Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1) (3 page)

8

Bust

It wasn’t the
cleanest money I’d ever seen, banded all tight with nice clips or anything like that, but I figured the dirty greenery would spend just fine.

Which was how I found myself out at Pete’s Point, overlooking the town. These two morons had an illegal trailer set up there—but then, Seaside PD didn’t have teeth. Small time hoodlums scared them, it seemed.

“They took my damn scheme,” Johnny said, nodding his gleaming dome towards the smoke billowing across the night sky, “I told them about that a couple weeks ago.”

“You been playing cards with these idiots for that long?”

“It was going well until I brought Maggie into it,” he said, “then they hit a hot streak.”

“I’d say they’re about to.”

“That’s my woman you’re talking about.” The right words were there, but the conviction was lacking. I liked this plan less and less by the minute. Nonetheless, the prospect of keeping the AC juiced and some food in the fridge spurred my feet forward. Maybe Cassie would even like it, me taking initiative for once.

Doubtful.

I watched the two shadows move back and forth behind the drawn curtains. That didn’t seem safe, cloth curtains in a portable meth lab.

“All right,” Johnny said, “you ready?”

“No.”

“Let’s do this.”

We crept forward, eyes locked on the trailer. But the occupants didn’t come out, so we kept pushing up. Pretty soon, my back was flush against the front, right next to the door, Johnny beside me.

“Remind me why you came,” I said, fumbling in my pocket, “if you’re not going to do shit.”

“Distractions, man, distractions.”

“Yeah, don’t do that.” I took out my snake rake and tension wrench, clutching them between my fingers. Time to start. With a nod back at Johnny, I snuck over to the door. The ten feet felt like about ten miles, but I made it.

Then I was in my element. I slid the tension wrench in the bottom part of the lock. I could already feel that this was going to be easy; trailers didn’t sport the gold standard in security. A single rake from the pick and a twist later, and I was peering inside the hazy confines of a double-wide.

One being used to convert store-bought cough suppressants into addictive stimulants.

And I always thought of Seaside Heights as such a quaint place. I suppressed a snicker, remembering Otto’s small talk. I slipped inside and eased the door shut.

The two idiots were hunched over a table at the other end of the trailer, which was about thirty feet down. I peered over the countertop, straining to make sense of their voices. No dice; just a murmur, obscured by surgical masks and goggles straight out of high school Chem class.

I had to get closer.

Cursing my own stupidity—Bledsoe and Ramsky weren’t going to split the atom, but they could hold their own in a fist fight—I crouch walked closer. I was right in the middle of the hallway, in plain view. If they turned, I was done.

For some reason, my feet kept moving further, until I was only about ten feet away. Now I could hear them just peachy.

“Ya goddamn dummy,” Ramsky—at least, I think it was Ramsky—said to the smaller guy, “ya put that one in first, then you turn the heat up.”

“We ain’t making medicine,” Bledsoe replied, throwing his mask at the wall, “just crystal. Hell, the tweakers around here won’t know the difference.”

“I ain’t poisoning no one. That’s murder one and twenty-five to life in the pen. Put your damn mask back on before I hold you down and tape it there. Don’t want to be breathing this shit. Get that emphysema.”

This would do. I sucked in my breath as Bledsoe went to gather the fallen mask, but he never turned around, instead doing a crab-esque side shuffle to the wall and back.

I dialed the burner phone Johnny had handed me earlier, muting the microphone. The call connected. I placed the cheap plastic device on the counter above me, and backed up. My luck had just about run out.

Ramsky and Bledsoe were still having a spirited conversation about the quality of their product and other issues of respect as I retreated.

I started running once I was outside.

“You do it,” Johnny asked, galloping up alongside me, “you set it to 911?”

“Yeah, I did. Where’s my cash?”

“Hot damn Desmond,” he said, slapping me across the back, sending the air scooting from my lungs like a runaway train, “I knew you were the right guy for this.”

“Glad I could help out. Money.”

“Deal was, the cops had to get ‘em.” Johnny looked around. “You think they’ll come? They can locate them with the signal, right? That’s not just in the movies?”

“Your plan. You tell me.”

Johnny shrugged and knelt down behind a tree. From our vantage point, the trailer was a comfortable distance away, and we were hidden—from any assailants or potential police presence.

“That’s what it said on the internet. I used Google.”

“Big day.”

“You’re some sort of prick, you know that?”

“You and Cassie should start your own little group. Bitch about me to each other.”

“Yeah, well—hey, check it out.” Johnny leapt to his feet like a kid who’d just seen that the toy store had something he wanted. “Those are lights, all right. Thought that was all pretend, just in the stories.”

“Cops aren’t messing around tonight.”

Red and blue painted Pete’s Point. I checked my watch. Seven minutes since I’d left the trailer. Not bad. It’d taken twenty-seven seconds to pick and open the lock. They weren’t as fast as me, but then, I wasn’t as fast as I used to be. Going on the straight and narrow kills your skills.

“Whaddya say we get out of here, grab a beer at the Lone Star?” I wasn’t eager to stick around. Bledsoe or Ramsky—I couldn’t tell who from this distance—had just poked his head out the door to see why the police had paid them a surprise house call.

“We gotta make sure,” Johnny said, shaking his head. I wasn’t sure how our presence was going to seal the deal, but I’m a sucker for a bag of bills. I stayed put and watched the fireworks.

Two cruisers peeled into the dirt, skidding to a sideways halt. Officers popped out from the steel-framed monsters like they’d been wound up in a jack-in-the-box. I counted three of them, pistols already drawn. I heard the fourth, though; he had a megaphone that could just about blow your ears off.

“Jack Ramsky. Donovan Bledsoe. We have a probable cause to search the premises for the manufacture of methamphetamine. Come out unarmed with your hands in the air. If you do not comply, we will enter with force.”

Somehow, with all the smoke billowing out of the top, the cops hadn’t had probable cause before tonight.

One of the two men poked out the trailer door, and I could see the police tense up. I think he said something, then disappeared quick as he came.

A standoff. Wonderful.

The police didn’t seem too keen on moving from the safety of cover. After all, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that the two would-be chemists had a couple firearms handy for extenuating circumstances.

Then the two men came barreling out the door, running straight through it Kool-Aid Man style. No guns, at least not from what I could see; these two cretins were trying to make a dash for it, even though the cops had the only exit off the Point blocked.

I saw one of them cock his arm back and hurl something from the ledge—the cell phone, one might presume. I hoped that was the case; no need for the police to start wondering who their mysterious informant was. Snitch was never a good label to have, even on the outside.

“They know there’s no way off this hill, right,” I said, turning to Johnny. His eyes stood open in rapt awe. This was better than he could’ve hoped for. At this rate, the two wouldn’t just be busted, but find a way to get themselves killed.

Not that I relished the thought, but I didn’t think the world would be missing out on a cure for heart disease or something.

The police, upon seeing that Ramsky and Bledsoe were unarmed, had moved up and pinned the pair against the cliff. It wasn’t far to the water below, but it was rocky as hell, and neither man seemed eager to test it for soft landing spots. Their arms flung up, and that would have been it, except meth labs are real unpredictable.

The top of the trailer blew off about twenty yards in the air, a fireball erupting into the otherwise tranquil night. Ramsky and Bledsoe, being farthest from the blast, only fell down from the explosion, but the cops, they were stunned a bit. Flames and debris decorated Pete’s Point, a spectacle that I was sure could be seen for some miles.

Not believing their good luck, Ramsky and Bledsoe stumbled and dragged themselves forward, leaping over the prone police officers. They were heading towards our little outcropping of trees, which fed into a thicker strand of woods. I’m not sure what their end game was—the explosion confirmed that they were playing Iron Meth Chef—but what was going down right at that moment, that was clear.

They were headed straight for us.

“Johnny,” I said, and I turned to him. Now he was frozen in a shitting-your-pants kind of way—not the kind of look you wanted to see when someone’s in this sort of foxhole with you. “Goddamnit, man, you need to get the little guy. I got the big one, on the right.” My eyes tracked back to Ramsky and Bledsoe. Fifty yards, maybe less. The showdown would happen soon. “If you don’t, we’re both done.” I hoped that this drilled down how important not screwing up was, but I didn’t get a response.

I crouched behind a tree and breathed deep. The footsteps grew louder. When they were almost even, I sprang out.

I connected with Ramsky, the big ass bastard, going full bore, spearing him from the side. His momentum carried us in a staggering sort of diagonal, into a scrawny sapling that sagged and then snapped under our weight.

He groaned. I threw my best haymaker while he was clutching his ribs. Not an honorable move, but it did the trick, knocking him out cold. I pricked my ears up like a hunting hound, listening for Johnny.

Thrashing and crashing.

I rushed over and blasted Bledsoe in the head with a cheap shot from his blindside, causing him to crumple face first into the grassy dirt. Wouldn’t get me the title, but it would get me the money.

“I had him,” Johnny said, panting, blood dripping from a cut over his mouth, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“Insurance,” I said. “You keep an eye on our new friends. I’ll get our boys in blue.”

I walked over to the group of cops laid out on the ground. I wasn’t friends—if you could call us that—with any of them except Mike Greenville. I offered my hand to him, and he took it, groaning as he stood.

“Goddamn tweakers,” he said, “you see them?”

“I’ll do you one better, Mike,” I said, taking his hand like I was leading him somewhere real special, “I got them for you.”

He shook loose from my grip. “What’d you say?”

“Just come into the woods.”

After I helped him drag Ramsky and Bledsoe back to the Point, Greenville stood there, hands on his hips.

“So, Desmond, what were the two of you doing out in these woods, anyway?”

“Fresh air,” Johnny said. “Good for preventing cancer.”

“I’ll bet,” Greenville said. “And you two just happened to be here when we get an anonymous call—almost a damn bug—on the premises that lets us hear all about their little meth operation.”

“Look,” Johnny said, placing his hand on my shoulder, “I didn’t want to tell you this, ‘cause you know, my buddy Desmond, he’s sensitive about it.”

“Sensitive about what?” I said.

“About how we like to pack each other in the woods. Just get sloppy, roll around in the bushes. Get a good screw in every now and again.”

Greenville wasn’t believing a word, but he was amused by Johnny’s enthusiasm. I can’t say that I shared this view; I wanted to get the hell out of there, not listen to how I loved to suck Johnny’s dick.

“Yeah, two regular faeries,” Greenville said, dragging Bledsoe to his feet. “Whatever you were doing, I don’t want to know about it.”

“Aye, aye,” Johnny said, “later, Mike.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“We can do that,” I said, and I started down the dirt road that led off Point. Behind me, one of the captured men was yelling epithets and threats. I’d have been more scared if he’d had any juice.

But dumb freelance criminals didn’t worry me too much. Considering, at one point, I’d been one.

Johnny caught up with me after a couple minutes and hopped on my back. I about buckled into the dry soil.

“You beautiful bastard,” he said, “I could fuck you right now.”

“Please don’t. Although I’ll take that money.”

“Straight to business.”

“Do I get a bonus for making the bust myself?”

“Don’t be greedy.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

We reached his house just as the moon was brightest. I felt that was a good sign.

9

Wine and Dine

Seven hundred sixty-eight
bucks.

It looked like a thousand earlier, but I hadn’t counted it. Laziness was part of the culprit, although the thought of rummaging through the dirty bills had played a role. Now that they were mine, they didn’t seem so nasty.

But I didn’t like being shorted.

I’d argued with Johnny for a while, but he swore up and down that he thought it was a thousand bucks, had counted it three times himself—all bullshit, of course—and that he’d get me the difference in a week.

I didn’t have much faith in that notion, but I did have faith that the money would spend. I swung by the liquor store and picked up a bottle of wine with a fancy French name. Seven bucks, but still. The flower shop was closed, so I raided the neighbor’s window box for something that looked half-alive.

And then I went into our home office.

I had hopes that my initiative would result in some gratitude.

Cassie put the kibosh on that right quick, though.

“You were involved in that clusterfuck on the scanner,” she said, voice loud as hell, “we’re running a goddamn business, here, Kurt. Not some fly-by-night gun for hire bullshit.”

I stepped over the flowers, petals strewn about the room. I offered her the bottle of wine, since nature’s beauty hadn’t appealed. She took it and then chucked it against the wall, a magenta geyser exploding onto the floor.

“Jesus, Cass,” I said, “glass is dangerous.”

“Not half as dangerous as I’m gonna be if you pull this crap again.”

I reached into my back pocket and extracted the wad of greasy bills, tossing it at her. This is what I should have led with, but I didn’t.

Her eyebrows arched in the slightest hint of surprise.

“Rob a strip club?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Who knows with Johnny, but the money’s there.”

She thought about it for a second, wheels turning. I bit my lip, squashing my desire to say something else, argue my case. I was no silver-tongued devil; further input would only seal my fate.

“Fine,” she said, putting the money in her own pocket, “this will cover us for the month.”

“Hey, but I need—” She shot me a look that said
shut the hell up
, so I did.

“You find any more…projects, you bring them to me first.” And then she went into the bedroom, shutting the door.

Despite my bread-winning capabilities, I was sleeping on the couch. Fox came over and barked.

“I know, man,” I said, “I don’t get women either.”