the surface, indicating an improperly filled mold. She grabbed a legitimate pill from a recent shipment that’d come up through Tijuana and laid it beside Gregory’s.

  “Such a shit job,” she muttered, then grabbed another pill that’d come from one of the EMTs who’d responded to the 911 call about the girl who’d OD’d. It was identical to this newest pill.

  She smirked and glanced out at the yard, where a robin was pulling a wiggling worm from its home in the dirt. She’d be doing the same to Gregory soon. She’d scare him so bad for his indiscretions that no amount of bleach would turn his tighty whiteys back to their original color.

  ~

  That evening, with the sun just barely hanging on, Gregory scrolled through the photos Randy had taken: Jacob grabbing a coffee downtown, Jacob watching his dog crap outside the hotel, Jacob walking back inside. Gregory hadn’t asked Randy to take the photos—Randy’s boredom had driven the initiative—but Gregory figured he could put the photos to use. Except the last one. Randy had taken a picture of his dick, flopped limply over the steering wheel.

  “Fucking gross,” Gregory hollered, deleting the photo and grabbing a wet wipe from the packet in the console and furiously wiping the steering wheel.

  When the leather glistened, he tossed the wipe out the window, unable to even let it sit with the collection of garbage on the floor. The very sight of it would serve as a horrifying reminder of Randy’s pinkish knob.

  As the biohazardous wipe blew away in the wind, Gregory called Tiffany. He’d received a prepayment of several hundred dollars to cover his retainer through Thursday when her “husband” was to return, but she hadn’t signed the contract he’d emailed her, and he wanted the contract signed. He wanted to know he was getting that finder’s fee, which he planned to drop into a trade betting on a poor quarterly earnings release from Facebook. (Everyone on wallstreetbets was talking about it.)