Authors: Chelsea Cain
He glanced up at Leo and widened his bleary eyes. “Hey, man,” he said. “What gives?”
Upon closer look, Susan realized that he wasn’t very gangsta at all. More like a college kid trying to look gangsta. Big pants.Athletic jacket.Blazers basketball jersey. But his affect wasn’t urban. This kid hadn’t grown up in Detroit or Compton or even North Portland. This kid probably played basketball for Lake Oswego High. Susan would have bet her life on it.
The dancer leaped up and did another spin on the pole. She
had a tattoo of a star on the top of her pubic bone. She was so close to them that Susan had to step back to avoid getting a face full of her hair as she twirled by them.
“Can I have a word?” Leo said.
The black guy frowned and then shrugged. “Sure, cuz,” he said. He got up, adjusted his pants, then remembered his beer and turned and got it.
The dancer sank into jazz splits in front of them and tossed her hair. She was pretty. Susan had hoped she would be ugly. It would have been more fair if she’d had a hot body and a pockmarked, hollow face.
“Hi, Leo,” the dancer said.
“Hi, Star,” Leo said.
Susan searched Star for imperfections. She had a tiny bit of cellulite under her butt cheeks. It would have to do.
Susan and the not-very-gangsta gangster followed Leo over to a table between the two stages and sat down. Susan lit a cigarette, took a drag, and set it in the black plastic Camel-logo ashtray in the middle of the table.
“This is Susan,” Leo said to the black man. The music was loud, and he had to speak forcefully to be heard, but he somehow made it seem like he wasn’t raising his voice. “She’s a reporter for the Herald.” He turned to Susan. “You can call him ‘Cousin,’ ” Leo said.
“You’re cousins?” Susan said.
“I’m adopted,” the black man said.
Leo picked the cigarette up out of the ashtray and took a drag of it. “This is off the record.” He looked at Susan. “Right, Susan?”
She nodded. She had no idea what he was up to. “Deep background,” she said. “Anonymous sources.Totally.”
Cousin looked at them both like they were out of their minds. He took a sip of beer and set the glass on the table.
“I’m looking for some people,” Leo continued. “Jeremy’s caught
up in something. I want to find him. And I want to find the people he’s with. This will be in the news tomorrow. The cops are releasing his picture, and the girl’s picture, and sketches of the rest of them.”
Cousin blinked at him. “You want me to help the cops find your brother?”
“Susan,” Leo said, “describe Jeremy’s friends to my associate here.”
Susan dug in her bag and got out her reporter’s notebook. “I’ll write it down for you,” she said, and she described the pointy-teethed guy and the masked piercer and the two big dudes, taking notes as she talked. Then she tore the page off the spiral notebook and handed it to Cousin.
“Sound familiar?” Leo asked.
Cousin took the paper and looked at it. “They junkies?”
Leo took another drag off Susan’s cigarette. “I’m guessing they move in that circle.”
Susan set the tip of her pen on the fresh page of her notebook and leaned forward. “Are you a drug dealer?” she asked Cousin.
He backed up an inch. “ ‘Deep background,’ you said. ‘ Anonymous sources.’ ”
Susan shrugged and closed the notebook. “I’m curious.”
Cousin slugged his last sip of beer and motioned to the waitress, who was still leaning against the wall. “Middle management,” he said.
“What do you deal?” Susan asked.
Leo sighed and dropped his head in his hands.
Cousin smiled. “Cocaine,” he said with a shrug. “Hard, not soft. I used to move soft, but man, everyone starts calling you when the bars close and you never get any sleep.” He put his finger in the air for emphasis. “ Crackheads are in bed by eleven.”
He reached into the pocket of his Adidas warm-up jacket and
took out a Baggie and dumped some white powder on the table. “You want some?” he asked.
Susan tried to look blasé. “No,” she said.
Cousin was busy cutting himself a fat line. “Leo?” he said, not looking up.
“No,” Leo said.
“Your call, cuz,” Cousin said. He had a green plastic straw that had been cut about the length of a pinkie finger, and he snorted the line and then put his head back for a second and plugged his nose.
When he put his head back down, his eyes were wet and he had a big grin on his face. He wiggled the straw at Susan. “You sure?”
“Fuck it,” Susan said. She hadn’t done coke since college. She was tired. She wasn’t going to be going to bed anytime soon.
She took the straw from him, and he laughed and cut a line.
“You sure you want to do that?” Leo asked.
Susan bent over the table, held a nostril closed and inhaled. It burned and she squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her face. Her sinuses felt like they were on fire, like she’d just snorted Clorox. The back of her throat filled with a sludge of foul, bitter mucus. It took her a moment to identify the taste—gasoline. She forced herself to swallow a couple of times and pressed her nostrils closed. “Ow,” she said.
“It’s pretty pure,” Leo said softly.
When she opened her eyes, Cousin was still rocking back and forth in his chair. She felt a surge of energy. The burning stopped. The bad taste in her mouth subsided. Her face and arms tingled.
It was better than what she remembered from college.
“Is that what crack’s like?” Susan asked him.
Cousin stopped laughing. “You think I’ve used crack?” he said. “Shit, girl. I don’t touch the stuff. You go near that, your life is ruined.”
Leo put out Susan’s cigarette in the Camel ashtray. “Find these
people,” he said to Cousin. “It’s important to the old man. Put the word out. I want them to know we’re looking for them.” He turned to Susan. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before you get us all arrested.”
They stood up and Susan followed him toward the door.
“You have interesting friends,” she said to Leo.
“My job involves a lot of community outreach,” Leo said.
They took a few more steps.
“Star?” Susan said.
Leo’s eyes fell away from her and he made a noncommittal motion with his hand. “We slept together once or twice,” he said.
Susan felt a ball of disappointment in her stomach. It was stupid. So he’d had sex with a hot stripper with implants. She had other things to worry about besides another inappropriate crush. She had to focus on finding Archie.
They passed the dancers’ dressing room door. A green street sign over the door read
STRIPPER ALLEY.