Diversion 2 - Collusion (12 page)

Another day, after another night spent alone. Lucky schlepped a few pitiful totes up to the pharmacy. One look at Ava and Martin confirmed they’d likely been a part of Bo’s “drug packing party” the night before. Lucky shot a lethal glare at a woman in a white dispensing jacket who appeared far too rested to have been up half the night.

Good people. They might paint themselves blue and dance naked around bonfires on their off time, for all Lucky cared, but they actually gave a fuck about their jobs. He’d make it a point not to growl the next time she smiled at him.

At lunchtime Lucky joined the throng in the cafeteria, hoping to catch sight of Bo. The man couldn’t keep pushing himself like this. Lucky made it halfway through the lunch line before realizing he’d made selections with Bo in mind and not for himself— vegetable soup (“No, sir, there’s no meat in there”), a Granny Smith apple, and a deviled egg sandwich on wheat bread.

Nearly every chair held a uniformed worker of some kind, but Lucky managed to find a two-seater table out of the way. He stared down at his plate, wondering if Bo had bothered to eat that day, when a shadow fell over his table. “I hate to bother you, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to sit. Mind if I join you?”

The smile on Bo’s face didn’t reach his eyes.
Uh-oh. What now?
“Sure, if you don’t mind sittin’ with a basement dweller.”
Something flashed across Bo’s face that Lucky couldn’t quite identify. Embarrassment, maybe? For Lucky being a basement dweller?
“You should try the coleslaw,” Bo suggested. “Pretty tasty.” Like Lucky guessed, Bo had chosen the vegetable soup and egg salad sandwich. He kept up a running monologue of inane banter, merely picking at his food. Lucky moved the apple from his plate to Bo’s.
The more Bo said, the faster he talked, and the faster his leg bounced. At last he excused himself and took off for the door, barely pausing long enough to deposit his tray and garbage in the bins provided. What? He didn’t recycle? He must be pretty tired, or shook up.
Lucky finished his meal and stood to leave when he noticed the folded sheet of paper where Bo’s glass had been. He ran a napkin over the table, sliding the note under his lunch tray. On his way out the door, he parted company with the tray and slipped the note into his pocket.
He ducked into a convenient bathroom and parked himself in a stall to read Bo’s message
. The hospital administrator refuses to buy from the gray market, but Danvers isn’t going to listen. He gave me this number to call. They didn’t ask what I needed, they told me, and rattled off a list of everything we’re short of. They evenhad meds we haven’t been able to get in weeks. How the fuck did they find out?
He’d given a number with a local area code.
“Danvers” not “Graham.” So Bo felt the need to add a little distance, did he? Was he losing faith in his boss? The bathroom door opened and closed. No telling who’d just entered. Instead of calling Walter, Lucky texted:
“It’s going down.”
Tired of spinning his wheels and ready for some action, when Lucky arrived back at the seventh floor “armpit of hell” he lived in, he donned tennis shoes and running shorts. The evenings were getting warmer this close to May, and with no particular destination in mind, he ran.
He blanked his mind, focusing on nothing more than the steady in/out of his breathing, heavy pulse of blood through his body, and his rhythmic footfalls pushing him on.
A man and his body, no background noise. No work, no Walter, no future, no past. Only now. No wonder Bo loved running.
Gradually rational thought returned and Lucky slowed, rolling over the events of the past few days in his mind, always coming back to Danvers. A humanitarian, news articles said, though they’d not mentioned a wife or kids. Normally Lucky’s intel served him better. Maybe they were divorced. But no, Bo said Danvers didn’t voluntarily work overtime because of a wife and kids waiting at home.
If the hospital and the patients meant as much to the overpaid asshole as he pretended, wouldn’t he do every legitimate thing in his power to help in this time of crisis, like working overtime, before turning to questionable sources?
In, out, Lucky breathed, trying to piece the puzzle together. In, out. Why did Danvers suddenly buck the hospital and decide on his own to deal with a possibly shady vendor? And of hundreds of gray market wholesalers out there, why give Bo a single number, when Bo got paid to shop around and find the best deal? Surely with an underling at his disposal, Danvers hadn’t actually gone through the trouble of negotiations himself, had he?
Danvers’s recommendation gave Lucky a name, someone unknown to the SNB database. Again, what was up with the shoddy intel? While they’d taken on this exercise to ferret out newcomers to the game, Lucky hadn’t expected any surprises.
Who the hell was Primero Care? What was Danvers’s connection? Not many wholesalers, legit or otherwise, managed to fly under the SNB radar for long.
He returned to his apartment, sweaty and out of breath. Shirtless Guy sat by the door, flipping through a motorcycle magazine. “Hey, G-man,” he said, not bothering to take his eyes off his magazine. “Your boss is here. I let him into your apartment.”
“G-man? My boss?” Lucky swallowed hard. Had the super been snooping in his apartment?
“Don’t go getting paranoid,” the guy said. “I don’t reckon nobody’s pegged you but me.”
Lucky glanced right and left to assure no one else listened in. “What makes you say that?”
“Number one, you the only one living here not to hit me up for drugs. Number two, that guy comes by from time to time? He throws off Fed vibes like sonar. You need to tell Junior to back off on the gung-ho a bit.
Bo? Gungho? Really? “And you are?”
Shirtless Guy stood, gaining IQ points by the second. “I’m just a man who watches the world. But don’t worry. I like having you around. This used to be a nice neighborhood when my granddaddy bought the place. Your kind keeps the crime down.” He turned and ambled around the building.
What the fuck? Lucky checked the parking lot, but didn’t notice Walter’s distinctive black Range Rover. Probably didn’t want his tires stolen.
He clattered up the stairs, giving Walter plenty of warning, since the neighbors seem to be observing some kind of moment of silence. Maybe they’d blown out their stereo and run out to buy a new one. His door was unlocked, his boss sprawled on his couch. “Crack central, how may I help you?” Lucky asked.
Walter swept his hand out, indicating a line of vials on the coffee table. “I brought my own, thanks. We didn’t get much on Primero Care. They’re a startup, apparently less than a year old.” He sat up, resting his elbows on a pair of meaty thighs roughly the size of tree trunks. “They’re licensed as a pharmacy, but there’s no record of them dispensing any medicines. They appear to be selling one hundred percent of their purchases to other entities. Sit,” Walter commanded, unrolling a flowchart across his lap.
“Hold on a sec.” Lucky dashed into the kitchen for a towel and bottle of water. “Need anything?”
“No, thank you.”
Lucky dropped down beside Walter, downing his bottled water in one go. He mopped at his sweaty hair with the towel. “Now, what did you want to show me?
Walter pointed at the diagram in his lap. “In a perfect world, the manufacturer,” he jabbed a finger at the first point on the chart, “sells product to the wholesaler, here.” His finger moved to the next rectangle. “The wholesaler sells to hospitals and pharmacies.” The third rectangle came into play. “However,” Walter slipped the diagram behind a much more complex markup, “based on product and lot numbers provided by Bo, in this case, the wholesaler purchased stock from the manufacturer, selling it to another wholesaler for a phenomenal profit. The new purchaser sold it to another wholesaler.” Names and numbers filled the page. “The last wholesaler passed control to Primero Care, who offered the products to RosarioChildren’s Center.”
Lucky whistled, staring at the vials on the table with renewed appreciation. The diagram showed mind-boggling prices. While “casual sales” took place between wholesalers on a regular basis, he’d never seen this magnitude. “You mean to tell me folks are willing to pay six hundred bucks for one dose of a med that the manufacturer sold for seven measly dollars?” Damn! The gray market had certainly expanded after Lucky and Victor’s downfall. Some of the figures on Walter’s chart didn’t seem possible. For a split second Lucky’s inner felon reminded him that perhaps he’d been a bit hasty in going legit.
Walter held a vial up to the light. “This represents the difference between life and death to a leukemia patient. I had to pull strings to getthese little beauties.”
Lucky stared at Walter’s chart, mentally calculating excursion times between wholesalers. “With so many changes of hands, how long have the drugs been traveling? Are they safe?”
“Start to finish, five days, from what we’ve learned.”
“Five days? That’s it?” Sometimes it took a month or more for Lucky and Victor to move a shipment.
“Some buyers never took physical possession, simply requesting the current owner to drop-ship to the next point on the chart.”
“What you want me to do with these?” Lucky waved his hand toward the vials.
“Give them to Bo. Tomorrow you’ll receive your first shipment of Fluorouracil from Primero. Mind you, we’re still walking a line. Other than violate state laws against pharmacies reselling more than five percent of its stock to another entity, Primero has done nothing legally wrong. Until the pending legislation passes, the other companies are perfectly within their rights to buy and sell.”
“Even if people suffer?”
“That’s why we want them out of business.” Walter, so laidback Lucky occasionally accused him of moving in reverse, growled, “We intend to make an example of them. Right now they might appear heroes, swooping in and saving the day. In reality, they’re vultures, and we’re going to stop them. These vials are from the same manufacturer and same lot as you’re scheduled to receive tomorrow. I want Bo to swap these for some of the received goods. We need to analyze them to ensure they’ve not been replaced with counterfeits.”
“Analyze? If they’re suspect, why not seize the shipment?”
“And risk cancer patients’ treatments on mere suspicion? Remember, this is a lawful transaction.”
“Oh.” Damn. While Lucky’d learned respect for the law over the years, sometimes he didn’t truly understand the nuances. If he couldn’t stop Primero, he could slow down the flow of money into their greedy hands by taking out their accomplice. “Have you found anything on Danvers?”
“Not yet, but we’re still searching. Do you have information you haven’t yet shared?” Walter raised a bushy gray brow.
“Just a gut feeling. Being around vermin for much of my life taught me to smell the rats.”
“I’d pit your intuition against most documented research any day. I’ll have the team focus more on Danvers. Anything else?”
Lucky studied his mentor, the open face, the leaned-forward, I’m-all-ears stance.
Now I know how a traitor feels
. He took a few deep breaths to gather his courage. “I’m worried about Bo. He’s getting too close.”
Walter offered a sad little smile. “That’s what he does, Lucky. You scratch the surface, you dig and you dig until your reach the heart of the matter. Bo starts inside the heart.”
“Inside the heart.” Lucky’d said the same thing himself.
“You don’t give up easily,” Walter continued, “but you’ve got a keen sense of when to pull back and wait rather than go charging in. Bo will learn from you. Do you have any idea how much inside information he’s getting from the disgruntled pharmacists he’s working with after hours?”
Oh good.
The boss knew, meaning Lucky didn’t have to tell him.
Walter patted Lucky’s shoulder with a heavy hand. “Now, Keith will be back any minute to get me, and I’m due in Atlanta by morning. Keep up the good work.”
Lucky lay on the couch a long time after Walter left. He and Bo worked well together. They made a good team. Damn it, he hated when Walter was right.

“Fluorouracil! Do you have any idea how much these are worth?” Bo ran his hand lovingly over the vials.
“A lot more than they should be. You need to switch those off with tomorrow’s shipment. Then I’m heading back to Atlanta with the goods.”
Thumpa, thumpa
pounded in the background, the wanna-be disco next door back in full swing. Damn it.
“You’re leaving?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to get out of here. To date, we’ve been able to track down most of the suppliers you’ve given us. The others are only a matter of time.”
Bo paused, more questions in his eyes than what he finally voiced. “That’s it?”
“What’s it?”
“We close them down? What happens to the people who need those drugs?”
“That’s not our problem.”
“Not our problem?”
Lucky should have gone up in a puff of smoke under Bo’s glare. “Once we close down a few shady dealers, it’s only a matter of time before the law goes into effect, making gray markets illegal. After the shysters are gone, the legitimate supply chain will start working again.” He quoted the department’s official stance. No need telling Bo that he’d already asked Walter for help for Rosario.
“Damn it, Lucky! Are you always this cold?”
“What?”
“Don’t you give a damn about anything?”
Where the fuck did that come from? “Of course I do!”
“What if it was one of your nephews lying in a bed at the center? Would you be so quick to dust off your hands and walk away?”
“Bo…” Lucky sucked in a deep breath. He held out a hand.
Bobacked away. “I’ve got what I came for. I’m leaving now.” He pulled out his cell phone and yelled Lucky’s address over the neighbor’s chaos. “I’ll be back tomorrow with the samples,” he said after hanging up his call, and left without saying goodbye.
At two in the morning Lucky lay staring at the ceiling, imagining one of Charlotte’s boys lying in a bed at Rosario. He pictured Stephanie, her big eyes and bright smile, despite fighting a battle with cancer. A weight bore down on his chest. He wanted to punish the people who valued Ben Franklins over Stephanies. He wanted to fix the broken system that allowed such opportunists to flourish.
“Lucky,” he groused to himself. “You’re getting too fucking close.”

“Here ya go!” Lucky offloaded the last package from his cart in the gift shop.
A customer approached the counter, carrying a few magazines and a box with a smiling baby on the cover. “Will you gift wrap this for me, please?”
“Can you wait a minute?” the middle-aged clerk asked Lucky. “I’ll be a few minutes. I need to check these in before I sign.”
Lucky grunted what he hoped sounded like an “Okay.”
Instead of hurrying about her chore, the clerk asked about the customer’s family, job, and a million other things. Apparently, the owner of the shiny platinum credit card was a personal friend with lots of gossip to share.
Lucky bit down on several choice words he’d like to say. He’d love to vent his spleen on the molassesslow clerk. He’d never been known to idle well, and he rambled through the store, inspecting an item here and there to keep himself occupied. Why the hell would anyone pay those kind of prices when the same items were sold elsewhere for a lot less?
He rounded a corner and halted. Green eyes caught his attention first, followed by whiskers and yellow fur. Lucky stepped closer, the stuffed cat reminding him of one of his landlady’s.
Through a mass of gold, he spotted a splash of black, buried beneath yellow. He dug out a black-and-white cat, wearing a black bow tie and a top hat. What had Stephanie called her cat? A tuxedo kitty?
Recalling the sweet little girl on the third floor, some unseen force guided Lucky’s hand, first to caress the toy’s softness, then to carry it with him to the counter.
He held out the forms for the clerk to sign, paid for the cat, and slinked away, ignoring the woman’s, “Oh, do you have children, Mr. Picklesimer?”
The cat stared at him all the way down the hall. “Whatcha looking at?” he asked the stuffed toy while on the elevator. Leaving his cart by thedoor, he dashed down to the nurses’ station. Was he a complete idiot? Other than her first name being Stephanie, he didn’t even know the child he’d spoken to. What if she’d left the hospital?
He stood by the desk, waiting for the attendant to notice him. “Got supplies for us today, Reggie?” she asked.
“No. I…ummm…” He held up the cat.
Don’t you dare tease me.
Her face lit up. “Oh, how cute! Who is that for?”
Now came the complicated part. “Steph. I mean, Stephanie. She didn’t tell me her last name.”
“Big blue eyes, carries a bald Barbie, could talk the hind legs off a mule?”
Lucky chuckled. “Sounds like her.”
“That’d be Stephanie Owens.” The nurse’s smile fell. “Poor little thing. Seems like she’s been here forever.” After a moment she added, “She’s going to love this. Who should I say brought it?” She checked the blank card on the cat’s collar.
“Lucky.”
“Lucky? Who’s Lucky?”
Lucky felt his face flame. “Ummm…her cat. She said he sleeps on her bed when she’s at home. I thought she might like another cat to sleep with while she’s here.”
“Well aren’t you an angel?”
Angel?Stick around lady, you’ll learn.
Lucky’d been accused of being many things before—angel wasn’t one of them.
Another nurse wandered by. “Brenda! Guess what this nice man did—” Lucky hightailed it down the hall. The last thing he needed was their misguided praise.