“Jack rabbits or cotton tails?”
“Clearly the rabbit is the better option,” I told them. “No one wants to fuck with geese. Now shut up so I can hear.”
Rotor gave us a smug grin since he got us to concede to his point. “Hey, Pete.”
The man jerked his head and stared at Rotor. “I don’t like him,” Pete whispered, only a decibel below his normal speaking voice.
“It’s alright,” Jury told him. “Neither do we.”
“What the fuck?” Rotor huffed.
Warrant hooted with laughter.
“What did you do to make a cocaine addict dislike you?” I asked with a grin.
“Fuck if I know.”
“He’s too purple.”
We all stared at Skinny Pete, processing that. Conversation with Skinny Pete was going to require updating my mental hard drive on a minute by minute basis to keep up.
“We sure we can trust what this guy says?” Warrant muttered. “Druggies aren’t exactly the most reliable as far as intel goes.”
“Maybe not,” I said as Jury moved closer to speak with Pete, “but he’s the only lead we have for now. What does it hurt to check with him?”
“We end up fighting purple people all over town?” Rotor offered, scrubbing one hand through the long hair on the very top of his head and making it spike upward like a cracked out porcupine. “But despite all that, he knows his shit about the dealers here.”
Warrant made a face that said he wasn’t so sure about that.
“He has a vested interest,” Rotor told us. “The important thing to remember when dealing with these guys is to never get hustled by a coke head.”
It was his turn to get stared at by the two of us. “What the fuck does that even mean?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Warrant added, “who would ever let a coked out fuck up hustle them?”
“You’d be surprised how lucid these bastards can be when it suits them. They can even stay clean for a bit, blend in with normal society. Or they just do their coke at night, in the privacy of their own homes, and somehow manage to function through their high all day long.”
Rotor had done a stint with the Drug Enforcement Administration after his time in the military was over. He’d seen first-hand what some of these people were capable of, so we just shrugged and turned back to Jury and Pete.
Jury handed over a wad of cash, nodded at Pete, then turned back to us. Skinny Pete headed back over to the gravestone.
“You know he’s just going to stick that right up his nose,” Warrant pointed out. “Like, he may not take the time to even turn it into coke. Just snort dollar bills.”
Jury shrugged. “We got the intel we need and no matter what we do an addict is going to find a way to get their drugs. He gave me what I needed so I gave him the same. What the fuck do I care what he does with it? At least this way purses and copper wire are safe for the next few days.”
He had a point. “Where are we headed?”
“Mountain View Storage. Want to check back in with Cypher first?” Jury asked Warrant. “Or check it out to see if it’s a solid lead?”
Warrant was the ranking officer amongst us as the Sergeant at Arms. Jury and Rotor were enforcers. I was used as the medic and enforcer as needed. Which meant this call was Warrant’s.
“Let’s go check it out first. See what we see,” he replied.
Mountain View wasn’t too far of a ride from the cemetery as it was on the edge of town. It made sense. It wasn’t in the middle of town, had electricity in the units, and there was enough traffic happening as people moved their shit in and out you might not notice a couple guys hanging around there often. Plus, it wasn’t uncommon for some random guy to be using a storage unit as an apartment every now and then. At least until the owners noticed and ran them off.
We parkedout on the road and strolled over to the gates. They were open and sure enough, people were bustling in and out. Storage facilities in this area did a lot of business because people were constantly moving to, or away, from town. Some didn’t realize until they lived here how far it was from Cheyenne. Others thought they could handle the cold winters. Whatever their reasoning, they’d dump their crap here until they moved it into a house, or back to wherever they came from.
“We have a unit number?” Rotor asked.
