“She’s on the twin-separation team ...”
“You said that. We don’t give a fuck,” Lyle Mack said.
“That means that she’ll be here every day for the next few days. One of the twins is having heart problems. The operation is taking longer than they thought. So ... you know where she’ll be. Every morning she comes, at the same time. I can’t help you much more than that.”
“We’ll get back to you,” Lyle Mack repeated.
They sat staring at each other for a minute, then Joe Mack said, “You know, Al, if we don’t get her, and she fingers me, and it’s your fault . . . well, we won’t worry so much about your fuckin’ family, then. I’d be looking at thirty years.”
“Worse things than jail,” Barakat repeated.
“Something for you to remember, too,” Joe Mack said. “I got a chain saw in my garage. You hang me up, I’ll cut you in half, the long way, balls first.”
More staring, then Barakat said, “If you need some specific thing, call me. On my cell, all the time. But don’t call me from your bar, or from your houses.”
“We got clean cells,” Lyle Mack said.
Barakat slid out of the booth. “And don’t call me Al,” he said. He walked away.
ON THE WAY OUT of the student union, Joe Mack asked Lyle Mack, “You believe that thing, about skinning the guy alive?”
“Hey, they’re fuckin’ Arabs or something,” Lyle Mack said. “Who knows what they’d get up to?”
“You know, he’s a harder guy than I thought,” Joe Mack said. “I don’t think he was kiddin’ about all that.”
BARAKAT WALKED the bundle of cocaine out to his car, locked himself in, checked the ramp, then unrolled the sack and took out the Ziploc bag inside. Half a kilo: it looked right. And pure, crystalline white. Gorgeous. The Macks had said that it would be straight, unstepped-on; he’d believe it when he tried it.
And he’d try it now. A terrible risk: anyone could come along. Somebody could be walking down the ramp, quietly, see him in the car ... but he was going to do it anyway.
He took his briefcase off the passenger seat, opened it, took out a paperback book with a slick cover, closed the briefcase and put it on his lap. Looked around again. His hands were shaking as he shook a pile of coke onto the paperback. The pile was the size of the last joint on his little finger. He dipped his little finger into it and tasted it. Tasted fine.
Still a little worried. Coke was sometimes cut with strychnine to boost the rush—that’s what he’d heard, anyway. What if they’d added a little extra? But it tasted fine ... and clean. Coke was cut with lactose, mannitol, lidocaine, dextrose, all kinds of other shit. He looked at the little pile, felt the cold sweat on his forehead.
Mentally flicked back to the Beirut story he’d told the Macks: all bullshit, an accumulation of legends he’d picked up from kids at school. But he was worried about the Macks.
He looked again at the pile of cocaine. Didn’t matter if there was strychnine in it, he thought. He couldn’t wait. He fished the cafeteria straw out of his pocket, made a last check, and snorted the stuff up.
One minute later, the world had changed.
First the rush, like electricity running through his nerves; then the power, the brightness, the focus.
Better than sex.
THAT NIGHT, Adnan Shaheen let himself into Barakat’s house, called out, “Alain?” Shaheen was a short man with a fuzzy, bushy mustache, dark-complected, soft brown eyes. He was wearing a parka over a white, hip-length physician’s coat. He was in his first year of residency in internal medicine. “Alain, are you there?”
Barakat’s car was in the driveway Instead of an answer, Shaheen got a thump from the back bedroom. Like a body hitting the floor.
“Alain?” He went back, down the hall. “Alain?” Pushed open the bedroom door. Barakat was sitting on the floor, back to the bed, his head back, eyes closed, saliva running over his lips and down his chin. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt, boxer shorts, and over-the-calf socks. His shoes were on the floor between his legs.
“Ah no,” Shaheen said. He grasped the hair at the sides of his head, as though he were going to tear it out.
“Go away,” said Barakat.
Shaheen ignored him, squatted on the rug next to the other man, switched to Arabic. “What is it? Cocaine? What have you taken?”
Barakat opened his eyes. “Maybe ... too much. Better now.” He giggled. “Pretty bad an hour ago. That was very, very crazy. You know. My blood was ... on fire.”
Shaheen stood up and turned on the bedside lamp, and Barakat shouted, “Off . . . turn it off!”
Shaheen turned the lamp off, but not before he saw the baggie of cocaine on the nightstand. A lot of cocaine. Too much.
“Where did you get this?” he asked. He poked a finger at the bag, but was careful not to touch it.
“Got some money.”
“Not this much money,” Shaheen said. “Three days ago, you borrowed two hundred dollars from me.”
“Go away,” Barakat said.
Shaheen looked at him for a long moment, then said, “If your father knew, he might disown you.”
“So don’t tell him,” Barakat said. He waved his arms around, struggling to get up. His eyes were black as coal. “Gotta get something to eat.”
“Sit on the bed. I’ll get you something . . .”
Barakat shook his head, as if to clear it. Shaheen walked out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator: empty, except for a bottle of olives. Checked the cupboards, where Barakat sometimes kept cereal. Nothing. There was no food in the house.
He went back to the bedroom, where Barakat was staring down at his shoes. His sport coat was thrown over a chair, and Shaheen picked it up, took Barakat’s wallet out of the breast pocket, opened it. Ten or fifteen dollars, a five and a wad of ones.
“You have no money for food, even,” Shaheen said. “Where did you get this cocaine? What have you done?”
“Fuck you,” Barakat said in English. He pushed himself up, went to the cocaine, picked up the bag, pushed it in the drawer of the nightstand. Then, “You know what I need? I need falafel. A lot of falafel. I need three kilos of falafel, right now. And coffee. Lots of coffee.”
“You have to go to work . . .”
Barakat shook his head. “I’m on day shift for two weeks.”
SHAHEEN AND BARAKAT had grown up together, Shaheen’s family as servants of the Barakats; servants for generations. While Barakat was fouling out at one private school after another, Shaheen was thriving. He won a scholarship to the American University of Beirut, to study biology, the first of his family to finish high school, much less go to college. Barakat went off to Paris, wedged into the anything-goes foreign division of the Sorbonne, where he majored in women, wine, kief and cocaine.
Shaheen had spent a jobless year after graduation, his biology degree almost useless in a country that was falling apart. Then one day old man Barakat came to see him and they struck a deal.
Barakat was floundering in Paris. Five years, no degree in sight. Shaheen would go to Paris, move in with him, get him through school, get him through the medical exams, get him into a medical school in the U.S.
Get him through it, no matter how ...
And Shaheen would go with him.
A journey of seven years, but they’d done it. They struggled, cheated, fought with each other, and Barakat—who was smart enough, if lazy—managed to scrape through. Shaheen did very well. Not quite as well as he would have on his own, because he was studying for two, and if anyone had found out how they’d cheated on virtually every test they took, they’d both be out on their ears.
But now it was almost done. Once through their residencies, they’d go their separate ways—Shaheen back to Miami, he thought, Barakat back to Europe, or perhaps LA. Someplace warm, where he wouldn’t have to work too hard.
If, Shaheen thought, the American cocaine didn’t kill Barakat first.
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THE TWO BEST falafel places in St. Paul were closed, and they wound up at a McDonald’s on University Avenue. Barakat couldn’t go inside because the lights were too bright, so Shaheen went in, bought two Quarter Pounders with cheese and two large fries and a strawberry shake for Barakat, and a chocolate shake for himself. They ate in the parking lot, Barakat wolfing the food like a starving man. And he might be starving, Shaheen thought, watching him. All the money was going on dope.
“You’ll need a stomach pump,” Shaheen said as Barakat finished the second burger.
“I’m okay,” Barakat mumbled through the last of the beef.
“So you got more money from your father?”
“Mmm. Not yet. Next week. You get catsup?”
“In the bag,” Shaheen said.
Barakat found the three little packets and squirted them on the fries, started stuffing the fries in his face.
Shaheen thought about it. A few days past, he’d loaned Barakat money for food, though he suspected it would go for dope. And there’d been no sign of food in the house. Now he said that his father’s check wasn’t due for a week.
He had a big bag full of cocaine, and had apparently spent most of the evening snorting it. Not an eight-ball, but a big bag full of it. So where did he get what felt like a full pound of cocaine?
Shaheen thought about it, and the idea came upon him like some dark miasmic fog rising out of a swamp. He tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t go.
He leaned close to Barakat—so close that Barakat frowned, and pulled away, his face turned so Shaheen could see his eyes. Shaheen said quietly, “Tell me you know nothing about this robbery at the hospital.”
And he saw, in a flash, the truth in the other man’s face ...
Shaheen sagged and turned away and said, “Oh, no.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t,” Barakat insisted. “I use the cocaine, but I had nothing—”
Shaheen cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’ve known you every day of my life,” he said. “When you lie, I see it in your face. What have you done? Why have you done this?”
Barakat leaned back against the car door and said, “If you tell anybody, Addie, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you like a dog.”
SHAHEEN DROPPED HIM off at his house: “You have nine hours before your shift begins.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay. You’re a drug addict. You need treatment,” Shaheen said.
“Forget it. I’ll take care of it myself,” Barakat said.
“Allee ...”
“I’m okay,” Barakat said, and he went into the house.
IN THE EARLY MORNING, he took only a small hit as he got ready for work: just enough to cool him down. Hair of the dog, as the Americans said. The small hit was enough to get his brain moving again, and he thought: Joe Mack, Lyle Mack, Weather Karkinnen.
Two separate problems, the Macks on one side, Karkinnen on the other.
If Joe Mack were to die, the threat would be mostly gone—even if Karkinnen identified him, the cops could get no further. Not unless Lyle Mack did something really stupid, like keep the drugs in his basement.
An additional thought: the Macks had a killer. So that was one more person who knew. How many were there, on the Mack side of the equation? Hard to tell. Did the killer even know about him? Barakat worked through it: the Macks didn’t necessarily have to tell him, but the Macks were not the most reliable, he thought. He should have seen it before, but he’d been blinded by the idea of a mountain of cocaine.
Then there was Karkinnen. She’d had a good long look at him, could put him in the wrong part of the hospital at the wrong time.
One more hit before he left for work, and just a twist in a little Saran Wrap for lunch. He put the rest of the cocaine in a shoe in his closet.
The Macks. The Macks were a problem. Karkinnen was a problem only as long as the Macks were around. If Joe Mack were to die, though ... or both of them, for that matter ...
The idea pleased him; but he still wondered if the Macks, despite their denials, despite their slow-moving minds, had worked through the same equation.
5
WEATHER WALKED QUIETLY down the stairs, sensed a presence, stepped sideways and looked into the kitchen. In the reflected light from a hallway sconce, she could see Virgil Flowers sitting on his sleeping bag in the arch between the dining room and the kitchen. From there, he could see both the front door and the back. A shotgun was lying on the floor behind him.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. He yawned.
She suspected that he was lying; that he’d spent the night prowling the first floor with his gun. “I’m going to make some coffee, and there’s a coffee cake in the freezer. I could stick it in the oven. Ready in twenty minutes?”
“Great, thanks. I need to brush my teeth. Don’t open the curtains in the kitchen.”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t open the curtains,” he said. He said it with the same hard tone that Lucas sometimes used; not something she often saw in Virgil, though she knew it must be there.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Virgil asked, “Would there be enough coffee cake for another guy?”
“There’s enough for six,” she said.
“Jenkins has been wandering around outside. I might give him a call.”
“Ah, you guys . . .”
Guys with guns, taking care of her. She hadn’t flashed on the sniper killing again, but it was back there, somewhere, like Grendel, waiting to crawl out of its cave.
LUCAS CAME DOWN the stairs a moment later, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, looking sleepy. He was carrying a shoulder holster with a. .45. Virgil, just off his cell phone, said, “Jenkins thought he’d stop by.”
Lucas nodded, taking Jenkins’s behavior for granted. He dropped the .45 on the kitchen counter, and a minute later, Jenkins knocked on the side door. Virgil let him into the mudroom, a big man, cold, blowing steam. He said, “Four below,” and, clapping his gloved hands, said, cheerfully, “Looks like everybody’s up and at ’em, huh?”
“Ah, Christ,” Lucas said. Early mornings disagreed with him, unless he was coming from the dark side.
Weather got the coffee going and Lucas got the oven preheating, and Virgil went off to the guest bedroom with his Dopp kit while Jenkins shed his coat and rubber overshoes, and put two 9mm Glocks on the end of the kitchen table.
With the coffee going, Weather went to the phone and punched in a number, identified herself and asked, “Are we on schedule? Thanks.” She hung up and said to Lucas: “We’re on schedule. Sara’s stable. Don’t know if she’ll stay that way, but we’re going to do it.”
They ate the coffee cake, and argued about politics and medical care. The morning felt almost like an early fishing trip, a bunch of people sitting around eating unhealthy food.
Then Weather looked at her watch and said, “Better go.”
Lucas and Weather took Lucas’s SUV, on the theory that if somebody was still shooting for Weather, they might not know where she lived, or what other vehicles she had access to. Jenkins led the way in his personal Crown Vic, followed by Lucas in his SUV, with Virgil trailing behind in his 4Runner. Instead of going to the hospital parking ramp, they went to the front entrance. Jenkins parked, put a BCA placard in the front window, and held the door for Weather as she went in, with Lucas a step behind her.
“So I’m good,” she said, when they were in the lobby. “See you guys this afternoon?”
“I think I’ll hang out for a while, see who comes by,” Jenkins said. Virgil came in.
Lucas said, “Maybe I’ll get a bite in the cafeteria.”
“I’ll come with you,” Virgil said.
Weather looked at them: “You’re going to stay here all day, aren’t you?”
Jenkins shrugged: “Maybe.”
Virgil said, “Not me. I’m going back to your place and crash.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary—” Weather began.
Lucas cut her off: “You do the surgery, we’ll do the body-guarding.”
THEN THERE was the deal with the chickens. But not just any chickens.
Arnold Shoemaker, the farmer, was either blessed with, or cursed by, exotic fowl. He wasn’t quite certain which.
He didn’t buy them, he accumulated them. Somebody would come by, hearing that Arnold would take them, and they’d drop them off—unwanted family pets, stray birds, leftovers from farms that were going down. Cuckoo Marans, Golden Penciled Ham-burgs, Leghorns, Buttercups, Red Caps, Blue-Peckered Logans, assorted bantams and guinea hens, he had them all.
He ate the few eggs they produced, when he found them fresh, but never ate the chickens. They ran in and out of the old barn in the winter, and he’d feed them table scraps and ground corn, and leave them on their own to peck up gravel out by the road and bugs in the barn.
The fact was, they made him happy to look at. It was nothing short of remarkable, he thought, how so few people realized how good-looking a chicken could be. Better-looking than parrots, by a long way. No contest.
Arnold was up before dawn, into town, had breakfast at the diner, where the waitress called him “hon” and knew to bring the Heinz 57 sauce for his scrambled eggs and home fries cooked in sausage grease; the combo gave him gas, but the taste was unparalleled, and Arnold lived alone, except for the chickens and his yellow Lab, so the gas wasn’t a critical problem, though the dog sometimes got watery eyes.
The sun was just over the horizon when Arnold topped the hill on the way home, and came down to Minnie Creek and saw the coyotes break out from under the bridge and into the trees. He went on by, but he could see them at the edge of the woods, watching the truck with their silver eyes.
Coyotes loved the taste of a tender young guinea hen. Arnold’s young guinea hens. He lost a half-dozen birds a year to the coyotes—he’d find an explosion of feathers outside the barn and another old pal was gone. And the dogs were getting more and more aggressive.
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