Lee Child - First Thrills

“You shivved Frank?” Dubious.

I show her a saucy grin. “You can hardly expect me to make an admissible admission in a public place like this.”

“One phone call and you don’t live to see outdoors again, admissible or otherwise.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” I make a frowny face. “Besides, who says the Incandito Banditos don’t have some reach outside Little Liver themselves?”

She looks around the bar, tries to figure out which of the drooling slam-hounds might be my cover. All eyes are either glazed over or fixed on the pole grinders. I see no percentage in letting her know it’s none of the above.

“You’re taking a big chance, no matter who’s looking out for you.”

“Hey, if you’re not interested-” I slip the wad of cash back into my pocket.

She puts a hand on my forearm, wavering. “How long were you inside?”

“Coupla years on a cook-and-book. Got busted trying to move some meth. My buyer didn’t show and I tripped over my dick into a sting looking for a backup sell.”

She’s thinking about my roll of cash, thinking I ain’t seen a woman who wasn’t in halftone for two years. Thinking she can lead me anywhere she wants to go by my ugly duckling. And she’s bored. That may be what finally sells it. She’s a bored, broke ex-stripper more in love with provoking her man than the man himself. “What’s your name, sailor?”

“Call me what ever you like, Dahl.”

“That’s the way it’s gonna be, huh?” She laughs, puts an arm around my waist. One of her nipples pokes through fabric into my right ear. “Let’s get out of here, find somewhere with a little class.” And so we’re off. On the way out, I see Biff Steele giving me a look, and I know this little scene is going to get back to Frank. I’m fine with that.

Dahlia and I head downtown, hit a string of gold-plated joints where she can dance and inhale expensive hooch bought with my green. I’m not drinking as much as she is, but then she’s got a couple of stones on me. By the time we catch the last cab of the night from Old King Cole’s she’s barely walking. We go back to her place, a leather-and-lace doll house in the neutral zone between Miller’s Crossing and the Flats. The first bang is quick, which pisses her off, but I have a couple more in me. We both get my money’s worth, and the next morning I’m gone before she even realizes she’s hungover.

Sure, I’ve given in to my baser instincts. Man in my line of work gets few enough perks. But in the days and weeks that follow, I avoid the Flats and stay on the move, one eye cocked over my shoulder, ear to the rails. I have no illusions Dahlia has any interest in me personally, but given the bankroll in my pocket and my hints about the shank in Frank’s back, I’m sure she’ll come looking for me.

Takes her a while though. Long enough for Frank to recover and achieve his epiphany.

Meanwhile, folks living in Newcastle’s underbelly gossip like lady-bugs at a house fire. By the time I get a call from this simpleton I know who works at Leech and Humors Medical Testing, I’ve already heard the broad strokes of Frank’s seminal conception. Simon sorts test results for the courier, then files the lab copies. He knows just about everyone on staff at clinics and medico offices around town.

“Doc Ciconi has Dahlia Miller scheduled to come in for weekly prenatal vitamin shots,” he tells me.

“And I’m supposed to care because…?”

“Well, I heard you got a sniff of that blossom. Thought you’d be interested.”

“Street talk. If you believe that I got some magic beans to sell you.”

He giggles, then says, “Did you hear about Dingus?”

Dale Dingus is something of a legend around Newcastle, the super cop who first put the squeeze on Old Man Miller’s operation, weakened him enough that Frank was able to push him out. Then Dingus up and takes Frank himself off the street after catching him in the act of dispensing a little Pounder justice on the leader of the Red Riding Hoods over a demand for a piece of the meth trade. Dingus followed up on a tip that took him to a riverfront foundry just as Frank was dipping the errant biker boss feet first into molten lead. At least the poor bastard still had his boots on.

I already know the poop, but I let Simon tell me anyway. Dingus is local law, but his knowledge of the Flats is such that the Crabs brought him on board the task force targeting all the top guys in Frank’s operation. When they learn he’s been presenting paper trail evidence cooked up in his own office to the grand jury, the whole case collapses.

“Kinda like how your lungs will collapse,” Simon adds, “once Frank finds out about you and his sweetie.”

Maybe he’s not so simple after all. I hang up. Frank’s legal situation is still sorting itself out, but I know he’ll be released back into the wild soon. It’s time to make an appearance in the Flats.

I’m sitting alone at the bar in the Sugarplum Haus, brooding on the dark walnut and the smell of wood smoke, when Dahlia finally tracks me down. She slips onto the stool next to me, grabs my bourbon and tosses it back. She must not have read the brochure on what to avoid while heavy with child. Not that I say anything. For now, I’m content to let her think it’s her little secret.

“Where you been, sailor? You haven’t called.”

I’m sure she can guess why, so I order another bourbon, and one for her so she’ll leave mine alone. When the bartender sets us up, I sip my drink and watch Dahlia in the mirror over the back of the bar. She strokes her long neck like she’s got something on her mind. I keep my yap shut, figuring sooner or later she’ll need to fill the silence.

“Remember when you told me you got sent up for that meth thing?”

“What about it?”

“I was thinking maybe you could help me out.”

I look at her like she’s a pockmarked street gretel, not a statuesque blond rapunzel. “What, you wanna score some speed?”

She rolls those big indigos like she thinks my wit matches my stature.

“So what then?”

“Well, it might be I got a line on a truckload of decongestant. The real thing, not that fake crap they sell over the counter nowadays.”

“Sufa-Dream, something like that?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Where the hell did you get a truckload of Sufa-dream?” I make my voice sound dismissive, like I think she’s full of shit. But I already know such a truck exists. The news criers on teevee glossed over it, no doubt because Drugs and Vice doesn’t want to trouble Newcastle’s citizenry with facts. But the street has been buzzing about the truck that never arrived at Pharma-City’s central ware house. A mixed shipment, everything from eye drops to recreational lubricants. And barrel after barrel of Sufa-dream. Her father boosted the truck, and now the sweet flower beside me has her hands on a hundred thousand packs of sinus medicine, one-point-two million doses of name-brand pseudo-ephedrine. She wants me to cook it for her.

I tell her there ain’t enough bourbon in all of Kaintuck for this conversation. “Besides,” I add, “I can’t believe you don’t know someone else for this. With your connects?”

She swirls her bourbon and I watch her, curious what’s going on behind those eyes. She tosses back the hooch at last. “Everyone I know Frank knows.”

And there it is.

When her pop boosted the truck, all he figured on was a big payday, something to reset his fortunes now that his nemesis was in the can. What Old Man Miller didn’t count on was Frank already had his sights on the pseudo. Had a team and a plan. Cops on the come would divert the truck off the I onto surface streets and Frank’s boys would take it under the Billy Goat Bluff Bridge. Frank was already the biggest supplier of meth on the coast. This much pseudo would keep his distributors in crank for a year.