Tunnel Vision (16 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

The pager buzzes and I grab it, then flip it over and look at the number.
Paul.
I take the burner purchased for this occasion out of my pocket and dial the number. I’m working quickly, so that I’ll be on the phone before I even have a chance to get nervous, and Paul answers so quickly that it actually works.

“Hey, Nickel,” says Paul. I know he’s trying to get a rise out of me by using my name, but I’m not going to let it work. We’re going to have an in-person soon, maybe even tonight, and I need to be in a good place with him.

“Hey,” I reply, all business. Get the show on the road.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” says Paul. “You stop by the house with a bag, me and my boys toke on some smoke for the next day or two, and then maybe we work something out. Sound good?”

“Sure, I just need an address,” I say, but the truth is something else entirely. Paul and I have already been down this road—he’s had my stuff and he knows it’s good. Which gives me a sinking feeling in my gut, like maybe he’s just looking to score for a party, nothing more, but all I can do is hope that he can really come through on this.

Paul rattles off an address and I grab a notepad and pen to write it all down. When he’s done, he says, “So you can bring that by soon? I’m going to have some people over that will be able to help us both make some money, assuming this is the same green you brought by last time.”

“It will be, no problem,” I say, and I mean it. I might not be willing to negotiate on price or broker a bigger deal than he wants, but there’s no question that the product is the same. The same bale I took bud from the last time is where this bag is coming from. I mean, I don’t smoke this stuff, so if no one’s buying, it just accumulates.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” says Paul. “I’d hate to be let down.” He pauses, and then says, “One more thing, Nickel. How much did you bring by the last time you let me taste this shit?”

“An eighth.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” says Paul. “We’re going to need more this time. An ounce, actually. Like I said, these guys I’ve got coming over here are serious, serious dudes, and they’re going to want to taste the goods, you know?” An ounce of my pot is worth a few hundred bucks, and Paul is expecting me to give him a weekend of bliss for nothing, likely so he can show off and then never contact me again. It’s just like him using my name on the phone. He’s only doing it because he can, and I’m not exactly making a good case for why he shouldn’t.

“I can bring an ounce by later today,” I say, hating the sound of my voice, and hating myself for giving in even more. I’m acting weak, not like myself, but everything in me wants this sale to go through. Even the parts of me that hate dealing with a guy like Paul at all are insisting that I just shut up and bring him some dope.

“All right, Nickel, we’ll see you in a little bit then,” says Paul, and then the phone clicks dead. I know what he wants, dope in a heartbeat, and even though I resent myself for doing it, I plan to get it to him as fast as possible.

I stuff the burner in my pocket and walk downstairs to the basement, letting myself through the twin doors that lead to the pot. Even with the blowers on, the room smells like a few skunks are having a turf war, but that’s a good thing. I’ve had more than one person call my pot the best they’ve ever had, and I’ve seen the results in person. I might not smoke the stuff—I need my clarity—but I do take a certain amount of pride in providing a good product.

For the longest time, my dealer Gary and I had a great working relationship, but his greed put me in the spot I’m in right now. I’m still not really sure why he wanted to kill the golden goose. I mean, if he’d been thinking, he would have realized he was not born with a green thumb. Yeah, he could make more money without our split, but that was all dependent on him having grass to sell. When I came back from the dead looking for him, the warehouse space we’d been using was on the decline, and Gary looked like he was on the decline himself.

Thinking about Gary doing what he did makes me feel sick, so instead of dwelling on it, I cross the room to a few packaged bales of dope. Next to them lies a bag with about a half pound of some very clean-looking bud. The quality is the same as what’s packaged in the bales; these kinds of pieces typically fall aside during the cleaning phase. Think of them like butcher’s cuts from a cow, the kind you never see unless you know a guy in a bloody white apron.

I weigh the dope with my eyes, then drop a very pretty-looking bag onto a digital scale. I’m shy about an eighth of an ounce, so I toss a few more buds into the Ziploc, and this time the numbers dance and wind up just above an ounce.
Perfect.
I seal the bag, and then hit the lights and go upstairs, closing the doors behind me. Even through the bag the pot stinks, and since the last thing that I want to do is have a conversation with a cop about why I’m hauling a skunk corpse around town, I head to my laundry room.

One thing that you need to have if you’re going to be transporting dope in quantity is a masking agent. I’m not sure who invented dryer sheets, but somebody owes them a couple of beers. Dryer sheets smell so much like laundry that the mind goes there immediately, even if it should be obvious that no one at Lollapalooza is going to be taking a break between sets to get their darks done. I toss a couple sheets into a backpack, drop the dope on top of them, and then throw in three more sheets for good measure. Satisfied with the smell, I throw the backpack over my shoulder, head for the garage, and jump on my bike. I close the garage with the clicker and then ride to the gas station under the drooping sun, the same place where I had the girls leave their cars.

I leave my bike leaned up against a pole, and then do my trick with the lock and chain. Once the bike is secure, I pull another burner from my pocket and call Lou. I doubt he’d care even if he knew about the ounce in my bag, but I know that despite the fact he drove me to Rhino’s gym with a bullet in my arm once, he wouldn’t drive me crosstown with a few pounds of dope in a duffel bag.

That will be a situation to deal with when I get to it, though. For now all that matters is getting to Paul’s house and making everybody happy. Once I get an offer of cash on the table, then everything else can happen. For now, I just sit on the curb and wait for Lou. Like it always does, thinking about Lou brings back memories of Arrow.

Pretty girls get a pass in this world, but they also wear a target. I’d love to have that advantage, but I like the anonymity even more. That was the best part about Arrow. She could run the distraction while I came from behind with the garrote. Thinking about Arrow makes me think of Betty, and then I’m wondering how she’s doing at the prison. I’ve been so busy with the dope that I almost forgot, but once I remember it’s all I can think about, Betty and June and Duke Barnes. I hope Betty can get something out of him, and not just for the case. I want today to go well for both of us, and I want her to call me. I want to talk to her again, and I’d love to say I don’t know why, but I do. I want this to go well, and I want to help her, and with that in mind I stand as Lou pulls into the gas station.

I get in, throw a pair of twenties over the seat and mumble an address. Lou grunts, hits the gas, and we go. Betty will have to wait, because she’s at the prison and I have to deal with a deeply unbalanced egomaniac. In that regard, I guess Betty and I are doing the same thing, but at least Duke will have bracelets on.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Everything had gone perfectly so far, and now the girls sat in the room with the rest of the visitors, waiting for Duke’s name to be called. None of the people here to see friends and loved ones looked all that happy to be where they were. Babies and small children cried out from frustration and boredom, wives and girlfriends sat around looking sad in clothes that were either ill fitting or fit for prostitution, and a pair of older people looked scared and miserable. Everyone in the room jumped as the doors on the sides of the room opened, and when either the wrong name was called or one of them returned from visitation, all the heads would droop back down to return to the seemingly endless wait.

Betty heard “Barnes” called and felt as though the words were pulling her from a deep sleep, but then she felt June yanking at her arm and the two of them stood. All around them the room was already returning to disinterest as they approached the bored-looking guard by the door on the left.

When they got to them he said, “IDs, please.” After a quick verification to make sure they hadn’t switched with someone else in the waiting room, the girls found themselves following the guard to Duke.

Betty felt like she could throw up as the guard closed the door after them, but it faded to a kind of low-grade, sustained panic. Circular tables filled the room, about half of them seating men in orange jumpsuits and cheap plastic shoes and their visiting family members and friends. No one except for Betty, June, and the guard was standing, nor were they touching one another. Instead of leading them to a round table of their own, the guard ushered them to the far side of the room and one of a line of small tables bisected by glass partitions. Their side of the table had a pair of phone handsets; past the scratched glass, another handset waited for Duke.

“Go ahead and take a seat,” the guard said. “Mr. Barnes will be out in a few minutes. Do not stand while Mr. Barnes is at the table, do not touch the glass, and only communicate through the handsets. He knows these rules as well, so if he acts confused about them, he is trying to play you. You can be arrested for a violation of any one of these rules, so do not break them.”

“All right,” said Betty.

“If either of you want something from the vending machine, you can call me or one of the other guards over to your table by raising your hand, just like in grade school. We will come to your table as fast as we can, and then one of you can walk to the vending machine with me. Are there any questions?” Betty and June shook their heads, and the guard locked eyes with them one after the other, before leaving them to their seats and the void on the other side of the glass.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said June in a choked voice. “I can’t believe we’re going to meet him. I’m not sure if I feel excited or sick.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Betty, though not at all sure she was going to be fine. “Trust me. There’s guards all over the place, and he’s going to want to talk to us, not come over the glass and hurt us. This is going to be good, I know it.”

June nodded but didn’t say anything, because the door in front of them was opening and two guards and Duke Barnes were walking through it.

Duke was thinner than he’d looked in the recent pictures on the website, but still not as thin as he’d looked in the pictures from before he went to prison. His arms were sleeved in mottled greenish and gray prison tattoo work, and similar designs were climbing out of his cuffs and collar. Duke had huge knuckles—from fighting, Betty assumed—and though he was rail thin, he also looked taut, as though what was left of him was all muscle. His clothes were the same orange as the rest of the inmates’, but his were ill fitting, draped over him as though it had been impossible for the prison to find the proper size for him to wear.

Betty and June watched the man as though he were a movie star or punk rock hero that had been zapped into place in front of them. Duke was no one to lust after in schoolroom fantasies, but he had been all they had been thinking of for weeks. Seeing him in person felt both perverse and impossible, Batman brought from the pages of a comic book and presented to them in human form.

As the guards set Duke before them behind the glass, Betty could tell he was trying to pretend disinterest in the audience. It occurred to her for the first time that Duke might have a legion of female followers, girls that believed in the words on the website and not the story about a girl who’d been beaten into submission and then stabbed to death by a man more animal than human. Whether Duke was guilty or not, Mandy was still dead, and there should have been respect for that. Instead, Duke was the champion of a popular movement that should have been interested in proving his innocence by finding the man who had really committed the crime, rather than solely focused on freeing the one who might not have.

When Duke looked from Betty to June, his face changed. It was gone in an instant but both Betty and June had seen it, and Betty knew what had caused it. Duke was seeing Mandy, a Mandy before dope, an impossible Mandy even if she’d survived her Duke days. June was Mandy as she’d been before, before she was left to bleed out on the dirty floor of an abandoned house.

Duke cleared his throat, and the guards walked off without a care in the world. Betty found herself wondering how long it would take them to come back if Duke decided to launch himself over that partition, after all. She figured it would be too long by half. Duke was pale and yellow, but his tattooed forearms sheathed iron sinews.

The three stared at each other for what felt like forever, Duke’s eyes switching back and forth between them, and then Duke picked up his phone and, eyes drilled into June, said, “Is this some fucking joke?”

“No,” said Betty into her handset.

His gaze flicked to her.

“No,” she said again, amazed that her voice was steady. “This is Mandy’s niece. She didn’t know about you or Mandy until just a few weeks ago. Her parents never told her about either of you.”

“Not a bad call,” said Duke, his voice raw gravel as it came through the phone. “What are your names?”

“Betty.”

“June.”

“All right,” said Duke. “Now tell me why in the hell you’re here.”

“We want to know about you and Mandy,” said June.

“We want to know everything,” said Betty.

“You two have heard of the Internet, right?”

“We want to know what you told the police about the man in the green jacket, we want to know about your roommate, and we want to know about her diary,” said Betty. Her voice had risen as she spoke, but looking around the room she could tell the words had been lost in a fog of noise. People at every table were talking loudly—men complaining about the lack of money for the commissary, women complaining about money for rent, and not a happy child within earshot.

“All right,” said Duke. “Well, you know some things that most people don’t, good for you.”

“Tell us about the man in the green jacket.”

“You know this only goes a half hour, right?” he asked, seething with bitterness. Duke was used to being the idol, and now he was back in the hospital, a confession demanded from him. It was clear he was used to people that believed in him coming to visit from the land beyond the wall, and now he had two would-be adversaries holding court across the table from him.

“A half hour is plenty of time to tell us the truth,” said June.

Duke held his hands up in front of himself. “Look, I need you to be quiet,” he said to June. “Let your friend talk. You look and sound way too much like Mandy, and it makes it hard to concentrate.”

“Because of what you did?” June snapped back.

Duke nodded. “Why else would I feel bad about it?”