The Cocaine Chronicles Read online

  “We’ll go to my place,” the guy said, all super suave, like he was some international man of mystery inviting us to see his etchings.

  “A shooting gallery?” Molly squealed, all excited. “Ohmigod!”

  He seemed a little offended. “I don’t let dope fiends in my house.”

  He led us to one of the town houses, and I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not some place with doilies and old overstuffed furniture and pictures of Jesus and some black guy on the wall. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I figured out later, but I was really distracted at the time, and thought it was the guy’s dad or something.) But the most surprising thing was this little old lady sitting in the middle of the sofa, hands folded in her lap. She had a short, all-white Afro, and wore a pink T-shirt and flowery ski pants, which bagged on her stick-thin legs. Ski pants. I hadn’t seen them in, like, forever.

  “Antone?” she said. “Did you come to fix my lunch?”

  “In a minute, Grandma. I have guests.”

  “Are they nice people, Antone?”

  “Very nice people,” he said, winking at us, and it was only then that I realized the old lady was blind. You see, her eyes weren’t milky or odd in any way, they were brown and clear, as if she was staring right at us. You had to look closely to realize that she couldn’t really see, that the gaze, steady as it was, didn’t focus on anything.

  Antone went to the kitchen, an alcove off the dining room, and fixed a tray with a sandwich, some potato chips, a glass of soda, and an array of medications. How could you not like a guy like that? So sweet, with broad shoulders and close-cropped hair like his granny’s, only dark. Then, very quietly, with another wink, he showed us how to smoke.

  “Antone, are you smoking in here? You know I don’t approve of tobacco.”

  “Just clove cigarettes, Grandma. Clove never hurt anybody.”

  He helped each of us with the pipe, getting closer than was strictly necessary. He smelled like clove, like clove and ginger and cinnamon. Antone the spice cookie. When he took the pipe from Molly’s mouth, he replaced it with his lips. I didn’t really want him to kiss me, but I’m so much prettier than Molly. Not to mention thinner. But then, I hear black guys like girls with big behinds, and Molly certainly qualified. You could put a can of beer on her ass and have her walk around the room and it wouldn’t fall off. Not being catty, just telling the literal truth. I did it once, at a party, when I was bored, and then Molly swished around with a can of Bud Light on her ass, showing off, like she was proud to have so much baggage.

  Weird, but I was hungrier than ever after smoking, which was so not the point. I mean, I wasn’t hungry in my stomach, I was hungry in my mouth. And what I wanted, more than anything in the world, were those potato chips on the blind lady’s tray. They were Utz Salt ’n Vinegar; I had seen Antone take them out of the green-and-yellow bag. I loooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooove Utz Salt ’n Vinegar, but they don’t come in a light version, so I almost never let myself have any. So I snagged one, just one, quiet as a cat. But, like they say, you can’t eat just one. Okay, so they say that about Lays, but it’s even more true about Utz, in my personal opinion. I kept stealing them, one at a time.

  “Antone? Are you taking food off my tray?”

  I looked to Antone for backup, but Molly’s tongue was so far in his mouth that she might have been flossing him. When he finally managed to detach himself, he said: “Um, Grandma? I’m going to take a little lie-down.”

  “What about your guests?”

  “They’re going,” he said, walking over to the door with a heavy tread and closing it.

  “It’s time for Judge Judy!” his granny said, which made me wonder, because how does a blind person know what time it is? Antone used the remote control to turn on the television. It was a black-and-white, total Smithsonian. After all, she was blind, so I guess it didn’t matter.

  Next thing I knew, I was alone in the room with the blind woman, who was fixated on Judge Judy as if she was going to be tested on the outcome, and I was eyeing her potato chips, while Antone and Molly started making the kind of noises that you make when you’re trying so hard not to make noise that you can’t help making noise.

  “Antone?” the old lady called out. “Is the dishwasher running? Because I think a piece of cutlery might have gotten caught in the machinery.”

  I was so knocked out that she knew the word “cutlery.” How cool is that?

  But I couldn’t answer, of course. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “It’s—okay—Granny,” Antone grunted from the other room. “It’s—all—going—to—be—Jesus Christ—okay.”

  The noises started up again. Granny was right. It did sound like a piece of cutlery caught in the dishwasher. But then it stopped—Antone’s breathing, the mattress springs, Molly’s little muffled grunts—they just stopped, and they didn’t stop naturally, if you know what I mean. I’m not trying to be cruel, but Molly’s a bit of a slut, and I’ve listened to her have sex more times than I can count, and I know how it ends, even when she’s faking it, even when she has to be quiet, and it just didn’t sound like the usual Molly finish at all. Antone yelped, but she was silent as a grave.

  “Antone, what are you doing?” his granny asked. Antone didn’t answer. Several minutes went by, and then there was a hoarse whisper from the bedroom.

  “Um, Kelley? Could you come here a minute?”

  “What was that?” his granny asked.

  I used the remote to turn up the volume on Judge Judy. “DO I LOOK STUPID TO YOU?” the judge was yelling. “REMEMBER THAT PRETTY FADES BUT STUPID IS FOREVER. I ASKED IF YOU HAD IT IN WRITING, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ALL THIS FOLDEROL ABOUT ORAL AGREEMENTS.”

  When I went into the bedroom, Molly was under Antone, and I remember thinking—I was a little high, remember—that he made her look really thin because he covered up her torso, and Molly does have good legs and decent arms. He had a handsome back, too, broad and muscled, and a great ass. Brandon had no ass (con), but he had nice legs (pro).

  It took me a moment to notice that he had a pair of scissors stuck in the middle of his beautiful back.

  “I told him no,” Molly whispered, although the volume on the television was so loud that the entire apartment was practically reverberating. “No means no.”

  There was a lot of blood, I noticed. A lot.

  “I didn’t hear you,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t hear you say any words.”

  “I mouthed it. He told me to keep silent because his grandmother is here. Still, I mouthed it. ‘No.’ ‘No.’” She made this incredibly unattractive fish mouth to show me.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I mean, I was totally up for giving him a blow job, especially after he said he’d give me a little extra, but he was, like, uncircumcised. I just couldn’t, Kelley, I couldn’t. I’ve never been with a guy like that. I offered him a hand job instead, but he got totally peeved and tried to force me.”

  The story wasn’t tracking. High as I was, I could see there were some holes. How did you get naked? I wanted to ask. Why didn’t you shout? If Grandma knew you were here, Antone wouldn’t have dared misbehaved. He had clearly been more scared of Granny than he was into Molly.

  “This is the stash house,” Molly said. “Antone showed me.”

  “What?”

  “The drugs. They’re here. All of it. We could just help ourselves. I mean, he’s a rapist, Kelley. He’s a criminal. He sells drugs to people. Help me, Kelley. Get him off me.”

  But when I rolled him off, I saw there was a condom. Molly saw it, too.

  “We should, like, so get rid of that. It would only complicate things. When I saw he was going to rape me, I told him he should at least be courteous.”

  I nodded, as if agreeing. I flushed the condom down the toilet, helped Molly clean the blood off her, and then used my purse to pack up what we could find, as she was carrying this little bitty Kate Spade knockoff that wasn’t much good for anything. We found some
cash, too, about $2,000, and helped ourselves to that, on the rationale that it would be more suspicious if we didn’t. On the way out, I shook a few more potato chips on Granny’s plate.

  “Antone?” she said. “Are you going out again?”

  Molly grunted low, and that seemed to appease Granny. We walked out slowly, as if we had all the time in the world, but again I had that feeling of a thousand pairs of eyes on us. We were in some serious trouble. There would have to be some sort of retribution for what we had done. What Molly had done. All I did was steal a few potato chips.

  “Take Quarry Road home instead of the interstate,” I told Molly.

  “Why?” she asked. “It takes so much longer.”

  “But we know it, know all the ins and outs. If someone follows us, we can give them the slip.”

  About two miles from home, I told her I had to pee so bad that I couldn’t wait and asked her to stand watch for me, a longtime practice with us. We were at that point, high above the old limestone quarry, where we had parked a thousand times as teenagers. A place where Molly had never said “No” to my knowledge.

  “Finished?” she asked, when I emerged from behind the screen of trees.

  “Almost,” I said, pushing her hard, sending her tumbling over the precipice. She wouldn’t be the first kid in our class to break her neck at the highest point on Quarry Road. My high school boyfriend did, in fact, right after we broke up. It was a horrible accident. I didn’t eat for weeks and got down to a size four. Everyone felt bad for me—breaking up with Eddie only to have him commit suicide that way. There didn’t seem to be any reason for me to explain that Eddie was the one who wanted to break up. Unnecessary information.

  I crossed the hillside to the highway, a distance of about a mile, then jogged the rest of the way. After all, as my mother would be the first to tell you, I went for a run that afternoon, while Molly was off shopping, according to her mom. I assumed the police would tie Antone’s dead body to Molly’s murder, and figure it for a revenge killing, but I was giving the cops too much credit. Antone rated a paragraph in the morning paper. Molly, who turned out to be pregnant, although not even she knew it—probably wouldn’t even have known who the father was—is still on the front page all these weeks later. (The fact that they didn’t find her for three days heightened the interest, I guess. I mean, she was just an overweight dental hygienist from the suburbs—and a bit of a slut, as I told you. But the media got all excited about it.) The general consensus seems to be that Keith did it, and I don’t see any reason to let him off the hook, not yet. He’s an asshole. Plus, almost no one in this state gets the death penalty.

  Meanwhile, he’s telling people just how many men Molly had sex with in the past month, including Brandon, and police are still trying to figure out who had sex with her right before she died. (That’s why you’re supposed to get the condom on as early as possible, girls. Penises drip. Just fyi.) I pretended to be shocked, but I already knew about Brandon, having seen Molly’s car outside his apartment when I cruised his place at two a.m. a few nights after Brandon told me he wanted to see other people. My ex-boyfriend and my best friend, running around behind my back. Everyone feels so bad for me, but I’m being brave, although I eat so little that I’m down to a size two. I just bought a Versace dress and Manolos for a date this weekend with my new boyfriend, Robert. I’ve never spent so much money on an outfit before. But then, I’ve never had $2,000 in cash to spend as I please.

  LAURA LIPPMAN is a New York Times best-selling writer who has published sixteen novels and a collection of short stories; she also edited Baltimore Noir, part of the award-winning Akashic Noir Series. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans.

  white irish

  by ken bruen

  Man, I’m between that fuckin’ rock and the proverbial hard place. Hurtin’?

  Whoa … so bad.

  My septum’s burned out. Kiddin’, I ain’t. There’s a small mountain of snow on the table. Soon as the bleed stops, I’m burying myself in there, just tunneling in. The blood ran into my mouth about an hour ago, and fuck, made the mistake of checking in the mirror.

  Nearly had a coronary. A dude staring back, blood all down his chin, splattered on the white T-shirt, the treasured Guns n’ Roses one, heard a whimper of …

  Terror.

  Horror.

  Anguish.

  A heartbeat till I realized I was the one doing the whimpering.

  How surprising is that?

  The Sig Sauer is by the stash, ready to kick ass. Say it loud, Lock ’n’ fuckin’ load. Is it an echo here, or does that come back as rock ’n’ roll?

  I’m losing it.

  Yeah, yeah, like I don’t fuckin’ know? Gimme a break, I know.

  All right?

  Earth to muthahfuckah, HELLO … I am, like … receiving this.

  The devil’s in the details. My mom used to say that. God bless her Irish heart. And I sing, “If you ever go across the sea to Ireland … It may be at the closing of your day …”

  Got that right.

  A Galway girl, she got lost in the nightmare of the American Dream and never got home again. If she could see me now.

  Buried her three years ago, buried her cheap. I was short on the green, no pun intended. A pine box, 300 bucks was the most I could hustle. I still owe 150 on it.

  A cold morning in February, we put her in the colder ground.

  Huge crowd and a lone piper playing “Carrickfergus.”

  I wish … There was me, Me and Bobby McGee.

  Sure.

  One gravedigger, a sullen fuck, and me, walking point. For the ceremony, a half-assed preacher. Him I found in a bar, out of it on shots of dollar whiskey and Shiner.

  Bought him a bottle of Maker’s Mark to perform the rites.

  Perform he did and fast, as he wasn’t getting the Mark till the deal was done.

  Galloped through the dying words. “Man, full of misery, has but a short time.”

  Like that.

  Even the gravedigger gaped at the rapidity, the words, tripping, spilling over each other.

  “Ashes to ashes.”

  I was thinking David Bowie. The first pound of clay was shoveled, and I went, “Wait up.”

  Didn’t have a rose to throw, so what the hell, took my wedding band, a claddagh, bounced it off the lid, the gold glinting against the dirt.

  Caught the greed in the digger’s eyes and let him see mine—the message: “Don’t even think about it.”

  I get back down that way, he’s wearing the ring, he’s meat.

  My current situation, fuck, it just, like, got the hell away from me, one of those heists, should have been a piece of cake.

  Cake with shredded glass.

  Take down a Mex named Raoul. A medium mover of high-grade powder. Me and Jimmy, my jail buddy, my main man.

  Simple score, simple plan. Go in roaring, put the Sig in Raoul’s face, take the coke, the cash, and sayonara sucker.

  No frills.

  Went to hell in a bucket.

  Raoul had backup. Two moonlighting Angels. We never thought to check the rear, where the hogs were parked. Jimmy had sworn Raoul would be alone, save for some trailer trash named Lori.

  And so it had seemed.

  We blazed in, I bitch-slapped Raoul, Jimmy hit Lori on the upside of her skull—then the bikers came out of the back room. Carrying. Sawed-offs.

  The smoke finally cleared and I was in Custer’s Last Stand. Everyone else was splattered on the floor, across the carpet, against the walls. Improved the shitty décor no end, gave that splash of color.

  Jimmy was slumped against a sofa, his entrails hanging out. I went, “You stupid fuck, you never mentioned Angels. This is way bigger than us.”

  The coke, too, more than he’d known. I needed two sacks to haul it out of there, and a bin liner for the cash.

  Shot Jimmy in the face. Did him a favor. Gut shot? You’re fucked.

  So, bikers, cops, and some stone-cold suppliers from wa
y south of Tijuana on my tail. I covered my tracks pretty good, I think, only made a few pit stops. A bad moment when I saw a dude give me the hard look, but I’m fairly sure I shook him.

  I’m holed up in the Houston airport Marriott. Who’s gonna look there?

  Checked in two days ago, leastways I figure it. Living on room service and the marching powder, thinking I’d have one hit, but it kinda sneaks up on you and you’re doing a whole stream without realizing. Got me a bad dose of the jitters, real bad.

  The first day, if that’s the day it was, I was nervous as a rat, pacing the room, taking hits offa the coke, chugging from the Jack D. Had made the pit stop for essentials, loaded up on hooch and a carton of Luckies, oh, and on impulse, a Zippo—had a logo if not the edge.

  Yankees, World Champions, 1999. Like that.

  Made me smile, a good year for the roses. The year I almost made first base. McKennit, met her in a bar, I’d been drinking Lone Star, nothing heavy, and building a buzz, almost mellow. Hadn’t even noticed her.

  Me and the ladies, not a whole lot of history there, leastways none of it good.

  She’d leaned over, asked, “Got a light?”

  Sure. Got a boner, too.

  Bought her a drink, figuring, a fox like she was, gotta be a working girl. I could go a couple of bills, have me a time.

  I was wrong, she wasn’t a hooker.

  Things got better, I took her home and, hell, I didn’t make a move, hung back, kissed her on the cheek, and she asked, “So, Jake, wanna go on, like, a … date?”

  Two months it lasted. Had me some fun, almost citizen shit, even bought her flowers and, oh god, Hershey’s Kisses, yeah, like, how lame is that?

  Got me laid.

  I’d a cushy number going, a neat line in credit card scams, pulling down some medium change. I was on the verge … fuck … I dunno. Asking her something. Telling her I’d like to set us up a place … Jesus, what was I thinking?

  We were sitting in a flash joint, finishing plates of linguini, sipping a decent Chianti, her knee brushing mine.

  I can still see how she looked, the candle throwing a soft blush on her cheek, her eyes brown, wide, and soft.