Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

DeMarco was convinced that in some prior life he had done something horrible to women. There had to be some cosmic explanation for his terrible luck with the opposite sex. He married a woman who had cheated on him with his own cousin. A few months ago he met an FBI agent — a pretty lady from his old neighborhood back in New York named Diane Carlucci — and right after he’d fallen in love with her the Bureau reassigned her to Los Angeles, which was even farther from Washington than Iowa. And now he meets a cute schoolteacher with a sense of humor, has a wonderful vacation fling just like he’d always wanted, only to find out he wanted more. God was either testing him or toying with him, one or the other.

Fortunately, before DeMarco could get more depressed, King strolled into the bar. He was a lanky, fidgety guy, one of those people blessed with a me tabolism that allowed him to eat like a hog and never gain weight. He and DeMarco played on a softball team composed of men over forty who made up for their lack of youth and skill by being absurdly competitive in games that didn’t matter.

King had agreed to pull the DEA’s file on Donny Cray, not because DeMarco worked for Congress but because he and King were friends. He knew they were friends because King had once called DeMarco to help him move a sofa into his house, and once DeMarco had called King when he had to get a new washing machine down into his basement. That, DeMarco figured, was a good definition of a friend: someone you called when you had something you couldn’t lift on your own.

After DeMarco had told King about Cray’s death and his connection to Reza Zarif, King said, ‘According to our records, Cray was just a nasty cracker who spent half his life in jail. He’d been caught for using dope, selling dope, making dope, and transporting dope. He was also into guns. He’d modify ’em — you know, turn rifles into machine guns, that sorta thing — then sell ’em. But if you want to know more about the gun stuff, you’ll have to talk to somebody at ATF.’

This was typical: To find out about one small-time criminal, DeMarco would have to talk to the DEA, the ATF, the FBI, and God knows how many state and city cop shops.

‘The funny thing about Cray was …’

At that moment, on the television directly above their heads, one welterweight African American boxer began to pummel the shit out of a Puerto Rican boxer, both men looking as if they weighed maybe eighty pounds. The poundee had been pinned into a corner, his head snapping back with every punch, and just when it looked like the ref was about to stop the fight — which would have really pissed off all the rich white guys who’d paid to see it — the bell rang. DeMarco and King watched as the Puerto Rican’s cut man slit the puffy bag of blood beneath the boxer’s left eye, so that in the next round he’d be able to see the fist that would turn his brain to mush.

‘Oh, yuck,’ King said, as blood squirted from the boxer’s face.

‘You were saying about Cray,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh, yeah. The funny thing is that in the last two years this guy wasn’t arrested once. He’d been working for a guy named Jubal Pugh.’

‘ Jubal? ’

‘Yeah. Southerners, go figure. Anyway, Pugh, from what I’ve heard, is one of the biggest meth distributors in Virginia.’

‘From what you’ve heard?’

‘Yeah. He’s not in the area I cover.’

Great, more bureaucratic divisions.

‘This guy Pugh is supposed to be careful, and apparently Cray had been doing exactly what Pugh told him to do, which explains why he hadn’t been nabbed for anything lately. But it makes me wonder what he was doing selling a gun to Zarif.’

‘You don’t think he would have sold Zarif a gun?’ DeMarco said. ‘Why not? Because he was a Muslim?’

‘No, he wouldn’t have cared if Zarif was a Muslim. Donny would have sold a gun to a four-year-old if the four-year-old had the money. What I’m saying is, I’m surprised he was selling guns at the same time he was working for Pugh. Pugh’s into dope, not guns, and from what I’ve heard about Pugh, he wouldn’t like it if one of his guys was moonlighting.’

‘Huh,’ DeMarco said. ‘So that’s the whole story on Cray? Drugs and guns?’

‘No,’ King said, ‘drugs and guns are the only things he was convicted for. He’s probably got some kinda back story — been buggered by an uncle or starved by his foster parents — but whatever the reason, Donny was one mean son of a bitch. He pistol-whipped a neighbor practically to death because the guy told him to keep his dog chained up. He didn’t do time for that because the neighbor was afraid to testify. And he smacked a couple of his girlfriends around, bad enough to put one in the hospital for a week. Why in God’s name a woman would hook up with someone like him is a mystery to me. I also saw one note on his sheet that said he was suspected of killing another meth dealer when he worked for Pugh but, like I said, I don’t know anything about Pugh.’

‘Was Cray political at all?’ DeMarco said.

‘Political?’ King said.

‘You know, into radical causes, white-power stuff, anything like that?’

‘Not that I know of, but I think Pugh might be. I remember hearing something, but I can’t remember what.’

‘And to find out, I have to talk to somebody else over at the DEA,’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah, Patsy Hall. She’s the expert on Pugh. She hates his guts.’

King said he’d get DeMarco in to see Hall if he wanted to talk to her, but it would have to be in a week or so because right now she was out of town.

DeMarco and King watched the rest of the fight, which the ref finally stopped when the Puerto Rican’s face resembled a plate of uncooked ground beef. As the cameras were showing a close-up of what used to be the Puerto Rican’s nose, DeMarco thought to himself that you’d have to hold a gun to his head to get him to climb into a ring with a professional boxer.

And then DeMarco was no longer seeing what was on the television screen. It was as if his brain had just changed lanes. You’d have to hold a gun to his head .

Goddammit. He wanted to be done with this thing with Reza Zarif, but now there was something else he needed to do. He was going to have to go to New York and talk to Youseff Khalid’s wife.

He told King it was time for him to leave because he had to go home and buy an airline ticket and pack for a trip, but King begged him to stay. King wasn’t yet ready to face his wife and three noisy kids. And it wasn’t hard to twist DeMarco’s arm. It wasn’t like he had that much to pack.

So he sat there with King and drank half a dozen more beers and tried to focus on three TV sets simultaneously, one showing another fight, one a hockey game in Toronto, and the third a golf tournament in San Diego. The shots of blue skies and palm trees in California reminded DeMarco of Key West, which in turn reminded him of Ellie.

The next morning DeMarco woke up late and with a terrible hangover. Beer always gave him one, so why did he drink it? The answer came from that great western philosopher John Wayne: Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do .

He caught a midafternoon shuttle up to New York and spent the night at his mother’s place in Queens. The following morning, as he’d consumed no beer and been fawned over and fed by his mom, he woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to conquer the world.

He took a cab to an apartment building in the Astoria section of Queens, where his knock was answered by an enormous scowling black woman in a bright orange and yellow caftan.

‘Are you Mrs Khalid?’ DeMarco asked.

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Who are you? A reporter? Police?’