Michael Koryta - The Prophet

“You’re shitting me.”

“I am not.”

Jerry laughed. “Oh, man. You got to be kidding me. What do you need?”

“Something in the heroin, meth, or coke families would be terrific,” Adam said. “But if that’s hard for you to come up with, I’d settle for OxyContin, provided the quantity is substantial.”

The smile left Jerry’s face and his eyes narrowed. “Screw this, man. Entrapment, that’s what this bullshit is.”

“Only police can entrap you, Jerry. And I’m quite serious. I would like whatever you can give me. Right now. Or we go to jail. Right now.”

There was a long pause while Jerry studied his face and SportsCenter ran and the pug wrestled with the chip bag somewhere out of sight in the kitchen.

“I can give you some OxyContin.”

“I’d like more than a hundred.”

“What? Why?”

“Jerry—again, we could be on our way to jail now. I’m frustrated by the need to continue to reiterate that idea. What I am telling you is this: I will officially lose interest in your bond if you make sure you give me at least 101 pills. Understand?”

Jerry understood perfectly. That extra pill was the difference between illegal possession charges and trafficking charges. Between jail time and prison time.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not letting you trap me, man.”

“Trap you? Jerry, I’ve got you. What I’m offering is to release the trap. Your call.”

Jerry Norris sighed, looking unhappily at Adam, not liking the situation but not liking the certainty of several months in jail if he didn’t roll with it, and then he said, “Hang on,” and went down the hall and into a bedroom and closed the door. When he came back, he had four orange prescription bottles.

“One twenty,” he said. “There’s a lot of money there. Maybe we could talk about that?”

Adam almost laughed. The dumb son of a bitch had a pair of brass balls on him, you had to admit that.

“Jerry,” he said, “you probably have one hell of a battle of wits going with that dog who is currently stuck in the chip bag. I’m going to let you get back to it now.”

He pocketed the pill bottles, left the trailer, and drove to the hospital garage where Rodney Bova parked his truck every day.

The hospital parking garage was a risk-versus-reward scenario. On the one hand, it was a far more potent opportunity than Rodney Bova’s house; on the other hand, there would surely be security cameras in place. Adam addressed this problem as best he could by borrowing a jacket, hat, and set of car keys from Bova’s home. He was even more pleased to find that Bova had an extra security tag, complete with his photograph. It was outdated, but Adam doubted they’d changed the design much. He was a good deal taller than the man, but if he kept his head down and the cap pulled low and moved fast and with confidence, he’d make it hard on anyone studying the tapes, at least.

He left his own car nine blocks away, where no camera would track it, and then walked in, staring at his feet as he entered the hospital, careful not to lift his face to the cameras. Once inside, he found a restroom, where there would be no cameras, and waited for a full hour, giving those security videos a long lapse to deal with after his entrance. All of this would not fool a diligent detective, but it was unlikely that a police detective would buy the “someone planted this stuff” story enough from a guy with priors to pursue it to such lengths.

When he entered the parking garage through the attached walkway, he moved fast, and then he was in the poorly lit space and headed down to the second floor, where he’d seen Bova park the previous day. The F150 was right where it belonged. He used Bova’s spare set to unlock it, then reached out with a gloved hand, opened the door, and placed the bottles of OxyContin in the glove compartment, then removed a Colt .38 revolver from the jacket pocket. An acquisition from one of his previous skips—Adam had taken it after the guy threatened him but then backed down. The gun’s serial number was filed off, and it had probably floated through dozens of hands over the years. Today it was loaded, and wiped clean of prints. He added the weapon to the glove compartment, then locked the car again.

He was out of the garage in under two minutes, back at Bova’s house in ten, the jacket, hat, and car keys replaced exactly as they had been.

It was another two hours before Rodney Bova left for lunch. Adam, now parked with a clear view of the hospital, slipped in behind him, followed him to a Burger King, and called the police from a disposable cell phone— burners, his skips liked to call them, guys who didn’t want to have a number attached to their name—and gave the location and license number, then said that the driver seemed impaired and was armed.

“I honked, you know, because he was so erratic, and he held a gun up,” Adam said, speaking high and with a shop towel held between the phone and his mouth, enough distortion to get by. “Pointed that thing right at me, I thought he was going to shoot.”

They asked for his name, of course.

“Hell, no,” he said. “No way, no way. That guy just pointed a gun at me, do you understand? I’m not going to be part of this. I don’t want him coming to my house, threaten my wife, my kids, how do I know what he’ll do? You just pull him over and see if I’m lying. He’s going to leave the Burger King on Lincoln Avenue in about five seconds if you don’t hurry. The guy’s drunk or stoned and he’s waving a gun around. Do something about it.”

He hung up. A defense attorney would have a field day with this anonymous call, but Adam didn’t care what happened in court, he cared about providing probable cause for the vehicle search.

When the F150 pulled out of the Burger King, Adam passed it driving the opposite direction on Lincoln, then banged a left so he was running on a different street but parallel. It was maybe a mile before he saw police lights come on through the houses beside him.

He made another call then, this one from his own phone. Called the Chambers County Jail and asked for one of the booking agents he knew best, a guy who regularly sent business to AA Bail Bonds in exchange for a small commission. There were only three bond agencies in the county, but Adam wasn’t about to take a risk on missing this one.

“I’m listening to scanner traffic right now,” he said. “You’re going to see a boy in there soon on possession charges, maybe weapons, too. Sounds lucrative. I need it. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“A grand in cash tonight if you can send him my way. I need this one. And if anybody else comes in today on high-dollar shit, consider the offer matched. When you recommend me, though, don’t use my name. Just say Double-A Bonds.”

“A grand? Shit, you got it, Austin.”

“Thanks,” Adam said, and then he hung up and drove to the office. Chelsea was behind the desk.

“Jerry Norris back in jail yet?”

“He is not,” Adam said. “But I’m done chasing for the day. We got any calls?”

She frowned. “None. Slow day.”

“Maybe it’ll pick up,” he said.

20

IT WAS JUST PAST THREE when Rodney Bova called from the Chambers County Jail, seeking bond and release. Adam listened while Chelsea ran over the basics and promised him she’d be at the jail in fifteen minutes to secure his release.

“Good news,” she said when she hung up. “Fifty-grand bond on a guy named Bova who’s in on drug and weapons charges. That’s a nice five-grand day for us.”

“Very nice,” Adam said. “I’ll go down and handle it.”

“I can do it.”

He shook his head, getting to his feet. “I probably ought to put in an appearance.”