“In a bar. St. Arnold’s Craft Brewery. The bartender told the cops that he was sitting on a barstool, grabbed his chest, and fell off. When he didn’t get up, they went around and looked at him, and he might have already been dead. He definitely was dead when they got to the hospital.”
—
OUTSIDE, Lucas put his sunglasses back on and asked Mallow, “Who was Louise talking about?”
“The Eli brothers. I was going to ask her what she thought about them, but she brought them up herself. They’re downtown.”
Lucas followed, a ten-minute ride. When they’d parked, Mallow pointed down an alley to the back end of another low stucco building with an open garage door instead of a normal entrance. “That’s the legal front end of the Eli business. Somewhat legal—most of it fell off a truck somewhere. Walk down there and go in. Be cool. Pick up an item or two. Hang out at the back of the store, in the electronics. There’s a black steel door on the left side; it goes into the back room, where the real hot stuff is. The door’s always locked. When somebody comes out, grab the handle and yell for me. I’ll be right outside. I can’t come in, they know me.”
—
LUCAS AMBLED DOWNthe alley, walked through the garage door, and found a store with piles of crap and the stink of truck exhaust and diesel. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the crap. Stacks of slightly crushed rolls of Bounty paper towels were piled next to heaps of car wax bottles, with boxes of peanut bars on top of it all; cartons of nails sat next to a hill of tattered books; bottles of Softsoap sat on top of a couple of battered-looking speakers. The store itself was the size of two double garages, and the merchandise went to the ceiling. The shoppers seemed to be more browsers than people looking for specific items.
Lucas checked through a basket of Levi’s premium blue jeans, found that they were all bootcut, let them go. An elderly woman sat by an old-fashioned cash register, chewing on a strip of beef jerky. She asked him, “You finding what you want, hon?”
“I was wondering if you ever get any accordions in here,” Lucas said.
“Aw, hell, we had two Hohners in here last week; they both went in an hour. You keep checkin’ back, though. We do get them in from time to time. There might be a concertina in the back by those ukes, if you’d be interested in that.”
“Let me take a look,” Lucas said.
He wandered toward the back, toward the black steel door. A rack of cheap-looking musical instruments sat within a few feet of it. Lucas took down an electric guitar, peered at the brand name on the headstock—ZziZZiX—plucked a string, which flopped instead of vibrating.
He peered down the fretboard, as if gauging its flatness, andheard the lock grind on the steel door. He put the guitar down, stepped to the door, and when it opened an inch he shouted, “Mallow! Now!” and yanked the it open. The man on the other side—skinny, gray-faced, with dark bags under his eyes, and startled—followed the door out into the sales area.
Mallow was coming fast for a man with a build like a bowling ball, and he jammed past the gray-faced man and yelled over his shoulder, “Shut the door!”
Lucas stepped inside and pulled the door closed and hurried after Mallow into a brightly lit room lined with built-in metal filing cabinets and with a couple of tables, a half dozen chairs, and an oversized television looming down from a wall. Four bulky men were standing around one of the tables, looking at something Lucas couldn’t see.
Mallow spread his arms, his pistol in one hand, and cried out, “Hi, guys! What do we got going here?”
One of the bulky men shouted, “Fuck!” grabbed a plastic Office Depot bag off the table, and ran at Mallow and stiff-armed him. Mallow went down, and two of the other men jumped over the supine cop, the three of them then heading for the alley door. Lucas swung at the lead man, who put the plastic bag up to take the blow, and what looked like candy exploded from it. The man hit Lucas with his shoulder and Lucas went down and smacked his head on the concrete floor. One of the men stepped on his arm and Lucas hooked him by the pant leg, but the man pulled free. And Lucas could hear Mallow shouting for them. And then...
And then they were gone.
Mallow was on his knees, a drip of blood running out of his nose, and he croaked, “You okay?”
“Whacked my head,” Lucas said. He got to his knees and almost toppled over, and Mallow came over and helped him get to his feet.
“You don’t look so hot,” Mallow said. He turned to check the fourth man, the one who hadn’t run but who was now edging toward the exit. “Hey now, Tommy, stay put,” he said. He pointed at a chair. “Sit.” The man sat.
Lucas knelt down again, and Mallow asked, “You want me to call the meat wagon?”
“Nah, I’m looking for...” Lucas was patting the floor and came up with one of the candies that had exploded from the bag. Except that it wasn’t a candy; it was a pill.
He stood up and tipped the pill into Mallow’s hand. “OxyContin. Pure Purdue Poison.”
Mallow turned to the man in the chair. “Tommy, what is this shit? Dope? What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’d already told them to take off when you busted in,” the man said. “We don’t deal no dope.”
Mallow looked at all the pills scattered on the floor. “You’re gonna have to tell it to the narcs, my friend.” To Lucas he said, “Keep an eye on him. I gotta make a couple of phone calls. Don’t fight him. If he tries to run, go ahead and shoot the motherfucker.”
The man on the chair said, “Bart, goddamnit, you know me.”
“I thought I did,” Mallow said. There was a compact bathroom with a toilet, and a sink off to one side. Mallow stepped in, pulled a handful of toilet paper off the roll, wetted it in the sink, and wiped the blood off his face. After checking himself in the mirror, he walked down the hall to the back door and started talking into his phone.
They waited some more, not talking much, watching Eli squirm.
