Red Fish, Dead Fish Read online

  “Claudine, why are you making your son and his friends deal meth out of your garage?”

  Claudine patted her son’s shoulder, tears leaking out of her squeezed-shut eyes. “Heroin,” she said quietly. “We’re dealing heroin out of my garage. But Billy, our supplier, he… he went to ground over a week ago. This is our last batch, and people….” Her voice broke. “People get mean, right? And I don’t know how to make heroin. We just get the packages, and we distribute them like this ’cause Jael and Robbie had a paper route, and we figured they could keep that and, you know, use it and—”

  Oh God. She was all over the place.

  Jackson took a deep breath. “Claudine, why are you getting your son and his friends to deal heroin out of your garage?”

  She opened her eyes and begged him with them. Her makeup stayed perfect, but her nose had swollen, and she looked like she needed a tissue and a glass of wine.

  “Because my husband killed himself to get out of debt, and we were going to lose the house.”

  Jackson sighed.

  “Of course.” He swallowed then. Ellery had stopped shouting over the phone, and Jackson figured that telling his lov—his frie—his boyfri—his colleague that he wasn’t dead would be the considerate thing to do. “Claudine, Larry’s going to drop the knife—” He glared, and the weapon made a dull thud and a clink as the haft hit the ground first and then the blade hit the cement. “—and now I’m going to get my phone. The gun is loaded. My shoulder hurts because Larry there stuck a switchblade in it, so yes, making me raise the gun is going to be a risk.”

  He glared at them all again. This time Larry wet his pants, the stain spreading across the black denim like a plague map.

  “Don’t. Make. Me. Do. It.”

  They all nodded soberly, and Jackson put the gun in his good hand and twisted his shoulder behind him. Something tore and something bled and he swore.

  Claudine gave a little moan and buried her face against her grown son’s side, and Jackson managed to pick up his cell phone.

  “I’m alive.”

  “Good. I’m going to kill you myself.” Ellery’s voice shook.

  “No jury in the land would convict you,” Jackson assured him. “But it’s not worth the trial expense. I take it you called the cops?”

  “Are you injured?”

  He’d bled through the gauze. He could feel it.

  “No more than usual. How long until they get here?”

  Claudine burst into a fresh round of sobbing.

  “Well, given that I told them shots fired, you should be hearing sirens about now.”

  Jackson let out a sigh. “How would you like to defend Ms. Levine and her band of merry pranksters—”

  “Pro bono?”

  Jackson looked over her shoulder at the house and the pricey neighborhood. “No. I think she’s going to sell her house.”

  She sank to the ground, rocking back and forth, and her son and his friend joined her. Jackson gave a grunt and sat in the passenger seat of his car, avoiding the broken glass on the seat.

  “Great. I’ll do it. The partners will be thrilled. Now will you come in?”

  “Nope.” Jackson had ibuprofen and water in his glove compartment. Just as soon as he could shake Ellery off this interminable phone call, he was going to get him some of that.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Her supplier’s name was Billy—and he seems to have fallen off the map. Does that sound like anyone you know?”

  “Oh God. Jackson, calling that number is an epically bad idea.”

  “Two cases, one granola-bar-toting asshole—”

  “He might be dead!” Ellery said rashly.

  Oh Jesus. “You’re having someone watch the house, right? While you’re there without me? You’re not going there alone—right? I mean, you can sleep on Mike and Jade’s couch, but you can’t go home—”

  “Langdon will give me a detail, Jackson—just, why can’t you come home yourself?”

  “’Cause I’ve got shit to do. Now keep me briefed on Owens, and don’t go home by yourself!”

  Jackson hit End Call and shoved the phone into his pocket, where it buzzed furiously. Well, let it.

  “Claudine, Mommy dearest, I need your attention. Can you chill out long enough for me to connect the dots here?”

  Claudine Levine had big blue eyes and a tiny Audrey Hepburn nose, as well as blonde hair in a little ponytail. Her son held her like a precious thing, and Jackson’s heart twisted as he heard sirens wailing in the background.

  “Yes?” she sniffled, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her sweater.

  “So let me get this straight. Your husband died—”

  “Blew his brains out,” Jael said, the hostility in his voice evident.

  Aces.

  “And you found him.” Jackson had to say it. “I’m sorry for that—it wasn’t fair. So your dad dies, and you lose your shit for a little. You go to juvie, and you meet up with Larry and Robert and your buddy on the bicycle—”

  “Thad,” Jael said helpfully and then assumed a classic doh expression when Larry smacked him in the arm.

  “Wow. Thad, Jai—Jay-el, Larry, and Robert. All you need is a water cooler. Scary. Anyway, Larry and Robert have effectively alienated their families—”

  “Their mothers were both messes,” Claudine confirmed, patting Larry’s knee. “And they’d been good to Jay in juvenile detention.”

  “Saved my life,” Jael said softly. Larry inclined his head, and Jackson hated the world all over again.

  “Great. So who suggested selling drugs?”

  “Me and Bobby,” Larry said, like Jael’s quiet worship had given him strength. “We were in for possession, but we were already distributing. My mom knew Billy since I was in diapers. I knew how to call him up and set up a buy. Mrs. L. was, you know, letting us crash on her couch, feeding us. Treating us right. But she was worried that her husband’s insurance wouldn’t come, and they had to sell the minivan and buy the POS and stuff. So Bobby and me, we said we knew a way to make a lot of money really fast.”

  “Me and Thad had a paper route before I got in trouble,” Jael said quietly. “Thad, he’s known me his whole life. He wanted to help out.”

  Jackson grunted, and the cop cars rounded the corner, five of them, sirens blazing. He stood, weapon in hand, safety on, held by the trigger guard so the muzzle pointed up, and waited patiently.

  “So, my house…?”

  “Billy disappeared,” Claudine said, her voice crumbling. “And we were running out of product. And people had already threatened me and Jael. So I looked up how to make meth online. It’s bad for you.” She nodded earnestly at Jackson. “And so we thought we’d do it in vacant houses. I….” She grimaced at Larry. “I guess Larry couldn’t tell you still lived there.”

  “It’s been under repair,” Jackson said. “But it’s part of a duplex—”

  “Dammit, Larry!”

  “Sorry, Mrs. L. It was on my bus route, and it looked okay to me!”

  “Well, not if there were people right next door!”

  “Yeah. Sorry. We were running out of time. That’s why there was product in the kitchen. We were cutting and measuring the last bit.”

  “And using,” Jackson said as the SPD came screeching to a halt. Larry looked away, and Claudine gasped. “Well, jail will clean you out—”

  “Jail?” All three of them had the nerve to look surprised.

  “Yes, you’ll still serve time!” Jesus, what did they expect? Being white and cute did not a soccer mom/drug lord excuse! “And you’ve earned it. But maybe we can keep the boys out of hard time, Claudine—if you pony up and own most of it.”

  “My fault,” she whispered, leaning her head on her son’s shoulder. “All my fault.”

  Well, yes, a little, he thought, comparing her to the other women he’d known. Not his mom, of course, who was worse, but… but Rhonda or Jade. Kaden’s wife was too damned smart to need to sell dru
gs to keep her house. Jade would kick Mike in the balls for even suggesting it.

  Jade and Kaden’s mom, Toni, would have done exactly what she had done. Work her ass off, make her own clothes, and keep her son and daughter and their worthless damned friend fed, warm, and with a roof over their heads until they got big enough to do their own damned raising.

  Claudine Levine didn’t deserve the name mother next to Toni Cameron.

  But she wasn’t a monster either.

  Jackson had grown up with one of those, right? He’d recognize the breed.

  “So I can keep you from doing hard time. I need you guys to do two things for me as you’re getting processed.”

  Claudine looked at him with trust in her eyes.

  “The first thing is remember the name of this law firm. Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper.”

  “Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper,” she repeated dutifully.

  “Freeze!” the cops called out, and Jackson turned and rolled his eyes at the point man.

  “I’m a PI for Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and—”

  “We know who you are. Put the weapon down slowly.”

  Jackson breathed out some of the tension that had been holding his body captive and squatted very slowly so he could set the weapon—bargain basement .38, if he knew his guns—on the ground in front of him.

  “What’s the other thing?” Claudine asked, voice shaking.

  “Give me the last place you guys saw Billy the drug dealer.”

  “Crack house out in Meadowview,” Larry replied promptly. “Billy’s place, actually.” He looked down. “You know them old neighborhoods, where everyone’s got foreclosure signs up and nobody gives a shit where you squat? Place was the size of a shoebox, you know? But he had girls in the bedrooms and people weighin’ product on the table. Like a business.” Larry brightened, his scrawny, big-nosed face looking pathetic and young. “Sorta like when we were, you know, doin’ business in the garage, Mrs. L.”

  Claudine Levine looked up and smiled through her wobbly lips and tears, and at that point the police came swooping in to cuff everybody and read them their rights. Claudine and the boys seemed to pull themselves together while they were being cuffed and processed, and Jackson stood patiently, hands over his head while his shoulder squealed like a pig in protest, until the lead officer came to talk to him.

  “Rivers?”

  Thirty-fiveish, sandy-brown hair, hazel eyes, a square jaw with a bold nose. Not bad-looking—Jackson would admit it.

  “Officer Pierpont?” Jackson checked the badge on his chest. “Wait—Eric Pierpont? You know Mack Davis over at Highway Patrol?”

  Oh thank God.

  “Yes, sir, I do. You may put your arms down if you please. I just want to chat.”

  Jackson let out a groan of relief as he lowered his arms and gave a brief thanks that—when the SPD could have made his life a living hell, like they had so many other times when he was working a case—in this instance, he happened to know one of the good guys.

  “So, can you tell us what went on here?” Pierpont indicated the nice little house with his chin.

  “Yes, sir, I can—if you can make sure my firm is contacted when those three are out of processing. You’ve got one more kid out there—stocky, white, brown and brown, first name’s Thad, and he’s got one of those kid faces that looks like he’s gonna be mouth-breathing his entire life.”

  “My sister’s kid,” Pierpont said, catching on immediately. “Big red lips—girls or boys go nuts after these kids. I don’t get it myself.”

  Jackson let out a chuckle. “Well, thank God, or you’d be in the wrong line of work.”

  Pierpont winked at him lazily. “Naw, I get to meet strong-jawed faces with green eyes and sort of a pout on this job. That’s a perk.”

  Jackson’s eyebrows about hit his hairline. “Uh, taken,” he said, suddenly grateful for the reflex. For a moment his old days came flooding back, when he could take Pierpont around the corner in a lull in the investigation and nail him to the wall, getting rid of frustration, puzzlement, and raw physical exertion in one blind act.

  But Pierpont would not shit his pants on the other end of the phone when he heard a gunshot, and Jackson, as strung out as he felt on emotion, on anger, on… (pain)… on whatever—he couldn’t leave Ellery hanging.

  Not with sex and not with knowing he wasn’t dead.

  Apparently he had a line. Now he knew.

  “That there’s a shame. I thought I was going to get a crack at a legend.” Pierpont flashed an appealing smile, and Jackson wondered how many people had actually heard of him from his man-slut days.

  “Davis talks too much,” he mumbled. Yeah, he and Mack had done the wild thing once. Mack had even been close to doing it again, but Jackson had shied away.

  As far as anybody knew, Ellery was the only relationship he’d had besides Jade that lasted more than twice.

  “Well, he had a thing. But speaking of, let’s get back to business. This place doesn’t look like a hotbed of drug activity, Mr. Rivers, except for the bullet in the sidewalk—” He frowned at the wound in the concrete, and Jackson grimaced.

  “That’s my fault. That Larry kid rushed me—little asshole.”

  Pierpont wrinkled his nose. “And you didn’t shoot him?”

  Ugh. Jackson scowled. “No, I’m not going to shoot him. He weighs ninety-eight pounds soaking wet, and I spent the morning beating the crap out of him legally. It would be like shooting a puppy for shitting on your floor.”

  “Point taken. Now, why were you holding a gun on a kid so he could rush you?”

  Jackson was suddenly glad he wasn’t single. Ellery would have managed to say that without sounding like an asshole. And even if he had sounded like an asshole, Jackson would have forgiven him.

  “Can you take the fact that they smashed my window in and held a gun—”

  “That was his gun?” Oh God—now he was impressed.

  “Yes, the gun was Jael’s, the knife was Larry’s, and the drugs belong to everybody. Do you want to see?”

  Pierpont looked at the huddling family and let out a low whistle. “Sure.”

  “Then follow me.”

  Jackson trekked up the driveway, the kind with the double strip of cement and a strip of lawn between it, growing soft and mossy in the damp of the fall. The yard was raised to the level of the house, and the side walls that held in the earth and lush lawn were made of the same discolored old concrete with the big shiny rocks in it that made up the sidewalks. Someone had mowed the lawn and trimmed the flowers—and even put a fresh coat of paint on the white wooden porch. The stucco was brown, but dark and sturdy brown, and a slurry of wind chimes danced in the faint autumn breeze.

  The place, in short, was everything Jackson had ever dreamed of in a house when he’d been a kid.

  He was glad they were heading for the garage—glad the garage was where they did their business. The thought of the inside of a place like this—with china hutches and dusted tchotchkes and pictures of Jail from the time he was a tadpole all vying for space in a room with pretty wallpaper—used as a background for drug paraphernalia made Jackson want to throw up.

  Drugs were meant for dingy apartments full of smoke and dust, with rotting food on the counter, and a dirty mattress with some blankets in the corner for the pet who refused to run away.

  “So I’m not sure what’s in the house,” Jackson confessed, trying not to admit his heart was threading a steeplechase as they walked. “I’m going to assume you’ll find something, and what’s here, in plain sight, should get you a warrant nice and legal.”

  The box of newspapers was still there—neatly divided.

  “Oh look, the Wednesday ad flier,” Pierpont snarked. “Whatever shall we do?”

  Jackson was over it. He grabbed a paper with a red band and rolled it off, wincing when the rubber snapped back and bruised his fingertips. Yeah. That fucking day. Then he unfolded the paper and slid the two dime bags into
his palm.

  He handed Pierpont one of them, held between his thumb and forefinger, and palmed the other one neatly, sliding it into the pocket of his jeans. Pierpont was too focused on the evidence in front of his eyes to see the evidence Jackson had just stolen.

  “All the newspapers?” he asked blankly.

  “No. Just the ones with the fat red expensive rubber bands.” Jackson gestured to the bins—three of them, big green plastic ones, labeled with street names and divided between the two different color-coded rolls of newspaper. Two of the bins were mostly tiny green rubber bands, and the third was almost all big fat red ones—and took note of the street names, unsurprised.

  College students. Some of them were just dying to piss away their lives.

  “Do we know who the kid was delivering to?”

  Oh. “I think the kid on the bike—Thad? He had a notebook in his hand, probably to keep track of the original deliveries to begin with. If you want to make this a big fat sting, go for it.” Jackson shrugged, suddenly tired when this was the smallest part of his day.

  “What are you even doing here?” Pierpont asked as he was getting out his radio. “I mean—how did you even know about this?”

  “They ran out of heroin and were using abandoned buildings to cook meth. Guess whose house is still being fucking repaired.” The injustice burned. Damn Claudine Levine anyway, for thinking her kids were more important and more special than everyone else’s kids.

  Pierpont’s soft red mouth fell open, and Jackson wondered if he’d looked like an eternal mouth breather as a kid. “That was you this morning? I heard the owner got stabbed!”

  Jackson looked at his shoulder, unsurprised to see some pink seeping through the sweatshirt. “Greatly exaggerated.” He sighed. “How much of my statement are you going to need?”

  “Can you hang out in your car a while? I’ll be by to make it official right after I get the DEA in here and get your happy heroin family down for booking.”

  “Don’t forget to look out for Thad,” Jackson muttered, and then, because this guy seemed a little gun-happy, “He is not armed and not dangerous. Try not to shoot him if he turns to ride his bike away. Hear me?”