Canary (21 page)

Sarie huffs. “You told me I needed to find a drug dealer. So I went out and found one. Again.”

“But how?”

“By asking around? By doing some research? How else do you think I found him? I went to places where people my age go to meet other people who might have drugs. We got talking. He mentioned this great connection he had. I followed it up. It’s called research.”

“What the fuck you talking about, research? You telling me you’ve been going out nights, hunting for drug dealers in your spare time?”

Sarie turns and gives him a gaze that could melt steel. Wildey doesn’t have to look. He can feel the side of his face burning.

“Isn’t that what a confidential informant is supposed to do? Go out and do research and report back with the hope that maybe, just maybe someday she’ll come up with the magical piece of intelligence that will get her off the fucking hook instead of being harassed day and night?”

Wildey pulls the car over, violently and without warning. Good thing they’re both wearing seat belts. Honors Girl lets out a small cry of shock.

Headlights from a passing car wash over them. The car seems to slow a bit, its driver rubbernecking. Wildey slowly exhales, readjusting his grip on the wheel. The car resumes speed and continues down Pine Road.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a few moments of silence.

“I’ve been thinking about something, Wildey. You told me that you wanted to go after the salt and pepper shakers and the mustard tubs.”

It takes Wildey a few long moments to realize what the fuck Honors Girl is talking about. The diner table. The salt and pepper as distributors, the mustard as kingpins. “Yeah. What about it?”

“You and the rest of the police are focused on taking them out, even though the minute you take one out, another one pops up in his place. Like, instantly.”

“Who says that happens?”

“I’m doing research. It happens all the time. Are you really going to sit there and deny it?”

“So we’re just supposed to leave the kingpins alone? Let their empire grow until nobody can touch them, with the whole PD and the government in their pocket? Then we’re like Mexico. You ever been to Mexico? It ain’t nice.”

“Of course,” she says. “But wouldn’t it be much smarter if all of the money and power of the police and the government were focused on another part of that system?”

“I told you, going after the low-level dealers is useless. You wanna talk about weeds popping up … shit, I could spend all day crushing fuckin’ creamers and they’d ship more in by the boxful.”

“I’m not talking about them.”

“What, then?”

“What about the people sitting down at the table?”

Wildey blinks, uncomprehending. “Huh?”

“The users, Wildey. What if you took all that money spent hunting down dealers and kingpins and used it to help the users? Jobs, training programs, rehab. That’s the one thing in the system that can’t be replaced. The customers. You take away the user and the whole thing collapses.”

“Huh. Wow. Never thought of that, Honors Girl. Hey, wait—junk food is bad for you, too! All we have to do is talk billions and billions of people out of going to McDonald’s for a Quarter Pounder.”

“Joke all you want, but you know it’s the truth.”

“And I know it’ll never happen, not on the scale you’re talking about. I don’t care what grants or rehab or bullshit do-gooder shit you got, people want to get their drugs on. Too many people are wired with the self-destruct button, you know what I mean? Ask yourself—why aren’t you hooked on the Oxys? I’ll tell you why. Because you’ve got a future. Not everybody’s that lucky.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. Our government spends over fifty billion dollars every year on the drug war. Imagine if you divided that up among addicts—”

“Yeah, they’d go out and buy one fuck of a lot of drugs, that’s what would happen.”

Honors Girl sighs. Wildey almost feels bad.

“Look, you’re asking good questions. I asked myself more or less the same things when I first started out. But it’s not about saving the world. It’s about keeping this city from tearing itself apart. It’s stopping scumbags like Chuckie fuckin’ Morphine from profiting from the weak and turning whole neighborhoods into war zones. If I can drop the right kingpin, the boot comes off my neighborhood long enough to do all that good shit you’re talking about. Right now, I just don’t see it. Sorry,” he says again, then flips the left turn signal, checks to make sure nobody’s coming, and executes an illegal U-turn.

Wildey pulls into the doughnut shop parking lot but grabs Honor Girl’s arm before she can reach the door handle.

“Look,” he says, “don’t do any more research.”

“So we’re done?”

“No. We’re not done. Just stand by until further notice.”

“What does that even mean? Can I at least get rid of this stupid burner phone?”

“No! I need to talk to my lieutenant, see where we are with the investigation.”

“Whatever.”

“Go ahead and get in your car. I’ll follow you home to make sure you get back okay.”

“Why?”

“Because even though you think I’m some kind of dick, I’m actually a gentleman?”

“That’s nice. But I’ve got to stay here for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because of the lie you made me tell my dad.”

Wildey nods. Yeah, he deserved that one.

“Don’t stay out too late,” he says quietly. “And text me when you go back home.”

“Why?”

“I wish you’d stop asking me why all the time.”

“I wish you’d leave me alone.”

He probably deserved that one, too.

“Night, Honors Girl.”

Wildey doesn’t leave, of course. He can’t leave her all alone, defenseless, where anybody can pretty much take a run at her—not with the two dealers she’s brought down and whatever forces are at work taking out all Wildey’s CIs. So he pulls around the block and parks on a side street with a view of the insanely well-lit doughnut shop. Honors Girl, true to her word, sits alone in a booth, sipping a coffee out of a paper container. She looks up to glance at every customer who walks in. Not long, maybe a second. Which reminds Wildey to check the perimeter again, make sure no hostiles are moving in.

Maybe half an hour later she has a text exchange. Not on her burner phone. Her real phone. He can tell by the shape of it. The burner’s a piece of shit. Daddy probably bought her an iPhone. Who are you talking to? That mysterious boyfriend of yours? What kind of an excuse did you give your father, anyway? Who does he think you’re meeting?

Then the exchange ends and Sarie Holland smiles briefly. Catches herself in the act and quickly changes her expression back to bored concern. But it was there. Someone made her happy, if only for a few seconds. Who?

But then she puts down her iPhone and her face falls.

“What am I doing to you,” Wildey mutters to himself. He pulls out of Fox Chase and takes the long way back to the Badlands.

The commissioner is not pleased.

“How many?” he asks.

His would-be drug czar tells him: “Five since Thanksgiving.”

Katrina Mahoney doesn’t give a shit about what any man thinks about her—except perhaps the commissioner. He’s an old-school Philly cop who worked his way up from beats in the worst districts in North and West Philly to the top spot in the then-burgeoning narcotics squad in the late sixties, followed by two decades working homicide and organized crime. He was the ballsiest commissioner since Frank Rizzo himself, and that was saying a lot. Mahoney wanted nothing more than to impress him, and she was painfully aware she was doing the exact opposite.

The commissioner gave her a disarming smile. “Katrina, when you asked for this job, you told me your experimental system would be airtight. Did you not?”

Lieutenant Mahoney nods.

The commissioner stares off into the space over her head for a moment, as if seeking guidance from above. Then his iron gaze falls back on Mahoney. “Do you know what Fiorello La Guardia said about narcotics cops? This was back in the 1940s, mind you, long before the meth explosion in the sixties. La Guardia said that you could give a thousand cops to fight narcotics dealers, but then I’d need a thousand more cops to watch
them.
Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I do, sir.”

“So what the fuck is going on?”

“We have a rat. I’m actively working to flush it out.”

“See now, that’s the thing, Katrina,” the commissioner says. “You told me your system would negate the possibility of a rat. That only you and I would be privy to your complete list of CIs and counter-CIs. So what you’re suggesting here is that one of us is the rat.”

“Commissioner, I have the situation …”

“Is that what you suspect? Tell me now, and be honest. Do you believe that I’ve somehow exposed your operations? Maybe bragged to a pal over too many drinks at Palm? Told a mistress? Wrote a note on the men’s room wall?”

“No, Commissioner.”

“Well, then. If this is your fervent belief, then there is no other conclusion than that you’re the one dropping the ball. That you’re compromising this operation.”

“I want this resolved within the week,” the commissioner tells her. “I want you to find out who’s disappearing your CIs. I do not want any more CIs disappeared. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Commissioner.”

“And I want one of those big busts you promised me would be coming weekly.”

The lieutenant’s eyes narrow; her lips tighten. “We were instrumental in providing intelligence for the raids this past Monday …”

“That was last Monday. What do you have for me this Monday?”

The commissioner pauses to look around his office. “Remember, Katrina,” he finally says. “Play with rats and you end up with bubonic plague.”

Ringo can’t believe it. He’s actually happy to be riding a SEPTA bus.

SEPTA, short for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Who would have thought he’d miss that mouthful? But after a decade and change out in Buttfuck, Kansas, hawking used cars to Maw and Paw Sixpack—who’d always,
always,
fuckin’ comment on how much he looks and sounds like one of those wiseguys they see on the TV (Never just “TV,” always “the tv”)—Ringo’s glad to be back in a city that does not give a shit, populated with people who mind their own business.

His return is a little precarious, they say. He can’t risk being pulled over, so no driving. The bus would have to do. It’s an interesting way to see his city, he’ll say that much.

Twenty years ago, Richie “Ringo” Gloriosa had been a loyal soldier on the side of the D’Argenio family during the brutal D’Argenio-Perelli war of the early nineties. And soldier wasn’t a euphemism; Ringo was the real deal. A few years before the war, he’d gotten into serious trouble with some Russian gangsters, uncut heroin, a stripper, and a shotgun; the D’Argenios thought it was best for Ringo to head off to finishing school in the U.S. military. At least until the heat died down, which it always does. Ringo returned with an entirely new skill set and a certain amount of fearlessness. Which served him well on the home front.

After the D’Argenio-Perelli war, the D’Argenios ended up indicted, dead or in Witness Protection; the Perellis took the throne until ten years ago, when the same thing more or less happened to them. This was the way it went down in Philly.

Now, against all good sense and reason, Ringo is back.

And working with a Perelli, go figure.

The girl—he’d like to call her Lisa Lisa—offered to pick him up, but Ringo insisted on public transportation. (Now he was saying it, too.) They were meeting at this Asian bar/restaurant thing right on Washington Avenue. The place always changed; tonight it’s gonna be inside a private karaoke room. Just as long as nobody decided to sing. Ringo doesn’t think he’d be able to handle that.

Working with two ex-cops, that was the other surprise. He didn’t know either of them from back in the day. Hell, these guys were pups back in the day. The one they called Frankenstein was probably a toddler back in 1994, when Ringo was in his prime. And Bird looked like a youngster, too. What did the police department do to these guys to leave them so demoralized at such a young age? Ringo could only guess.