It’s a pyramid, like any other big-money organization. You’ve got your junior street dealers at the bottom, and most of them are juniors, so when they get popped they get tried as juveniles. In family court one day, back on the street corner the next. Then you’ve got your senior dealers, who service the clubs—where I got recruited—and the fat cats who save money by buying in bulk.”
She laughed, and I didn’t get why that was funny, either.
“Go up a little and you’ve got your suppliers, your junior executives to keep things running smoothly, your accountants, your lawyers, and then the top boys. It’s all compartmentalized, or at least it’s supposed to be. The people at the bottom know who’s directly above them, but that’s all they know. The people in the middle know everyone below them, but still only one layer above them. I was different. Outside the pyramid. Outside the, um, hierarchy.”
“Because you were a transporter. Like in that Jason Statham movie.”
“Pretty much. Transporters are supposed to know only two people, the ones we receive from at Point A and the ones we turn the load over to at Point B. Those at Point B are the senior distributors who start the dope flowing down the pyramid to its final destination, the users.”
Final destination. There it was again.
“Only as a cop—dirty, but still a cop—I pay attention, okay? I don’t ask many questions, doing that is dangerous, but I listen. Also, I have—had, anyway—access to NYPD and DEA databases. It wasn’t hard to trace the pyramid all the way to the tippy-top. There are maybe a dozen people importing three major kinds of dope into the New York and New England territories, but the one I was working for lives right here in Renfield. Lived, I should say. His name is Donald Marsden, and when he filed his taxes, he listed developer as his former occupation and retired as his current one. He’s retired, all right.”
Lived, I should say. Retired.
It was Kenneth Therriault all over again.
“The kid gets the picture,” Liz said. “Fantastic. Mind if I smoke? I shouldn’t have another bump until this is over. Then I’ll treat myself to a double. Really redline the old blood pressure.”
She didn’t wait for me to give permission, just lit up. But at least she rolled down her window to let the smoke out. Most of it, anyway.
“Donnie Marsden was known to his colleagues—his crew— as Donnie Bigs, for good reason. He was one fat fuck, pardon my political incorrectness. Three hundred ain’t in it, dear—try four and a quarter. He was asking for it, and he got it yesterday. Cerebral hemorrhage. Blew his brains out and didn’t even need a gun.”
She dragged deep and shot smoke out her window. The daylight was still strong but the shadows were getting long. Soon the light would start to fade.
“A week before he stroked out, I got word through two of my old contacts—this would be Point B guys I stayed friendly with—that Donnie received a shipment from China. Huge shipment, they said. Not powder, pills. Knockoff OxyContin, a lot of it for Donnie Bigs’s personal sale. Maybe as a kind of bonus. That’d be my guess, anyway, because there really is no top of the pyramid, Jamie. Even the boss has bosses.”
This made me think of something Mom and Uncle Harry used to chant sometimes. They had learned it as kids, I guess, and Uncle Harry remembered it even when all of the important stuff had blown away. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum. I supposed I might chant that to my own kids. If I ever had the chance to have them, that was.
“Pills, Jamie! Pills!” She sounded enraptured, which was mondo creepy. “Easy to transport and easier to sell! Huge could mean two or three thousand, maybe ten thousand. And Rico—one of my Point B guys—says they’re forties. You know what forties go for on the street? Never mind, I know you don’t. Eighty a pill. And never mind sweating out a run with heroin in plastic garbage bags, I could carry these in a fucking suitcase.”
Smoke slithered out between her lips and she watched it drift away toward the guardrails with their sign reading STAY BACK FROM THE EDGE.
“We’re going to get those pills, Jamie. You’re going to find out where he put them. My guys asked me to cut them in