He got a beer out of the fridge and used the bottle opener soldered to the wall to pop off the cap. Foam seeped out unenthusiastically and dribbled over his knuckles. He swapped hands and wiped his fingers against his jeans.
“What’s she on?” he asked.
Shepherd looked up from the grimy pile of cash he’d counted out onto the scored coffee table.
“What’s it to you?” he asked coldly.
Bass sucked a mouthful of foam out of the neck of his beer. “It looks like good stuff.”
There was a pause as Shepherd stared at him for a second, the potential for violence ripe in the air. Then he grunted and went back to his crumpled notes.
“Stay away from that shit,” he said as he wiped something sticky off a $100 note with his thumb. “Drop Dead will fuck you up too much to be any use to me, and you ain’t got a pussy to pay your keep.”
Nobody but the doped-out woman had their eyes on Bass, so he let himself grimace. Jesus. Drop Dead wasn’t like Krokodil—he’d seen a couple of users of that in New York, Russian kids who didn’t much care what happened to bodies they didn’t own anymore—but it wasn’t safe either.
“Not my place to tell you how to do business—”
“So don’t.”
“—but if it takes an elephant tranq to get her high, maybe your meth supplier is sending you the shit stuff.”
Shepherd folded a stack of notes over twice and snapped an elastic band around the wedge. He tossed it into the bag at his feet and leaned back, his head cocked to the side as he watched the blond.
“After the fuckup at the junkyard, my… new friend gave me a free sample of his product as a goodwill gesture,” he said. “Doubt it’s going to unthrone meth, but you gotta offer some variety if you’re going to bring in new customers. Club kids want something sexier than meth to get fucked-up on, at least to start with.”
Bass shrugged and leaned back against the kitchen counter. The trailer had no air-conditioning, and sweat itched at the back of his neck and was matted into his hair and in the crack of his ass. He took a drink of cold beer and pretended it made him less sticky.
“Is the deal back on?” he asked. “Is that why you asked me to come by?”
Shepherd slung his arms along the back of the couch and pointed at the fridge with his chin. “Get me a beer,” he said. “Counting all that cash is thirsty work.”
It was half insult and half reminder that Bass was still on his probationary period at the bottom of the pecking order. He didn’t get to ask too many questions. Bass drained his beer, tossed the bottle in the trash with the rest, and headed back to the fridge. He grabbed two bottles and sauntered over to slap a cold base against Shepherd’s outstretched hand.
“You got any problem with how I run my business?” Shepherd asked as he rolled the damp glass over his forehead. “Complaints? Suggestions?”
Bass shrugged and took a drink. “Nothing worth rocking the boat over.”
“Rock it. I wanna know what keeps my boys happy.”
“It’s been a bit slow for my liking,” Bass admitted. “And it ain’t easy to pick a bar fight when everyone knows you’re a Brother. But if getting into a fight whenever you got bored paid off, I’d still be in New York.”
Shepherd nodded. “And it’s not like you’ve got nothing to do,” he said. “I hear you hooked up with your doctor friend again.”
“I had an itch. He scratched it,” Bass said dismissively. “Not like he’s my prom date.”
Shepherd chuckled. He put the beer on the table, a stack of fifties as a coaster, and grabbed a pen to scrawl something on the back of a receipt. His knuckles were bruised and split. Fresh red scabs were clotted over the bones.
“Usually I’d send Ville,” he said. The nib of the pen nearly cut through the thin sheet of paper as Shepherd circled part of what he’d written. “But apparently he’s real unhappy with the way I run things, maybe even thinks he could step up. So you get to pick up some of his slack while him and me… hammer out a career path for him. Here.”
He held out the scrawled-on receipt, the limp bit of paper pinched between his fingers. Bass took it and squinted at the blurred scrawl.
A name, circled, and then an address. Not the Heights. This address was the sort of neighborhood Bass would have expected Tag to live in.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“You don’t need to know that,” Shepherd said. He twisted off the cap of his beer against the heavy signet he wore. “Just that he needs someone to punch him in the face a few times, send a message that it’s not a good idea to cross me, that people should keep their mouth shut. Now, see, Ville didn’t get that. I expect you will.”
He did. Bass squashed the guilt that tried to take root. He might have pushed some of Ville’s buttons, but he hadn’t made his old friend do anything. Besides, it wasn’t like Ville didn’t deserve what he had coming to him. Bass folded the paper over.
