Greely's Cove (20 page)

He clapped the hammy hand on Mitch’s shoulder and barked a loud laugh. The little man wobbled and pretended to be amused.

At their “joyful” reunion on Saturday, Cannibal had told Mitch that they were now neighbors, which was true to the extent that Cannibal had bought a place less than a mile up Old Home Road from Mitch’s own. The house was in appalling condition, but then Cannibal and his girlfriend, Stella DeCurtis, did not actually live here. They owned a “moocho lux” condominium in Seattle, Cannibal had bragged. They needed the house in the woods only as a laboratory to convert cocaine to crack. Though reeking with neglect and overgrown with moss and mildew, it had in great abundance the most desirable feature of any crack lab: privacy.

“Well,” said Mitch, clearing a frog out of his throat, “it’s nice, real nice. I like what you’ve done with it.”

Cannibal ignored the sarcasm and grinned around a huge wad of bubble gum, missing nary a beat in his noisy chewing. Stella DeCurtis, sullen as ever, seemed to be pretending that Mitch did not exist.

“I really should be going now, Cannibal,” Mitch added. “I’ve got things to do tonight.”

Scarcely ten minutes earlier, immediately after he had arrived home to find Cannibal and Stella lounging in his living room with heads full of coke, Cannibal had herded him back outside and into the Blazer. Just a little tour of the lab and some neighborly hospitality, Cannibal had insisted—a little beer, a little whiskey, maybe a little hit of coke to put lead in the pencil. Much against his will, Mitch was dragged along, knowing it was pointless to let Cannibal have anything but his own way.

“Hey, I haven’t finished showin’ you around yet, Mitchie Witchie,” protested Cannibal. “Come ’ere. You’re gonna get a fuckin’ rush out of this.”

The big man pulled open the door of a fairly new General Electric refrigerator, inside of which was at least a case of Anchor Steam in bottles. Instantly Mitch’s mouth was watering, and he was grateful to the god of beer when Cannibal tossed him one.

“I ain’t showin’ you the
beer,
little man,” said a laughing Cannibal. “It’s
this
I want you to see.” He pointed to a pair of packages neatly wrapped in butcher paper and tied with kite string. “That’s two pounds of crack, m’man, each worth seventy-five large on the street in Seattle. Me and Stella cooked it up this weekend.”

Mitch guzzled half his beer, hoping that the tingling suds would dampen the hunger and the demon-taste, but they did not. The beer merely ignited pain in the torn flesh inside his mouth, Cannibal’s handiwork of two days earlier.

“That’s great, Cannibal, really great. I can see why you’re getting rich.”

Cannibal slammed the refrigerator door and moved over to a countertop.

“The beauty of it is that we did it with these.”

He indicated four glass coffeepots like those found in cheap cafés and truck stops, a hot plate, and a pair of digital scales. Stacked nearby was an open case of baking soda. In a sagging cupboard sat rows of bottles with white labels marked “ETHER” in black felt-tip. Scattered over the countertops were clusters of little glass vials, measuring spoons, paring knives, and butane lighters.

“No fancy equipment or nothin’. Me and Stella have got this down to a science, Mitchie. I do the cookin’, she does the dryin’, and we both do the packin’.” He nodded at a feeble-looking card table upon which sat plastic molds and packing materials, the final station in an assembly line that produced evil little chips of smokable cocaine.

“Like I say, Cannibal, it’s great,” repeated Mitch, worrying now about what the former secretary-general of D Block wanted from him tonight. “I always knew you were smart, and I knew you’d find a way to jackpot when you got out of Walla Walla. It looks like life is being good to you, and I’m glad, I really am. But hey, I’ve had a hard day, and I really need some Zs, man.”

Cannibal’s attitude suddenly changed. His blue-stubbled jaw clamped tight and his hazy, hooded eyes grew hard as ball bearings. He thudded across the room to Mitch, grabbed the little man’s shirt, and forced their faces to within inches of each other. Mitch felt himself go numb with terror.

“Now you listen to me, Mitchie Witchie, and you listen hard. I’ll let you go when I’m good and ready, and not until, you dig? You seem to forget that you and me are partners.” The stink of Cannibal’s breath flooded into Mitch’s nostrils, gagging him, and for a horrible moment he feared he would vomit in Cannibal’s face—which of course would mean the end of his wretched life, right then and there. “We’ve got responsibilities to each other, you and me. Just because you happen to be a little tired doesn’t mean you can kiss off your responsibilities, hear what I’m sayin’? Am I getting
through
to you, little man?”

To get his point across, Cannibal shook him hard, and Mitch heard popping sounds in his neck. But he managed to nod his head. Cannibal smiled and released him.

“It’s not like I don’t want good things for you, Mitch,” he continued, now smoothing the smaller man’s shirt like a helpful big brother, still chewing his bubble gum loudly. “I’m payin’ you good money for your help, and all I ask is that you do what you’re told. That’s your end of the fuckin’ bargain—to do what you’re fuckin’ told. I’ve got a lot invested in this business, a lot of goodwill worked up with people, and I’m not going to let you queer it because you’ve got an attitude problem.”

For the first time that evening, Stella DeCurtis took an interest in the men’s conversation. She moved close to Mitch, a cigarette between her bony fingers, smelling heavily of costly perfume. Her colorless, coke-glazed eyes looked like plastic buttons set deep in a painted doll’s face.

“There’s something you should know, little slave boy,” she said. “We didn’t just
happen
to settle here. We didn’t choose this place just because it’s out here in the boonies, y’know. Wc chose it because of
you
.”

Mitch’s eyes widened and his throat went dry as sandpaper.

“Does that surprise you?” she went on. “I can’t imagine why it should. You see, Cannibal remembered you from the joint. He knew you were a worthless little shitbag who’d never have balls enough to fuck us over. That makes you the ideal throwaway. You’re cheap, you’re gutless, and you’re expendable. What makes it even better is that you live just up the road. so you’re always within reach if we need you. How does that make you feel, slave boy?”

“Aw, c’mon, Stella, don’t be so hard on the little puke,” pleaded Cannibal Strecker with mock sympathy. “Underneath that sorry excuse for a chest beats a heart like warm oatmeal. Ain’t that so, Marvelous Mitch?”

Marvelous Mitch gulped air and nodded.

“He’ll do just fine, now that his attitude’s straightened out,” added Cannibal. “He’ll carry our goods over to Seattle once a week, and he’ll keep an eye on the road for us, just to make sure our arrangement with the local heat is working out.”

“I—I don’t get it,” stammered Mitch. “I thought I was going to be a throwaway. Am I supposed to be a lookout, too?”

“Hell no,” answered Cannibal, chawing his bubble gum with violent relish. “We just want you to check on this dump now and then when we’re not here. All you have to do is give me a call if you see somethin’ that looks like a narc pokin’ around, so we’ll know not to show up. We never store any drugs here, so if the place gets tossed we won’t lose anything more expensive than a case or two of baking soda and a few bottles of ether—nothin’ anybody could use to send us back to the joint with.”

“What’s this about an arrangement with the heat?” Mitch wanted to know.

Cannibal’s eyes hardened into ball bearings again. “That’s no concern of yours, little man. Let’s just say that our associates in Seattle have worked out a deal with somebody who’s important locally and that we’ll hear about any undercover jobs goin’ down in the neighborhood. Like if the state and county decide to get tough on crack, or something equally wacko.”

“That’s enough, Cannibal,” said Stella DeCurtis in a tone Mitch had never heard anyone use with the animal. “The little shit doesn’t need to know anything about anything.”

“I only told him that much so he can sleep nights,” apologized Cannibal. “We don’t want him goin’ wild and paranoid on us, do we?”

“All he needs to know is that you’ll rip his liver out if he ever crosses us or if he ever fucks up,” said Stella.

“Hell, he already knows that, don’t you, Marvelous Mitch? You’ve seen ol’ Cannibal in action before.”

Indeed, Mitch had. Better than most, he knew what this beast was capable of, and his hatred of him roiled in his guts like a nest of rattlesnakes. The day would come, he vowed silently, when he would be free of this monster, when Cannibal’s ownership of Mitch Nistler would end. For the barest moment he thrilled to the vision of holding a large-caliber pistol to Cannibal’s ugly head, of pulling the trigger and hearing the magnificent bark of fire and smoke, of seeing Cannibal’s subhuman skull come apart and his brain spatter in all directions. The vision sweetened as he saw Stella DeCurtis kneeling at his feet, naked as a newly hatched crow, pleading for her worthless life, offering to fuck him and suck his cock, until choking on the muzzle of the gun and...

“Hell, what are we standin’ around here for?” barked Cannibal, having regained his good cheer. “We’ve got work to do—miles to go before we sleep and all that good shit. We’re due at eight, so we can’t fiddle-fuck around any longer. Let’s all have a little toot and hit the road.”

Mitch came to earth hard. “What do you mean, hit the road? You mean
tonight
? What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to make some money, Mitchie Witchie.” Cannibal laughed. “Two hundred and fifty fresh little greenies—your first big run. And just to make things easy, Stella and I are gonna walk you through it, introduce you to the people you’ll be working with from now on. All you gotta do is sit back and relax!”

So the three of them snorted perhaps eighty dollars worth of cocaine from the surface of a chrome-edged mirror that Stella DeCurtis produced from her alligator-skin purse. Cannibal then took the two neatly wrapped packages of crack from the refrigerator and zipped them into a large gym bag, which he ceremoniously turned over to Mitch. They switched off the lights in the sorry little house, locked it up with massive Yale padlocks, and boarded Cannibal’s Blazer for the ferry ride across the Puget Sound. They nipped Jack Daniel’s from a bottle under the seat, smoked cigarettes, and listened to country-western music on the stereo. But Mitch did not relax, as Cannibal had instructed him. Despite the booze and coke in his veins, the
hunger
was tearing him apart from the inside out.

They got off the ferry at the Seattle Terminal and took First Avenue northward through the heart of the downtown area to Pike Street. The evening was young, but a cold drizzle and a stiff wind off the Sound had thinned the traffic that usually swarms around Pike Place.

Cannibal Strecker turned into an alley just a block from the market, and Mitch squinted through foggy glass at the sights that crept by on either side of the truck. Huddled amid rusting dumpsters and mountainous stacks of plastic garbage bags, their backs propped against walls of sweating brick and cement, were the street people of downtown Seattle, the winos and bag ladies and shopping-cart jockeys, the child prostitutes already exhausted from a tough night on Second Avenue, and the wild-eyed addicts of heroin and crack.

At an intersection of alleys, Cannibal turned yet again and piloted the Blazer into an open area paved with broken asphalt and concrete. Once a parking lot, the site had been chosen for yet another office building, wherein lawyers and accountants would impress their clients with spectacular views of the Puget Sound. It was dark, but Mitch could see the looming abutments of an elevated roadway ahead, which he suspected was the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Cannibal parked the Blazer next to an abutment out of the rain, and switched off the headlights. Darkness enfolded them, and Mitch fought the panic of instant blindness. After their eyes adjusted, the three of them piled out and lit cigarettes.

“Where the hell are they?” grumbled Stella DeCurtis. “It’s almost eight o’clock, and it’s colder than shit out here.” She seemed worried about muddying her alligator shoes.

“Don’t sweat it, Punkin’,” said Cannibal. “They’ll be on time. They always are.”

And they were. Two cars arrived, a dark Caddy and a new white Corvette. The main man was someone Cannibal hailed as Laughing Luis Sandoval, the driver of the Corvette. From the Caddy stepped two bodyguards and a pair of “mules,” couriers of crack to various retail houses throughout the Seattle metro area. One of the mules had a name: Dexter, the man whom Mitch would meet every Monday night in some horrible place like this to hand over crack and money and to receive unprocessed cocaine for delivery back to Cannibal.

Though the darkness denied Mitch a clear view of their faces—which was exactly why this spot had been chosen—he got from Luis Sandoval the impression of a small man not much taller than himself. A small man who dressed in expensive clothes. Who bathed himself in expensive scent. Who had battled his way up from some stifling Hispanic slum to become a mandarin of the crack trade in Seattle, Washington.

Beneath Sandoval’s amiable Latin charm ran an icy current of threat: Notwithstanding his willingness to laugh and joke and call a stranger by name, as he did with Mitch, he would gleefully kill anyone who needed killing. Of that Mitch was certain.

After the introductions, Mitch handed the gym bag full of crack to Dexter, and everyone talked and chuckled and smoked cigarettes that glowed like little orange eyes in the dark. Money changed hands, hands slapped backs, and everyone was great friends. His business done for tonight, Sandoval said goodbye, but before climbing into his white Corvette he took time for a quiet word with Mitch.

“Welcome to our little band of bad guys,
amigo,
” he said, squeezing Mitch’s arm. “I hope you’re happy with us. Just remember who you are, okay?” A dim hint of a smile flashed in the darkness. “You do right by us, we do right by you. Otherwise...” He made a sound in the rear of his mouth that could have signified a throat being cut with a long, glittering knife, which Mitch supposed was strapped to his forearm in a quick-release scabbard. Then Sandoval laughed loudly, and everyone else did, too.