The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [53]
He expected an answer. Ellis rubbed his arm. “A bunch.”
“It’s like asking a food nut about the best place to eat,” Mel said. “This guy’s a drug nut. Guess what we’re going to ask him?”
Ellis covered the small lurch in his stomach by taking a sip of his Coke. Another job in the works. Not exactly a surprise, but it still struck home with a dreaded familiarity. He didn’t answer.
Mel didn’t notice. He was winding up, his eyes tracking High Top’s journey around the room as he glad-handed a collection of acquaintances. “What do you think about when you think about Bennington?”
Frankly, Ellis thought, it was Nancy. “I don’t know,” he answered.
“It’s a port of entry,” Mel told him. “Like a place where cargo ships have to enter and declare what’s on board. You know? Like a customs . . . whatever they call it.”
Ellis got the point. “Right.”
“And guess what’s entering?”
Gee, Ellis thought, the dread deepening. “Drugs?”
This time it was a slap on the back instead of a jab. “You got it. Now guess who they got to declare to?”
Ellis didn’t bother. Mel was already laughing. “That’s it, ol’ buddy—you and me. We’re going into the taxing business. Steal from the rich and give to the poor, and we’re the poor. Those guys wanna get off the interstate and avoid Brattleboro and the state cops and come sneaking in the back door, they gotta pay us a little off the top.”
Mel signaled to the barkeep to bring him another shot. Reluctantly, Ellis looked at High Top with more interest, now that he knew they would inevitably meet. He was scrawny, in his early to mid-twenties, unshaven and unwashed, with the bright eyes and nervous smile of a man with damaged synapses. Not much as a single target—below even the bingo guy they’d rolled a couple of weeks ago.
But Ellis was less sure of what he’d lead to. Mel’s hypothetical about what they would eventually ask this man had him worried. There were several key drug portals into Vermont, and Bennington, with major highways into both Massachusetts and New York, was one of them—all the more prized because it didn’t straddle a high-visibility interstate.
And where there was that kind of traffic, there also tended to be some very ruthless men. Not the kind of people they’d dealt with in the past.
“What’s High Top know?” he asked.
Mel laughed. “Not what, Ellis, my man—who. In his messed-up, brain-fried way, that pathetic little toad is the keeper of the keys—the guy who’ll lead us to the land of the pharaohs.”
Ellis didn’t comment. His view of how to reach the promised land was beginning to lie elsewhere, and for the first time in his life, he was pretty sure someone like Mel would not be his passport—with or without High Top.
But old habits die hard, and Ellis was having difficulty formulating how he could forge a new path. If he was lucky enough to end up with Nancy, he’d also have to be ambitious enough to get a full-time job, something he’d never done. In the meantime, while dreading the inevitability of the familiar, he found himself just going along.
“You been hearing about all those car radio rip-offs?” Mel was saying.
“Yeah,” Ellis answered vaguely, not sure that he had.
Mel motioned with his chin at the reflected scene in the mirror. “Well, he’s the guy doin’ it. I saw him. He’s actually pretty good. Real fast. Made me wonder, though, what he was up to. I mean, why so many, and why all of a sudden?”
Ellis was unsure if the question was rhetorical or demanded a response. Hedging his bets, he muttered, “Yeah.”
That seemed adequate. Mel nodded. “Right,” he said, and went back to watching his quarry. A few minutes later, he nudged Ellis in the arm again, this time less violently, and pushed a ten-dollar bill onto the bar top. “Let’s go.”
Ellis looked up, startled, and saw High Top in the mirror, angling toward the front door. He let out a small groan, unheard by his companion, who’d already shoved free of his stool and was taking off like a raptor.
They reached the