Django laughed. “This your way of easing into a talk about me and drugs? Well, Jesse, I didn’t do drugs because I needed an escape or nothing, or because I was all neurotic about competing with my dad. I didn’t get all bent because my folks named me after one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived. I didn’t do drugs because my dad’s a better musician than I’m ever going to be. Really, I’m good with that. I did drugs because I had to. First it was the pain relief. Then it was the high. Then it was the hunger. It’s that simple.”
Jesse laughed at himself. “Thanks for being honest with me. You straight now?”
“Totally. I never want to go back to feeling that desperate again. You can’t know how that feels.”
“I’m an alcoholic, Django. I know.”
The kid smiled. “No offense, Jesse, but that’s not exactly breaking news. Imagine being an alcoholic and having no open bars, no stores where you can buy a bottle, no way to quench that thirst. That is a sickening, lonely feeling.”
“You get your pills from Chris Grimm?”
Django’s eyes got wide. Suddenly, Django’s openness and ease took a hit. Jesse could see the kid calculating how to answer.
“Relax, Django. I already know he dealt. I understand that you don’t want to rat him out, but you might be doing him a favor.”
The kid wasn’t buying it, not yet. “That sounds like something a cop would say, that I’d be doing him a favor.”
“Chris Grimm is missing. He might already be dead, and if he isn’t, he soon will be. Did you hear about Heather Mackey?”
The kid nodded. “Always liked her. She was hot, yeah, but really nice, too.”
“Well, the people who were using Chris to feed drugs to the kids in school can’t afford to have him out there to talk if we find him first. You’re a smart person. You understand.”
“I don’t know how I can help.”
“You can help by telling me the truth,” Jesse said. “I’m going to ask you some questions and I need full disclosure. I’m not looking to hurt any of your friends or get anyone other than the people in the supply chain in trouble. I will not reveal to anyone that you gave me their names. Understood?”
Django nodded.
“Do you know who Chris was working for or where he got his supply?”
“Sorry, Jesse, I don’t. I swear.”
“When you bought from him, how did the buy go? Did you approach him, give him money, and he gave you pills, or—”
“Nah, not like that. You slipped him a note with a number on it or if you saw him in the hall, you’d say like ‘fifteen,’ then you’d go to locker 113, undo the combo, and leave the money. Next day you went to the locker and there would be your pills.”
“Was it Chris G.’s locker?”
“No. He had his own locker in the number-three section. Left it open a lot so we could see he didn’t keep nothing in it we could use. If you know what I’m saying.”
“I know. So it was never a direct exchange?”
“Never, no way.”
Jesse asked, “What if someone stole?”
“First thing, it was made clear that there would never be big orders filled. Only enough for a few days at most. Second, if anything was taken, the locker number would change and we’d all get cut off for a while. Chris also said he worked with some bad dudes who would beat the shit out of anyone who even thought about stealing. Man, no one wanted to risk any of that. At least I guess. We never got cut off, and the locker number didn’t change.”
“How about phone orders?” Jesse asked. “He couldn’t always be sure to run into his customers in class or in the hall.”
“Every week he’d leave a slip of paper with a new phone number on it in the locker.”
Jesse understood why he’d found all those prepaid phones in the Grimm kid’s room. Different phone every week. Phone records for Chris’s regular cell phone would be worthless. The same would be true of the people he worked for.
“Did you ever do a deal with him that deviated from this locker pattern? You had to have a way to get supplied over the holiday and term breaks.”
“Only once,” Django said, hanging his head in shame. “I met him by that self-storage place in the Swap. That’s where I brought him the James Jamerson bass.”
“How many pills did it buy you?”
Silent tears rolled down the kid’s cheeks. He couldn’t look at Jesse. Then, “I told him how much it was worth because of it being vintage and who had owned it and all.”
Jesse pushed. “How many?”
“Ten.”
It wasn’t just tears now, and they weren’t silent. Django excused himself and went to the men’s room. In the meantime, Jesse called in to the station. Suit was taking his rotation on the night desk. It was interesting how marriage had changed Suit. He used to hate the desk, but these days he didn’t mind his week of night shifts, answering calls, dispatching cars, entering data, and doing paperwork.
According to Suit, there was nothing going on in town and there was no word on Chris Grimm. Jesse said he’d stop by when he got back into town.
“Sorry, Jesse.” Django was back in his seat, face dry, eyes clear. “That was the worst thing I did, but I was desperate. I think I would’ve done much worse than that if I had to.”
“Well, the bass will be back in your dad’s hands and you’re doing well. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“I think I’ll beat myself up over that for the rest of my life. Helps remind me about how bad and low I was.”
“Makes sense.”
“Anything else, Jesse? I have a rehearsal with my band in fifteen back at school.”
“What was the combination to locker 113?”
“Six right, fourteen left, seventeen right, twenty-nine left.”
“Last question, and it’s the hard one.” Jesse took his notepad from his jacket pocket. “Names of anyone else you know was buying from Chris Grimm.”
“You give me your word they won’t get in trouble?”
“As long as they’re not selling, I give you my word.”
This time they shook on it.
“Steve Parkinson, Petra North, Lidell Thomas, Sara York, Carl Bedell, Bob Mark... That’s it, Jesse. I swear. Lidell and Bob graduated with me. Must be others, too, but I don’t know them.”
Jesse stood, replaced the notepad in his pocket, and bumped fists with the kid.
“Okay, Django. Thank you for your honesty. Get to rehearsal.”
He watched the kid disappear into the night. As he did, he thought about the price people paid for their missteps. Not the price in money, but the cost in dignity and self-respect. Money could always be recouped. He wondered about the rest of it. Remembered how he almost drank himself to death and embarrassed himself after Diana’s murder.
Forty-three
Suit was at the desk, reading a paperback. Jesse had stopped on the way up from Boston and bought Suit a jelly donut. The times of Suit devouring three or four donuts were over. Elena had seen to that. Suit even ate salads these days and went to the gym. His belly no longer strained at the buttons of his uniform shirts. He put down the book when Jesse came through the door.
Jesse held up the bag. “Only one.”
“Jelly?”
Jesse nodded.
Suit smiled, but it was sheepish. “Elena will kill me. Hell, Jesse, I’m down to less than my football-playing weight in high school.”
“How do you feel?”
“Great.”
“So you don’t want this?”
Suit’s right hand swung out and snatched the bag from Jesse’s hand. “Did I say that?”
Jesse enjoyed watching as Suit relished each small bite of the donut.
They hadn’t discussed Suit’s bravery at the old meetinghouse since right after it happened. Suit had been awarded a medal for his bravery, a plaque had been placed on the wall of the stationhouse, but like most real heroes, he was almost embarrassed by the attention. What mattered to Luther “Suitcase” Simpson had nothing to do with medals and plaques. He had always longed for Jesse’s respect. Not respect as a person. Jesse had always afforded him that. It was that he had always craved Jesse’s respect as a cop. There was no question of that now.