by Thom Whalen
* * *
On Sunday, I asked Randal what we were going to do next. I didn’t want to have to see Wanda again, but I figured that it was inevitable, sooner or later.
“I been thinking,” Randal said.
“Yeah?”
“About Gus.”
I struggled to figure out who Gus was. Then, I remembered buying beer from him in Utica. That seemed so long ago. Before Wanda. Before the Road Snakes. “Yeah?”
“He strike you as legit?”
“He sold beer to me and I look barely eighteen. And he was selling hard stuff to a bunch of other kids who didn’t look any older than me.”
“Besides that. What did you think about his story?”
“Uh. Okay, I guess.”
“First he’s all, ‘I ain’t seen Billy since high school,’ then he’s telling us about Billy’s personal life like him not having any friends, then he’s saying, ‘Billy was trying to crash at my pad last week.’ He knew a whole lot about someone that he hadn’t seen for ten years.”
“Yeah.” I struggled to remember how that conversation had gone. It had seemed natural at the time, but now that Randal was pointing out the inconsistencies, it did seem rather odd. “I guess if selling booze to minors didn’t bother him, lying would be no big deal, either.”
“Selling fifths of Old Grand-Dad to kids every night paints a certain picture,” Randal said. “He has a lot of college students around, going to parties, and he only works nights. Makes you wonder what else he offers for sale, don’t it?”
“Like maybe…”
“…like maybe Billy’s pot. I can’t think of anyone else who is so well-placed to distribute for Billy. He may have had other reps – I’m not saying that Gus was the only one – but I’d bet hard cash that Gus was his number one distributer.”
“What about the Road Snakes?”
“The Road Snakes might distribute a little, but they strike me as the kind to use more than they sell. They’re not exactly hanging around with college kids by the score.”
“So what are we going to do about Gus?”
“Make him an offer. Get into his head. See what he offers in return.” Randal looked at me. “You with me?”
“Always.”
“We close at eight. We can be in Utica by ten.”
My heart sank. I’d expected to get some sleep tonight. I was tired. But if Randal needed his door gunner for a night mission, that was not to be.
I had to tell Katie that I couldn’t take her out for a root beer like we’d been doing on Sundays. I was worried that she would get upset, but she was impressed that I was hanging with Randal, so it was all right.
Just to be safe, I waited until Gil had gone home for the day before breaking the news to her. No sense giving her a chance to make plans with him instead of me.
The ride to Utica was nice. Uneventful. Just cruising down the highway, curving this way and that, sometimes the setting sun at our backs, long shadows stretching out in front of us, sometimes tacking toward the red orb hanging low before us.
When it got dark enough, I had to swap my shades for clear goggles. The bugs were thick at this time of year.
When we got to Utica, Gus looked surprised to see us. He was selling a fifth of vodka to a kid with acne and tobacco stains on his fingers. We waited. After the kid left, paper bag in hand, he said, “What can I do ya for?”
“You remember us?” Randal asked after the kid left.
“Billy’s business associates,” he said.
“Right. But, now that Billy’s dead, there’s no associate. It’s all my business.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so. I figure it’s been a month at least, since your last deal with Billy so you’ve got to be out of product.”
“What product?”
“You know.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Sure you do. A couple weeks ago, I introduced myself and Gunner, here. And I know about your business arrangement with Billy, so that’s all the bona fides you need. The only question is how may keys you need on Wednesday so that I can deliver enough bona fides for you to make your customers happy.”
Gus stared at us. I could see the gears working. He didn’t know us but he needed what we were offering. It wasn’t a complicated problem, but it was hard for him to work through the trust barrier.
Greed and need won out over fear. “I can handle one.”
“Only one?”
“It’s a start.”
“Four hundred,” Randal said.
“That’s way too high.”
“That’s business. Inflation. There’s a lot of dime bags in a key. You’ll do all right. And if you gotta charge a little more, your customers are gonna understand. They’re college educated.”
Gus sighed. “You’re going to kill me.”
“No. That was Billy who was killed. You’re going to do just fine.”
Something about the way Randal said that – That was Billy who was killed – made me wonder again if Randal had done it. It had been a long time since I’d thought it possible that he had murdered Billy but I still didn’t have any proof of his innocence. I had only my gut feeling and I never trusted much in gut feelings. If you had enough information, logic beat intuition every time.
The problem was that I still didn’t have enough information.
An older man with a grey-flecked beard came in. He didn’t pretend to buy anything, just looked at Gus with hungry eyes.
Gus shook his head and said, “Wednesday.”
The man gave a sad salute and left.
Gus looked at us. “Wednesday.”
The deal was done. We left.
As we mounted up, I said, “I don’t understand the business. If we buy from Wanda at five hundred and sell to Gus at four, we don’t make any profit. We take the risk and do the work and we lose a hundred on every key? That’s insane.”
“Wanda’s overcharging us,” he said. “And it’s worse than that. We got the twenty percent loan payment on top. But that’s the startup cost. We can negotiate a proper price once we’re in operation. She’ll let us buy at a better price when she knows us.”
“But this is the same as she was charging Billy. Not the twenty percent, but the five hundred a kilo.”
“How do you figure?”
“That’s what she told us.”
“You believe Wanda? She also said he stole two keys. Don’t believe that, either. If he’d really stolen two, she’d have claimed four.”
“Okay. If you’re right and Billy was making a profit, why’d he have to steal from Wanda?”
“Guys like Billy don’t understand the need to keep their business solvent. Maybe he spent his capital on booze and whores. Maybe he got ripped off. Maybe he gambled it away playing poker with the Road Snakes. Who knows? All we got to know is that he was so desperate that he had to rip off Wanda for a key. He was on the ropes and he went down for the count. That’s what they ought to carve on his tombstone. He was on the ropes and he went down for the count.”