Money To Burn (32 page)

We sat in the front seat of my car and I was impressed with his calm. “You don’t seem too nervous,” I told him.

“You’re no cop,” he said. “I know every cop in this town. And you’re paying me good money. Besides, I know who you want to ask me about. They’re bad news and getting sloppy. Too much of a good thing.” He sniffed loudly. “Get rid of them for me. I don’t care.”

I pulled out the computerized photos of Jake Talbot and Franklin Cosgrove. “These guys?” I asked.

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His mouth curled up in distaste and he clicked his tongue against his teeth in disapproval. “Those guys, they have too much money. But they always try to get me to go down on my price. And they have big mouths. Especially that one.” He pointed to Jake Talbot. “What do you want to know?”

“What can you tell me about them?” I asked.

“I know that Daddy has lots of money,” he said, placing a long finger on Jake Talbot’s face. “Because he acts like he owns everything he sees.” Then he touched Cosgrove’s image. “And this one is sucking up to the other boy. He wants something from him. Maybe money, maybe a way to get to Daddy.”

Or to his sister, I thought “Sucking up?” I asked. “You think?”

“Sucking up, not off.” The dealer smiled. “They come to the bar sometimes, but only for the drugs. They think they are slumming, you know what I mean? But those two would not be into men.” He bumped his fists together. “There’s not enough power in being with a man for them.” He looked disdainful. “Those two, they like being on top. That’s why they like the White Lady so much.”

“Which white lady?” I asked.

He stared at me patiently and tapped his nose. “This white lady.”

“Oh, yeah, right” I felt as unhip as someone’s grandmother. Another reason why I hated the drug scene.

“She makes them feel bigger than they are,” he added. “I think they go for meek women who are afraid of them. Maybe lonely ones.”

“Or desperate ones,” I offered.

“Lots of those,” the dealer said with a sly smile. “Especially if you have some of what old Spencer here is selling to make the lady less desperate. But me, I like men.” He looked me over. “Even when they dress like a woman. You look good, mama. You almost fooled me. I thought you were all woman at first”

“I am a woman,” I explained.

He stared at my biceps. “Then you are not their type, I think. Maybe you are my type. I’m not a flyboy all the time, you know. Just when I work here.”

“I’m not meek, not lonely, not desperate, not in the market and definitely not in the mood, so stay on your side of the car, Bubbah,” I said, just to make sure we were clear on where things stood. The last thing I needed was to have to fend off an omni-sexual Jamaican coke dealer. “How often do they buy drugs from [uy ear on whe you?” I asked, to get him back to business.

“Only that one buy the drugs,” he replied, touching Jake Talbot’s photo. “The other one just do the drugs. He thinks if he doesn’t pay for them, it means he doesn’t have a problem.”

“Do they have a problem with it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The redhead who won’t buy has a problem here.” He tapped his nose. “The other one has a problem here.” He tapped his head. His eyes narrowed as he noticed the pocketbook on my lap, probably figuring out, correctly, that there was plenty of room for a gun among all of the fake badges, Kleenex and lipstick holders I had jammed in there.

“Why are you asking me about these two men?” he said, staring at a bulge in my pocketbook. He’d realized that it was from a barrel, not a portable phone.

“They may have killed a man.” I told him.

The dealer threw back his head and laughed—which scared me more than anything else he had done yet. “Not those two,” he insisted, his shoulders shaking with silent merriment. “Like I say, they are chicken.” He clucked a couple of times and laughed again. “They the kind who like their victims small. Besides, together, they don’t have two balls between them.”

I wished I could be as sure. “Where do you usually sell to them?” I asked. “Here?”

“In Durham,” he explained. “I go see my customers there first on weekend nights, then I stop by Chapel Hill and I end up the evening here with the night owls. I have a route see, like a bread truck. Only I get to keep the bread.” He smiled and a gold tooth winked at me in the glow of the street lamp. “Time management is my secret. I’m a good businessman.”

“Where in Durham do you meet them?”

He named a noisy beer bar in the heart of downtown that was a haven for white Duke students and old white bums. “Seems to me you’d kind of stick out in a place like that,” I said. “Not to be rude.”

“That’s true. But it’s good business for me to stick out,” he explained. “People know what I am. I am a walking billboard.”

“Great when you’re trying to be discreet,” I said sarcastically.

His smile grew wider. “Like I say, I know all the cops.”

“When did you last see these two guys?” I asked.

“Tonight, mama.”

“But you just sold this one some stuff Saturday night,” I said, waving Jake Talbot’s photo. “I was watching.”

He shrugged again. “He is a good customer. Maybe they have a party planned. Who knows?”

“Are they usually alone when they buy from you?” I asked.

“Sometimes girls are waiting back at the table. One night I see a fat man watching them and later I think he joined their party.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

He shrugged again. “He was watching the two of them and I was watching him. When the two boys come to me, I think to myself, ‘Is that fat man a cop?’ But then I say no, he’s too soft-looking to be a cop. When I sell them the stuff, they leave. The fat man, he gets up and leaves right after them.”

“What did he look like?” I asked curiously.

The dealer shrugged. “Fat and white. That’s all I remember.”

“That really narrows it down,” I said. He’d just described half the men in the South.

He shrugged again, apologetically this time, and held out a hand. “You said two hundred and fifty dollars to answer your questions for ten minutes.”

I gave him the money and he grinned happily at the bills. “You want a sample, maybe?” he asked me, gold tooth twinkling.

I shuddered. “No thanks. I’ve spent my whole life trying to learn to be happy where I am. I’m not about to take a drug that only makes me wish I was always someplace else.”

He nodded. “Smart lady. Lucky for me, not everyone thinks that way.”

“Lucky for you,” I agreed.

When we reentered the bar, I could practically hear the collective sigh of relief that filled the room once the packed partiers spotted their supplier again. God forbid people have a good time on their own. They might have to live with themselves for fifteen minutes that way.

I returned to the bar and explained to Marcus that I [Marh=“2 had to go, but he hardly heard a word I said. He was deep in conversation with the engineer and I was only in the way.

“I’ll give him a ride home,” Mr. Blond Buzz-Cut promised, earning me a dazzling smile from Marcus in lieu of a good-bye.

I left Marcus to his future and headed back to Durham in hopes of tracking down a little bit of the recent past.

I now knew Jake Talbot and Franklin Cosgrove were drug buddies and so despicable that not even their dealer wanted their business. But I had nothing to connect either one of them to the murder of Thomas Nash. So why was I about to don my gay apparel and follow them around Durham? Because Randolph Talbot had wanted to discourage me from following his son so badly that he had parted with twenty-five G’s—and I intended to find out the reason why. I don’t know the going rate for hush money elsewhere, but in Durham, $25,000 can buy a lot more than one person’s silence on a murder.

I stopped by my apartment to change into something that didn’t make me look like Beaver Cleaver’s mom and found a message waiting from Detective Anne Morrow. She was calling on behalf of her Durham cohorts and wanted to know what the hell was going on with Burly Nash and did it have anything to do with the death of his brother?

Good question. But I had no answer, so I didn’t call her back. Instead, I wiggled into my black jeans and a black leotard top, which looked a little New York for downtown Durham on a Monday night, but I was intending to skulk around in the bushes and the right outfit in the South makes all the difference, no matter what the social situation may be. I left my Colt at home. Sidearms are not standard issue when you’re trying to pass as a college student in Durham, at least not yet. I stuffed Bobby’s fake cigarette pack camera into my back pocket and headed out to track down my two least favorite people.

Downtown was insanely busy. It turned out that the final summer school session had ended that day in preparation for exams and scores of liberated, academically indifferent Duke students—which is close to an oxymoron—had decided to celebrate. I checked in at the bar where Jake Talbot supposedly purchased his drugs, and though the bartender readily admitted Jake was a regular and had been in earlier, he could not say where he had gone next. I folded the computerized photo back into my jeans pocket and hit the strip.

Main Street around Brightleaf Square includes several blocks’ worth of cavernous bars that cater to the student crowd, beer-drinking professionals and, in some sad cases, professional beer-drinkers. First stop was Down Under, which was jammed with sweaty Softball players and inebriated dart enthusiasts who were taking turns drunkenly tossing razor-sharp points within inches of each other’s eyes. And people think rock climbing is dangerous.

The bartender claimed he had no time to answer my questions, but a ten-dollar bill changed his mind. He pointed me in the direction of Satisfaction and I high-tailed it across the street to Brightleaf, where, over a pint of Foster’s, a cooperative female bartender directed me a couple of blocks down the street to a new bar called the Loop.

“Tonight’s opening night,” she explained. “Everyone’s headed that way.”

I thanked her and followed the raucous sounds of a bar band cranked up several hundred decibels over the legal limit. People who live near colleges are either masochists or fools. I ought to know, I’m one of them.

The Loop was located on a dark side street off Main, next door to a funeral home—which probably cut down on the noise complaints considerably. The building had housed an old-fashioned department store decades before, then stood empty until the Loop moved in. I wasn’t convinced another college bar was an improvement.

Picture windows lined the exterior of the building and I peered inside them, searching for a familiar face. It wasn’t easy. The place was packed and new lighting made it difficult for my eyes to focus. Bright neon lights flashed in a constant circle in the center of each window, red chasing red in an electronic frenzy that beckoned drinkers inside.

I squeezed into the sweaty, dancing crowd. Signs behind the bar advertised twenty-five-cent beer, which explained the chaos. The floor was so sticky with beer that my boots stuck to the linoleum. I heard a giant sucking sound down south every time I lifted a foot. Ross Perot would have felt vindicated.

The band was screeching away on a low platform at the other end of the room. I returned to the front and stood in an elevated bay window that had once been a showcase area for mannequins. I stared over the top of the crowd, searching for Jake Talbot.

I spotted Franklin Cosgrove first. He was leaning against the far end of the long bar, talking to a petite brunette whose white tennis shorts barely covered her butt. The edge of her white cheeks winked at the world in twin crescent moons. Her father would have fainted had he seen her. She was attractive enough, but, if she was flirting with Cosgrove, chances were good she was no rocket scientist. He was getting a little long in the tooth for this crowd. She was proof that there was always some silly misguided coed willing to mistake his sleazy lust for sophistication.

As I watched, the brunette tossed her head back in a classic flirting gesture, flipping her long hair behind her into some poor slob’s beer. Neither one of them noticed. She continued to shake droplets of beer from her damp hair like a poodle whenever Cosgrove made her laugh. God, was I that inane when I was picking someone up in a bar? I hoped not.

A dark corridor to the right of the band stretched toward the back of the building, leading to the rest rooms. Jake Talbot emerged from this hallway with a redhead clinging to his arm about three minutes after I set up station in the front window. The girl looked a little wobbly, as if she’d had about a keg too much to drink. Jake steadied her and leaned her against the wall, then handed her a fresh beer. Like she really needed one. One more sip and she’d be ready to book a room at Betty Ford for the month.

I moved closer, unconcerned about being spotted by either Talbot or Cosgrove. Both men were hot on the trail of college bootie and unlikely to notice me unless I lost forty pounds and fifteen years.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark interior of the club, I realized that the tavern had a door in the back that led out onto the sidewalk of the side street. Jake and his redhead claimed a small spot of floor near this door, where they were easily visible through the windows. I’d be better off tailing him from outside. I slipped out the front door and chose a dark doorway across the side street from the bar. An abandoned textile mill stretched the length of the opposite block. Its dark loading bays gave me plenty of cover.