Drift (28 page)

The scenery was beautiful, but the sensation in my stomach was not. Above the noise from the engine, I could hear a hiss coming from the helmet speakers, so I knew they were on. But apart from an occasional grunt or sigh, Brand didn’t say another word during the rest of the half-hour flight.

When the sound of the engine changed and I felt like we were getting lower, I looked down and saw a small clearing below. Off to the side was a double-wide trailer and a large, rusted metal hangar. The clearing grew larger as we made our descent, but it didn’t seem to grow larger enough.

I could see that the big doors on the side of the hangar were open, and inside I could see a bright red wing. As we bounced onto the grass field, a door opened in the metal shack and a skinny guy in overalls stepped out. He had a wispy beard, and he looked up at us, squinting into the late afternoon sun. He seemed to tense up, and he took a step back. His head snapped from left to right as if he was trying to decide which way to go, then he took off at an unsteady sprint toward a pickup truck parked on a driveway.

We came down gently and Brand kept the engine going, pulling the plane across the field and angling it toward the truck. As we overtook the guy in the overalls, he looked over at us, did a double take, then slowed.

Brand killed the engine, and when we came to a stop he jumped out of the plane, striding menacingly toward the guy with the beard. The guy took a couple of steps backward and smiled nervously. I hurried out after them, wondering what I had stepped into.

“Where you going, Ricky?” Brand asked, in a gravelly voice that sounded a bit too much like Clint Eastwood to be wholly unintentional.

“Hey, Charlie,” Spetzer said. Then he looked at me. “Who’s this?”

“Guy’s got a couple questions for you.” Brand walked right up to Ricky, standing close and looking down at him. “I got a couple myself.”

“Sure, Charlie. Whatever you say,” Ricky said, taking another step back.

Brand stepped to the side so he was no longer between Spetzer and me.

“That your plane?” I asked, hooking a thumb at the red plane in the hangar.

Spetzer smiled, like maybe he was hoping to make me an ally. “Sure is.”

“That plane sprayed my house in Dunston the night before last.”

The smile disappeared. “Did it?”

“Yes, it did. And I’d like to find out what it was spraying, and why.”

Spetzer looked down and laughed nervously.

“I’d also like to know why you were doing it in the middle of the night.”

Brand looked at me, then cocked an eye at Spetzer, waiting for an explanation.

Spetzer laughed again. A jittery smile played across his lips, then trembled for a second and fell. His eyes welled up. “You’re the guy who shot at me.”

Brand turned to look at me, but I don’t think he entirely disapproved. He turned back to Spetzer and waited.

“They had guns,” Spetzer whined. “They meant business.”

Brand snorted. “You mean they
were
business. How much did they pay you?”

I held up a hand to stop him. “So what was it you sprayed?”

Brand gave me a look to let me know he didn’t like my hand. I ignored him, and he got over it.

Spetzer shrugged. “Nothing, they said.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“They said it was harmless. It was like … flour or something. They said it wasn’t going to hurt nobody. One of the guys ate some of it in front of me.”

It
was
flour. In my mind, an image flashed: sacks of white powder in the back of that van. “Why were you spraying it?”

He shook his head. “They wouldn’t say. All they said was, if I did it, no one would get hurt, but if I didn’t, somebody would get hurt plenty and it would be me. I figured maybe they was sending someone a message.”

“Why was it at night?”

“I don’t know. ’Cause they had guns and they said so, man.”

“Why were you flying so low?”

Brand turned to look at me again. “It’s always low. That’s part of the job.”

“No, Charlie, he’s right,” Spetzer said. “It was low. They said it had to be. I figured it was part of the message, or ‘cause I was just doing a small area. I wasn’t crazy about that part neither, flying so low and at night. But it wasn’t like I could say no.”

“Right,” Brand said, mimicking him. “‘They had guns and they said so.’”

“Fuck you, Brand, you weren’t there!”

“All right, all right,” I said. “So who was it, anyway?”

Spetzer shook his head. “I don’t know. There was a couple of them. They was foreigners. They just showed up.”

“What’d they look like?”

“One guy was young, a little taller than me, had this long blond hair, like a fucking shampoo commercial. The other guy was bigger, meaner. Had all this junk stuck in his face.”

“Junk like what?”

“You know, earrings and stuff.”

“In his eyebrows?”

“In his eyebrows, his nose, all that. I think he was the one in charge. He was a scary motherfucker.”

Scary, indeed, I thought, picturing the badass who had leveled me behind Branson’s. “Get any names?”

“The big guy was called Levkov, I think. The guy in charge. That’s all I heard.”

“Levkov,” I repeated. Now he had a name.

“You done this before?” Brand asked.

He looked down. “Twice before this.”

Brand looked over at me, shaking his head, like this proved what kind of lowlife Spetzer was.

“They pay you?” I asked.

Spetzer nodded.

“Cash?”

He nodded again.

“How much?” Brand asked, stepping closer to him.

“Five grand a shot.”

Brand stepped even closer. “So here I am, trying to let you keep your fucked-up little territory that you can barely manage to service, and you’re doing midnight runs spraying some mystery bullshit in my backyard?”

Spetzer shrank away from him, looking away to the side. “I know Charlie, and I’m sorry. Maybe they knew you wouldn’t go along. But I mean it, man, these guys were scary.”

“You don’t think I’m scary?”

Spetzer laughed at that, then winced, like he was expecting a smack. “Charlie, you can kick my ass or ruin my business, whatever, but no, you ain’t scary like these guys was.”

57

When we got out of the plane back at Brand’s little airfield, he gave me a nod, then turned and walked back to the house.

I yelled thanks, and he gave me a half wave without turning around. My entire body felt rubbery and weird. I wondered if it was the plane ride or the Narcan wearing off.

When I got in my car, I checked my phone and saw I’d missed another call from Sydney Bricker. This time, I listened to her message right away.

“Mr. Carrick, I need to see you, as soon as possible.” She didn’t sound like a shark in a power skirt. She sounded small and frightened. “I’m at my office. Please call me. It’s important.”

I called her back and got her voice mail.

“This is Doyle Carrick. I got your message, so call me back at this number. I’m on my way over to your office right now. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

My mouth felt dry, and I wondered if my limbs were starting to feel heavy again or if I was imagining it. I started to put my phone away, but instead I made one more call.

Danny Tennison answered the phone with a sigh. “I’m going to start blocking your calls.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Seriously, Doyle, I know that bust went sour, most of it was bullshit. You’re in the shit, and you need to lay low. Way low. Tell me how the weather is out there, and then leave me the fuck alone.”

“Guy named Levkov, just one name. But I think he’s at the center of whatever’s going on up here.”

“Doyle! Knock it off! There is no center of whatever’s going on up there. If you got something, give it to the locals and walk away from it. If they drop the ball, fine. Leave it dropped.”

“Danny, it’s just one name—”

“No! I’m hanging up now, Doyle, and if you don’t have stories about fish that you caught or movies that you saw or even a goddamn dump that you took, anything other than police work, then I don’t want to hear from you until you’re reinstated. But I got to tell you, at the rate you’re going, I don’t see that happening.”

“Jesus, Danny—”

“Don’t ‘Jesus, Danny,’ me. You need to grow up, Doyle. You’re not a kid anymore, and that whole cliché, rebel-against-authority thing is just you being a fuck-up.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I do have issues with authority, and maybe it is cliché, but I don’t think it’s normal to have some asshole like Suarez barking at you all day.”

“It’s called having a boss, Doyle. No one loves it, but most grown-ups learn how to deal with it.”

“You know what? I think maybe you’re the one who’s got issues with authority, like maybe you like it too goddamned much.” I laughed bitterly. “Maybe that’s why you’re so happily married.”

Danny said, “Fuck you.” Then he hung up.

I immediately regretted having brought his marriage into it, but I knew I would have kept going if he hadn’t hung up.

I still couldn’t tell if I was getting reintoxicated from the Narcan wearing off, but I figured if there was any doubt after a buzzkill conversation like that, I’d better play it safe. I took out the little envelope Janie had given me and swallowed two of the pills.

A couple of minutes later, I pulled up in front of Bricker’s office. I immediately picked up a bad vibe. The exchange with Danny had brought me down, but it was more than that. The streets were strangely deserted, and so quiet I could have been the last man alive. I felt a slight chill. A dark layer of low clouds had developed out of nothing, pushing down on the world.

I knocked on the outer office door and waited, then knocked again and walked in.

The small reception area was empty, and the door to the office was open.

Sydney Bricker was at her desk, or rather across it. Her legs dangled in front of it, her short skirt riding up her thighs as her back arched over the blotter, her arms by her sides. Her head hung over the far side with her mouth wide open.

I took out my gun before moving around to the back of the desk, as if I could protect myself from what I was going to find.

Her left eye was open, staring blindly at the back of her deep leather chair. Her right eye was a bloody ruin, two inches of one of her personalized pens protruding from it, just enough so I could see the gold script
S
in Sydney. A thin red line led from her eye into her hairline, the blood wicking down her hair, which hung down onto the padded seat, curling into the blood that had pooled there.

I’d had a nagging feeling that something else was going on even before Stan Bowers told me most of the heroin from the bust wasn’t heroin. But while Sydney Bricker’s murder confirmed my vague suspicions, it didn’t clarify them. I still didn’t know what the hell was going on.

One thing I did know was that I had to get out of there. Pruitt could show up at any moment. Bricker had called me less than a half hour earlier. Careful not to touch anything, I pushed open the door and looked up and down the street. It was empty.

The sky looked even more ominous, but there was something else as well, an atmosphere of dread so thick I could feel it on my skin. Just like Crooked Creek Farm, where the bust went down, this place was haunted now.

58

I walked quickly to my car, keeping my head down in case the streets weren’t as deserted as they seemed.

As I opened my car door, I sensed movement behind me and simultaneously felt a sharp pain in the center of my back. For an instant I thought I’d been stabbed, but then I recognized the pain as the barrel of a gun applied with gusto.

“Don’t fucking breathe,” said a thick Russian accent, right next to my ear. “Or I’ll shoot through your spine.”

His gun stayed where it was, solid as a rock as his other hand swept over me in a quick but thorough frisk that included my ankles. When he was done, he was holding my gun as well as his.

“Move a muscle and I will kill you,” he whispered in my ear. Then the pressure disappeared from my back. He stepped away from me, backing around the car and coming into sight on the other side of it.

It was Fabio, the guy with the long blond hair. A shampoo commercial, Spetzer had said, and he nailed it. I smiled at the thought.

“It’s good you can smile,” he said with a smirk. He had both guns leveled at me, keeping them close to his body. “Unlock the doors.”

I flicked the power lock.

He opened the passenger door, keeping one gun pointed at me over the roof of the car and the other one pointed at me through the interior. “Nice car. You should take better care of it. Now get in.”

We both got in, and I fastened my seat belt. He thought for a moment; then he did, too.

“Drive,” he said.

I started up the car and pulled out. “Where?”

“Home.”

It tripped me up that I didn’t know where he meant. “You mean the place on Bayberry?”

He smiled and nodded. “Da,” he said, easing himself around so his back was against the door. He seemed relaxed, except for his hands, which both pointed at me—my gun at my head, his gun at my belly. I couldn’t decide if I would rather be killed by my own gun or his. Kind of embarrassing to be killed with your own gun. But then again, better it come from someone you know, right?

“So, who are you?” I asked.

He laughed a little to himself, like that didn’t deserve even a badass answer. “You can call me Mikhail.”

“So what is it you want, Mikhail?”

“I want you to shut up and drive.”

I drove slowly, partly because I needed time to think. Also, with two guns pointed at me, I didn’t want to hit a pothole and get the festivities started ahead of schedule.

“So were you in business with Cooney, is that it? Some kind of cartel?”

He laughed again. “Cooney? You fuck with me? Cooney is a joke.”

“Well, if this is about the drugs, I’d say just leave it alone. The case is closed. No one knows who killed Cooney, but they’re thinking it was one of the guys at Crooked Creek Farm.”

He snorted. “Drugs are a joke, too. Chump change. Now shut the fuck up and drive.”