First Thrills - Lee Child [79]
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 appearance 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