When the material burns down enough, I stir what’s left of it and drop in the other suit. I sit back on the sofa to watch it burn for a bit, then close and lock the front door, then go to the laundry room.
After I slide the wall open, I grab the bag of money out of the washer. I rearrange a few items on a bottom shelf and carefully stack the wads of money along the shelf. It takes me a while to finish. When I’m done it looks like a small wall of tiny paper tubes stacked one on top of the other.
I notice the pill container of Oxys I took from the house on Kenyon. I open it and take out two, then close up the wall again and head back up to the living room.
I down the Oxys with some bottled water and sit back on the sofa to enjoy the fire.
Fifty-three
I haven’t had a rough morning like this in a while.
I soak my head under a hot shower until the headache eases off enough that my frontal lobe doesn’t feel like it’s trying to force its way out of my forehead.
After my half pot of coffee and a couple of grapefruits, I replenish my supply from the secret wall and grab a couple more of the Oxys from the pill container and a few rolls of currency. I have a feeling it’s gonna be a long day.
I call Luna on my cell because I’m still paranoid about the landline. We talk briefly. He doesn’t have a clue about what I just went through. I’m sure both he and McGuire have been kept out of the loop because they’re close to me.
I set up a meet with him for lunch and ask him if he can give me a couple of PDID photos, one of Angelo and the other one of Viktor. He agrees after I tell him I’ll buy.
We meet at a hole-in-the-wall sandwich spot on Florida Avenue NE, a few blocks from Narcotics Branch. It’s just Luna. McGuire’s papering a case at district court. We all used to frequent this place a lot. The sandwiches are stacked. We’d get them on the go, find a nice spot with a good view, eat them in the car, and feel like taking a nap afterward.
I leave my car parked in the lot and hop in Luna’s cruiser. It’s a black Ford Expedition. He keeps it clean. The police radio is concealed and built into the glove compartment. He has it dialed into the citywide channel, so unless there’s an emergency or some kinda detail, it’s relatively quiet.
Luna’s idea of a nice view is parking off New York Avenue, near one of those sleazy motels we used to hit all the time, and watching the prostitutes hanging out in the parking lot and on the balconies just outside their rooms after a hard night’s work. I could never figure out if it was the view of all the working girls hanging out on the balconies smoking cigarettes and joints, hair up, dressed somewhat normally and not looking so bad from a distance that Luna was after, or if his eye was on work and who they were talking to and meeting up with.
Back in the day, he’d watch through small binos, copy down descriptions of people and vehicles, tag numbers and room numbers, so I’m thinking work, but you never know. We all got our vices. I never asked and I never will.
Sitting watching those women now, I can’t help but hope that I might see Miriam. But I know how slim the chances of that happening are. Old-school pimps run most of the girls here. The ones the pimps control usually do the route from New York to New Jersey to here and back again. And most of these girls are older. Some of them try their best to sell themselves as teenagers, but once you get close enough, you realize how off they are. No amount of makeup can hide that shit.
No, Miriam got herself caught up with something else entirely, and unless she was sold off to a pimp, she won’t be anywhere around here. The boys on this side of town don’t play nice with the guys they refer to as “the Mexicans” or simply “’migos,” because as far as they’re concerned, all Latinos are Mexican.
I don’t have much of an appetite, but try to eat nevertheless. I still got taste buds and the sandwich does taste good, so that helps.
Luna came through with my request and hands me two PDID photos.
“Remember, you get any information on their suppliers, you call me,” Luna says.
“You know I will.”
“And you’re buying at the Old Ebbitt when we go.”
“Now you’re getting pushy.”
“You haven’t seen pushy yet, brother. You’ve been asking a lot of favors of me recently.”
“I know. I know. So what do you got working with this Edgar Soto homicide?” I inquire.
“Routine shit. Lot of names on his cell phone we’re looking into. Most of them come back to cells, so they’re not listed in the Haines phone directory. We got a nice stash of weed out of a storage shed in his backyard. He had it stashed under the lawn mower. No father so I guess he’s in charge of mowing the lawn; it seemed like a good spot.”
“One of those names on his phone Calvin or Playboy?”
“Playboy is. How the hell did you get that?”