Gator was jangled on too much morning coffee, and now rubber-kneed from the bout at the sink, but when they entered the shop, he immediately started another pot. As the Mr. Coffee gurgled and dripped, he paced and watched Sheryl drift over to the cot in the alcove, tuck her knees under her, and start combing out her hair.
No afterglow booze. No drugs. He and Sheryl agreed. The first rule of the Great Monk Crooks was, they never used. Like Danny T. said in the joint: “You use, you lose the count.”
“So?” Sheryl asked, drawing the comb through her long hair, staring quizzically at the black kitten that emerged from a folded blanket under the desk and arched up against Gator’s shin.
“Jojo,” Gator said, picking up the cat, stroking it.
Sheryl’s eyes clicked around. “You mean…Danny T.’s Jimmy Jo?”
“Yep.” Gator gently put the kitten down, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to Sheryl. She set down the comb, took the cup in both hands, blew on it to cool it.
“The bust in Bayport, what? Eight, nine years ago, she said. “I hear it still cuts Danny like a knife.”
Casually Gator opened his desk drawer and took out the sheets of paper. “No one ever figured out who snitched on Jimmy Jo. Gave him to the narcs.”
Sheryl nodded. “Eats at Danny. Gave him ulcers, losing his only kid like that.”
“Wasn’t a snitch. Was an undercover cop.” He tapped the paper.
Sheryl narrowed her eyes, taking the papers; she drew up her knees cross-legged, got comfortable. “This is a search warrant,” she said as she flipped up the blue memo stapled to the top page, raised her eyebrows.
“Read,” he said.
She put on her serious thinking face and carefully read the warrant. Then she scanned it again. He reached in the desk again and tossed her the Washington County letter, the Visa statement.
“Connect the dots. I don’t trust myself,” Gator said.
Sheryl took her time reading, turning the pages, going back and forth, sipping her coffee, the student in her engaged. Times like this, he was grateful she was onboard. His deep bench. She glanced up, her eyes luminous, impressed.
“This guy, Broker,” she said slowly.
“I figure he was an undercover they didn’t want to show in court.”
“Maybe.” They locked eyes. “How’d you get this? Where?”
Gator smiled, “Never mind how. I got it from a house, yesterday afternoon. Where he’s staying.”
Sheryl’s eyes popped. “Up here?”
“Yep.”
“A state narc is up here?” Showing lots of whites, her eyes darted around the shop. “Shit, man…”
“Relax. If something was up, I’da heard from Keith. In fact, I’m working on that, to make sure,” Gator said.
Sheryl wrinkled her nose. She didn’t entirely approve of the way he played footsie with his childhood buddy, the sheriff.
Gator hurried to reassure her. “Way it looks, I don’t think he’s on the job anymore. Just living with his crazy old lady and his kid.”
Sheryl uncrossed her legs, got off the cot, and paced the narrow office. “Let me get this straight. You just stumbled on this?”
Gator shrugged. “If I told you how, you wouldn’t believe it. Doesn’t matter. What’s it mean?”
As Sheryl pondered her response, the black kitten reappeared from under the desk and glided to a bowl of water, then poked its head into a second bowl of cat food.
“I think Danny T. had a contract out on whoever snitched Jojo,” she said slowly. “It never went anywhere.”
“So,” Gator tossed up his hands in a gesture of great abundance, “let’s renegotiate the contract.”
Sheryl inclined her head so her hair fell in this dark cascade, and their eyes batted the idea back and forth. She frowned. “You mean…?”
“Make an approach, propose trading this ratfuck narc for…”
“A reliable supplier of precursor,” Sheryl said.
Gator took her hands in his, pulled her up from the cot, and twirled her in a celebratory circle. Sheryl went along for a moment, then her face went beetle-browed with concentration. She released Gator’s hands.
“Easier said than done, making an approach. When I tried putting out feelers to Danny’s guys, they treated me like a retread throwaway bitch. They’re still pissed at me ’cause I walked away from cooking for them. Shit, Gator, they wanted to know if I’d do prison visits again.”
“But this is different,” Gator said. “It’s got a personal angle, like a favor to the great man. We start out humble. Give them the guy like a gift. Don’t go to street guys. Go right to the top, Danny’s lawyer…”
An authentic ripple of disgust distorted her face. She clamped her arms across her chest. “You go see Dickie Werk, you blow him.”
“C’mon, this is different,” Gator insisted. Then he took her hand and walked her through the shop, past the disassembled tractor and the partitioned area where he kept his paints, paint gun, two protective suits with state-of-the-art rebreather masks. They entered the paint room. Hooks dangled from the ceiling on which he hung tractor parts. It was an almost hallucinatory space, swirled with layers of spray from the paint gun-red, orange, green, yellow. Empty now, kept scrupulously clean. Just a long workbench, a wide elaborate fume hood, and a color photo taped to the wall; a view of Sheryl’s sand beach lot in Belize. Gator believed in visualizing goals.
“We’re all set up-we got an industrial-rated exhaust system, the glassware, the mantles, the generator,” he said. “Got the perfect location, a pig tank full of anhydrous in the barn…and I got pickup, delivery, and disposal all figured out.”
“Figured out in theory,” Sheryl said tartly, bringing him back to earth. “Or have you forgotten what a mess it was two weeks ago, just cooking two pounds? All thumbs, the country kids…you getting stuck in the woods with a truck full of precursor and chemicals you ripped off…” She raised her finger and wagged it. “You got it figured out on paper, honey; not in real life.”
“Okay, two weeks ago was hairy; but we needed operating cash. I owe my brother-in-law, remember…”
“Your brother-in-law the lush, your buddy the sheriff ”-she rolled her eyes, then clamped her arms across her chest-“fucking wolves howling all night.” Again the wagging finger. “No way I’m going back to those West Side Mexican creeps; I don’t need the exposure. To lay off that shit we took a fifty percent cut in price”-her eyes flashed-“and me digging around in the water tank of some crummy nightclub toilet for the bread…there was vomit on the floor, in the woman’s john.” Sheryl finished up fierce and indignant.
“You’re absolutely right.” Gator made calming motions with his hands. “That’s why we need a reliable organization that can assemble the chemicals in volume, discreetly. Dead drops.”
“Gator, I don’t even know if OMG has a network in Canada to bring stuff down. They’re still a bunch of fucking bikers, man.”
“Work with me, here, will ya?” Gator pleaded. “Not like we’re in hurry; this year’s shot. If it happens, it’ll be next winter. We got time. Long-term, remember?”
Sheryl’s tantrum passed. She unfolded her arms and paced the room. “Okay, maybe it could work.” She pirouetted and raised the stern finger for a third time. “You’re forgetting something,” she said, still beetly, still thinking. “If this guy checks out and they go for it, they’re going to kill him. We can get indicted as coconspirators in murder one. This won’t be like the last time. Your buddy, the sheriff, is going to have to investigate an ex-cop with a bullet in the back of his head. Says in the paperwork he worked for BCA. They’ll bring in the state investigators. And they’re pretty good.”
Gator made a quashing gesture with his hands. “I thought of that. We’ll make it part of the deal. He dies in a house fire. They put a plastic sack over his head or do him with a small caliber in the ear, huh-that ain’t gonna show if he’s burned up. Bad connection on the propane. Gas rises to the pilot light in the furnace. Boom. Happens all the time in old houses up here.”
Sheryl enlarged her eyes. “Another house fire, Gator? You just had one last year…And for starters, you don’t dictate to these guys…”
“Aw, c’mon, maybe they’ll do it somewhere else, huh? Let’s take a shot. Take the papers to the lawyer. He can talk to Danny on the phone, and no one’s listening; they turn the tape off, right, when he’s talking to his lawyer?”
Sheryl chewed the inside of her cheek, angling her head back and forth, weighing it. “So go in humble, serve them up this guy, then later we angle for an audition,” she said.
“There you go, think positive,” Gator said.
“They’d have a whole year to put it together. And they’ll want to check out the operation, send out an appraiser, like a bank doing a mortgage.”
“Hey, we’re ready.”
“No more little jobs. No more sweating middlemen. All we do is cook and get paid. The big batch,” Sheryl said.
“Biggest batch ever cooked east of California. Right here,” Gator said.
“With the right support system, we could cook ten pounds a heat…”
Gator shook his head. “Hell, with our setup we could do twenty pounds of ninety-nine-percent pure glass. Easy.” He couldn’t help laughing, picturing it as he shuffled toward her in a stilted Frankenstein stagger, jerking his arms. “Our stuff hits the street, it’s gonna look like Night of the Living Dead out there, all the dumb doomed tweakers lurching around the countryside.”
His comic routine finally brought laughter to her eyes. Why she liked him; he had a sense of humor.
“Okay, okay, cut the clowning. This is serious,” she said. “One heat a week, at twenty-five K a pound. But then there’s overhead and Danny’s cut. Still, shit, man…” She walked across the paint room and touched the beach photo taped to the wall. Then she turned to him. “There’s a lot of ifs; if they can deliver in volume and on time, if they don’t screw up washing the money, if you can get a new set of ID…” Finally his enthusiasm swept her up and she grinned. “Shit, Gator, in two months we could get free. Disappear.”
“Say good-bye to winter,” Gator said.
“Belize.”
“Placencia, here we come. Build on that property. I could work on boat engines. Two-cycle diesel, not that different from tractors. Go straight, live on fish and coconuts.” He put his arm around her and walked her back into the mechanics bay. Then he gently pressed her forward against the disassembled bare metal of the old tractor, nuzzled her ear, inhaling the great hair. “Lean over, baby; grab some Minneapolis Moline.”
“I guess this is what they call progress, huh,” Sheryl sighed as she unbuttoned her jeans.