LITMIR.BIZ

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with the other cattle. Moo, motherfucker.

      “So you made it for them.”

      Vidocq nods.

      “Yes. To give myself just a little credit, I did it rather badly. After several attempts in which I produced mild forms of the drug and pure poison in one case, I convinced the marshal that the ingredients he had acquired were of too poor a quality. I suppose he believed me because I remained alive and unincarcerated.”

      “That’s good news, then,” says Candy.

      I look at her.

      “If it’s so hard to make and there are so few dealers, that means it’s a small operation, right?”

      “Or a bunch of lousy ones,” I say.

      Vidocq shakes his head.

      “No. If people had died from Akira, there would be rumors everywhere. Candy is right. Akira is a specialized business. Possibly as small as one or two labs.”

      “See,” Candy says. “I’m a good detective too.”

      “Just like Philip Marlowe. He’s the one with the robot glasses in The Maltese Falcon, right?”

      Candy sticks her tongue out at me. The sight of it is more distracting than I want it to be.

      “Thanks for the talk. I think I’ve got things clearer. Now both of you get out. I’m doing this thing alone.”

      Silence. Then Vidocq pipes up.

      “Do you think that’s wise? You’re not in the best frame of mind today.”

      “That’s why you’re not coming. Call a cab.”

      “Stark—” says Candy. I cut her off.

      “I mean it. You’re both reasonable and I don’t want reasonable around when I talk to an Akira dealer.”

      Neither of them moves. Candy’s up front with me. I reach across her and open the door.

      “Go. I’ll talk to you later.”

      “I’m calling you in one hour,” she says. “If you don’t like it, tough.”

      Candy and Vidocq get out. I leave them on the curb and head for the 405.

      I can already picture Carolyn as one of those seductive damned souls that used to hover around my room under the arena. Getting me high. Getting me talking. Treating me like the soft fool I was back then. I’m not soft now and I’m even less forgiving. I don’t know if Carolyn’s blood is red or black, but if things go right, I just might find out.

      CAROLYN MCCOY LIVES on Cantara Street in a run-down tract home surrounded by a low metal fence and a half-dead lawn where patches of bleak grass break through the bare soil. Her house is right across the street from Sun Valley Park. Prime real estate for a small-time dealer.

      I knock on her front door. It takes a while for anything to happen. I can hear someone banging around inside. I surprised her. She’s hiding her stash.

      The front door opens. Carolyn doesn’t open the screen door, but stands there blinking in the sun like a not very bright groundhog. I’ve seen exhumed corpses with better tans.

      “Who the fuck are you?” she says.

      I lean close to the screen and smile.

      “Hi. I’m a young college student trying to earn extra money selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. Would you be interested in a ten- to twenty-year subscription to Possession with Intent to Sell, and its sister publication, I’m Going to Burn Your House Down While You’re Asleep in Bed Tonight?”

      She stares, her mouth open a little, like she’s trying to form a question but forgot how to speak English in the last three seconds. I pull the screen door open and brush past her inside. She stands there, turns, and watches me invade her living room.

      Carolyn has short dry hair that frames her face perfectly. She’d be pretty if she didn’t have deep bruise-colored rings around her eyes and her skin wasn’t the texture of sandpaper. There are red welts on the inside of her arms where she’s been compulsively picking at the skin. I can smell not-quite-metabolized meth in her sweat. Her heart’s jacked up and her eyes are pinpricks, but that’s the drugs and not me. The angel in my head wants me to go easy so the back of her skull doesn’t blow off and take her brain with it. That’s a good idea. On the other hand, she’s dealing DHS black-box psychic poison to teenyboppers who don’t have a clue that demons, Kissi, and other brain-sucking assholes are out there waiting to get a claw hold in their cortex.

      Carolyn stands by the door, arms crossed. When the clockwork in her brain kicks back in, she follows me into an avocado-and-orange living room with overstuffed chairs, throw pillows, and a long rattan sofa. It looks like the set for a seventies snuff film. She stops a few feet away and looks at me with a jittery stare, trying to figure out if she should know me. If she owes me money. If I owe her.

      “Sit down,” I say.

      She doesn’t. I take a step toward her.

      “Sit down,” I say again.

      She walks around me and sits on the sofa, knees together, hands folded in her lap like she just graduated from charm school. I sit across from her on a cushioned green chair. I pull it over to the sofa so we’re sitting face-to-face. The chair springs are long gone and my ass tries to sink below my knees. Not a good look when you want to come across as intimidating. I slide forward and sit on the edge of the chair.

      “Are you a cop?” she asks.

      “Do you think I’m a cop?”

      “No.”

      “Then maybe we should go from there and see where it takes us. Is that all right with you, Carolyn?”

      “Fine. Whatever. If you’re not a cop, who are you?”

      “I lied earlier. I’m not a college student.”

      She starts picking at the skin on her left arm.

      “Stop that. You dig that arm open and you’re going to get gangrene in a dusty shithole like this.”

      “What do you care?”

      “I don’t, but it’s annoying to look at.”

      “What the fuck is it you want? You want money? Do I look like I have any money? Look around.”

      She waves a hand at the general wreckage. It’s not so much that the place is a mess, it’s that nothing is where any sane person would put it. It’s like everything she owns, from furniture to coffee cups, she’s used once and then dropped where she was when she was done with it.

      “I don’t have to look, Carolyn. I know that whatever kind of pig wallow you live in, you have money because you’re a dealer,” I say. “I can see it in your eyes and hear it in the tiny catches in your voice. You’re also strung out and about six months from a fatal stroke. You know you have high blood pressure, don’t you? That doesn’t mix well with meth.”

      She lifts her head, still eyeing me.

      “How do you know that?”

      She gnaws on her thumb. Her fingernails have all been chewed down to the quick. There’s plaster dust on her fingertips.

      “It’s just a trick I do. I know things about people. Like how all the money you say you don’t have is stuffed in a hiding place in the wall.”

      The look she gives me is halfway between anger and dumb wonder.

      “When did you come in my house?”

      “I’ve never been here before. That was just to show you that lying isn’t going to get you anywhere fun.”

      “If you want the money, take it. I’m sick. I can’t stop you.”

      “I don’t

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