Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

“If he’s got cops,” Sam said, “I’m a little limited on my sources. People tend to talk when they think something of interest is happening, and you never know who knows who in law enforcement.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone who can help,” I said.

“I can go back to my guy in Corrections, but he’ll only know so much. I’ve got a buddy who did some time at the same prison while Junior was there,” Sam said. “That might be a place to start. And I’m pretty sure he’s no friend of the local law. He runs a pretty lucrative post-lockup business these days, is my understanding. You know how Father Eduardo gets kids back on the road to good? My buddy, he paves the road with the papers they might one day need if they ever want to work a real job.”

“What was your friend in for?” I asked, which is probably the wrong question to ask anyone when they say they have a friend who’s done time.

“Oh, you know, fraud, some passport business, minor nonviolent acts meant to increase his personal wealth. That sort of thing. Good guy. You’d love him. I’ll call him and see if we can meet up for drinks. He’s the kind of guy who likes a little lubrication.”

“I know the type,” I said.

“Ah, Mikey, you only know the half. My guy? He still makes pruno at home. You’d love it. Puts a little spice in there that’ll make you jump out of your socks. Of course, if he makes it wrong, it can also kill you. So it adds a bit of thrill to the evening.”

“That’s great,” I said.

When we reached my Charger, there was a young man of about twenty walking slow circles around it. He had on the same polo shirt as the rest of the kids working at the facility. “This yours?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Nineteen seventy-three?” he asked.

“Nineteen seventy-four,” I said.

“Original interior?”

“It’s had a few accidents,” I said, though I opted not to tell him the number of times I’d fixed bullet holes in the leather… or the scrubbing that goes into getting scorch marks out… or, well, the periodic exercise involved with removing blood. “But yes, the original interior.”

“The body looks good. You should lower it,” he said.

“Not my style,” I said.

The kid considered this. “Then at least you should buff out the bullet marks on the passenger’s side.”

“I’m going to get on that,” I said.

“You pull it to the auto shop around back. I’ll do it free of charge. Good practice, homes. Know what I’m saying?”

Unfortunately, I did.

I looked at Sam. “You got twenty minutes?” I said.

Dealing with a source or a confidential informant is always a dicey proposition, but Sam Axe had made it into a kind of performance art. The way he figured it, people wanted to tell you their deepest and darkest secrets, because what fun is it knowing something salacious if you can’t revel in the knowledge with a friend? And maybe over a couple of beers? And maybe, in some cases, earn some cash for what you know?

The issues were always the same with people in the know, however: The more you used them for important information, the more power they began to accrue, and thus the more demands they’d start to make for the privilege of giving you what you needed. So Sam tried not to use the same sources more than one or two times. And at all times, Sam tried to keep his sources feeling like what they were sharing was an act of friendship. What better way to show that you like someone than to give up information on a third party? It was a lesson the FBI would have been smart to pick up on-back when they had Sam informing on Michael’s whereabouts, it was never even posed as an issue of friendship. It was always under a veil of threats: Do this or lose your retirement package, lose your health benefits, get audited for the rest of your life.

So when Sam called K-Dog Dorsey to see if he might want to meet up for drinks, he didn’t bother to let him know that he intended to pump him for information. The last thing any ex-con wants is to be questioned. The best way to get information out of someone like K-Dog is to perform a subtle form of conversational manipulation that involves, well, making him talk about things that would make him sound like a tough guy.

Problem was, Sam had to drink K-Dog’s pruno in the process of this conversation, which meant there was a high likelihood he’d forget salient details in the process. So he did what any good operative would do: He wired himself. He also took a cab to K-Dog’s, since there was an even higher likelihood he’d be far past the legal limit to drive just by breathing the air in K-Dog’s house. He was pretty sure K-Dog brewed his concoction in a more sterile environment than the prison toilet he learned his trade with, but, nevertheless, Sam also brought some antibiotics to the party, too.

Of all his preparations, the antibiotics seemed like the smartest move to Sam after only a few minutes in K-Dog’s home. It was the sheer amount of animal hair in the place that got Sam spooked. It floated in the air. It was stuck to the walls. It covered the sofa Sam sat on. How could a person live with that much dog hair? At some point, wouldn’t it get into the food supply? Sam didn’t like to cast aspersions on how other people lived, but in this case he felt like maybe K-Dog needed an intervention from someone who really cared about him. Unfortunately, Sam didn’t really care about him that deeply, so he was in something of a pickle.

K-Dog walked into the living room, holding a pitcher of pruno in one hand and two glasses in the other. At least all three of those things looked clean, though all would need proper inspection. “Now it’s a party,” K-Dog said. “Like old times. K-Dog and the Axe, right?”

“Sure thing,” Sam said. It was true they’d had some old times, but it wasn’t like they were best friends. In fact, they’d met under rather odd circumstances. K-Dog (whose real name was Kevin, but no one bothered to call him that, especially since he wore a gold chain with a dog bone around his neck and had a tattoo of a bulldog on both of his arms and the words “Dog Pound” etched across his chest) had run a nice fake-passport business back in the late eighties and early nineties, before he was pinched post-9/11. Sam had met a nice girl in Cuba on a mission and couldn’t get anyone in the government to listen to him about what an important, uh, asset she’d be, and so he had to turn to K-Dog to try to get a decent batch of papers for her. It cost him a bit of dough, but it was worth it… or, well, it would have been worth it if the girl ever even bothered to give him a call once she got stateside, but Sam didn’t dwell on that. You win some, you lose some, and sometimes you end up buying a fake passport for someone.

Over the years, though, they’d formed a nice friendship based on mutual respect and the fact that they both had things on the other person that could be used against the other. Sam even tried to help after he got picked up after 9/11, but K-Dog understood that old alliances didn’t mean much in the scope of world calamity. So he did his time. And now here they were again… drinking prison wine.

K-Dog filled Sam’s glass and then the two toasted, as if they were drinking some nice scotch. Sam took a sip of his pruno, swallowed, and then felt a burning sensation akin to drinking electricity. He had to try to keep his balance, even though he was sitting down.

“Good?” K-Dog asked.

“The best,” Sam said.

“Added a little something new this time,” K-Dog said.

“Battery acid?”

K-Dog slapped Sam’s leg. “I ain’t in prison, Axe Man. I put in a couple habanero chili peppers.”

“A couple?”