get evicted?” I asked.
“That’s not why I’m calling, Garin.”
“Answer me.”
“She’s been crashing with some dude, so she stopped paying the rent. Landlord tossed all our stuff. It ain’t too bad, being down at the beach.”
I couldn’t give Billy cash. He’d use it to buy as much black tar heroin as he could and have himself a shooting party until it was all gone. But there was something else I could do. It wouldn’t get him out of The Heart; that was what I wanted even if he didn’t.
“Call the landlord tomorrow morning, first thing. He’ll either give you the keys to your old place, assuming he changed the locks, or keys to a new place.”
“I don’t need no charity.”
He was homeless, and in a few days, when that guy kicked out his ma, she would be, too. I couldn’t let that happen. Paulie wasn’t alive to help them, and there was no one else who cared enough. Billy had his pride, and I respected that, but it wasn’t going to stop me.
“It’s not charity. It’s a place to live. Take it, Billy.” I walked across the room and leaned into the window.
Lights from the strip flashed below me. Sometimes, I needed a reminder—that piece of scenery Vegas was known for—so I wouldn’t question where I was. When I was on the phone with Billy, it was easy to forget that I’d gotten out of Jersey, and I wasn’t back living in that fucking hole.
“Fine. Whatever. But about those guys at the boardwalk, they were talking about Paulie, saying he was down there a lot. They said he wasn’t hustling or slinging rock or anything like that. He was doing something; they just don’t know what.”
“We knew he hung out there, Billy. We all did back then.”
“But he wasn’t hanging out. He was by himself, like he was looking for someone…or trying to recruit someone.”
Billy had never recovered from Paulie’s death. If my sister had died like Paulie, I wouldn’t have gotten over it either. It had hit Kyle and me just as hard. Harder than any of the other deaths in The Heart—and there were a lot of them. Losing Paulie was the catalyst that made Billy’s addiction spiral out of control. And, each year, it seemed to have gotten worse.
“Looking for those answers isn’t going to bring him back.”
He blew another cloud of smoke into the phone, and a long stretch of silence followed. I could tell he was high. I heard it in his voice.
I always heard it.
And, every time I did, the guilt would gnaw at me a bit more. I was responsible for his using. I was the reason he had become a junkie. His voice was my punishment, and I had to live with it.
“I know,” he finally said. “But I still want you to look into it. Ask some of your guys if they ever saw Paulie down there. Maybe they’ll remember something.”
After Paulie’s death, we all asked around to see what we could find out. I started with the people who lived in The Heart and then the guys who sold and hustled on the streets. No one knew a thing, and the police didn’t do shit. Mario and I came to the conclusion that the murderer had worked alone because no one in this town could keep their mouth shut, and it had been timed perfectly to make sure there were no witnesses. Asking around again wouldn’t get Billy what he wanted, but I’d do it for him.
“I’ll make some calls.”
“Thanks, man. Now, when are you coming home for a visit? It’s been too long since I’ve seen your ass.”
“Not for a while. Things are a little heavy here.”
“Is Mario going out there anytime soon? Maybe I could hitch a ride with him?”
Whenever one of the bosses came out, I’d meet them in Phoenix or Santa Fe or Denver. If the gambling commission found out they were in Nevada, our entire operation would be shut down, and we’d all be in jail. Mario would bring Billy to one of those spots if I asked him, but I couldn’t have him here. Not with him shooting that shit into his arms all day, hustling every goddamn dollar that crossed his path.
During my years of dealing, I’d learned never to trust a junkie. Billy was as bad as any of them. I couldn’t trust him in this city, and I sure as hell couldn’t trust him in my casino.
“He doesn’t have any plans to,”