It was only about six o’clock in the evening, far too early to turn over and go back to sleep if he wanted to be ready for the office tomorrow. Mike shook his head, trying to dislodge the cobwebs. Then he sat up, gently pushed Oscar out of the way, and began to undress. After ten minutes in the shower with the heat turned right up he felt almost human, although the taste in his mouth and the stubble itching on his jaw felt like curious reminders of a forgotten binge. Virtual bar-hopping, all the aftereffects with none of the fun. He shook his head disgustedly, toweled himself dry, dragged on sweat pants and tee, then took stock.
The flat was remarkably tidy, considering how little time he’d had to spend on chores in the past week—thank Helen for that. She’d left him a note on the kitchen table, scribbled in her big, childish handwriting: MILK STAIL, BOUT MORE. He smiled at that. Oscar’s bowls were half-full, so he ignored the cat’s special pleading and went through into what had been a cramped storeroom when he moved in. Now it was an even more cramped gym, or as much of one as there was space for in the bachelor apartment. He flipped the radio on as he climbed wearily onto the exercise bike: Maybe I should have held the shower? he wondered as he turned the friction up a notch and began pedaling.
Fifteen minutes on the bike then a round of push-ups and he began to feel a bit looser. It was almost time to start on the punch bag, but as he came up on fifty sit-ups the phone in the living room rang. Swearing, he abandoned the exercise and made a dash for the handset before the answering machine could cut in. “Yes?” he demanded.
“Mike Fleming? Can you quote your badge number?”
“I—who is this?” he demanded, shivering slightly as the sweat began to evaporate.
“Mike Fleming. Badge number. This is an unsecured line.” The man at the other end of the phone sounded impatient.
“Oh, okay.” More fallout from work. Head office, maybe? Mike paused for a moment, then recited his number. “Now. What’s this about?”
“Can you confirm that you were in a meeting with Tony Vecchio and Pete Garfinkle this afternoon?”
“I—” Mike’s head spun. “Look, I’m not supposed to discuss this on an open line. If you want to talk about it at the office then you need to schedule an appointment—”
“Listen, Fleming. I’m not cleared for the content of the meeting. Question is, were you in it? Think before you answer, because if you answer wrong you’re in deep shit.”
“I—yes.” Mike found himself staring at the wall opposite. “Now. Who exactly am I talking to?” The CLID display on his phone just said NUMBER WITHHELD. Which was pretty remarkable, on the face of it, because this wasn’t an ordinary caller-ID box. And this wasn’t an ordinary caller: his line was ex-directory, for starters.
“A minibus will pick you up in fifteen minutes, Fleming. Pack for overnight.” The line went dead, leaving him staring at the phone as if it had just grown fangs.
“What the hell?” Oscar walked past his ankle, leaning heavily. “Shit.” He tapped the hook then dialed the office. “Tony Vecchio’s line, please, it’s Mike Fleming. Oh—okay. He’s in a meeting? Can you—yeah, is Pete Garfinkle in? What, he’s in a meeting too? Okay, I’ll try later. No, no message.” He put the phone down and frowned. “Fifteen minutes?”
Once upon a time, when he was younger, Mike had believed all the myths.
He’d believed that one syringe full of heroin was enough to turn a fine, upstanding family man into a slavering junkie. He’d believed that marijuana caused lung cancer, dementia, and short-term memory loss, that freebase cocaine—crack—could trigger fits of unpredictable rage, and that the gangs of organized criminals who had a lock on the distribution and sale of illegal narcotics in the United States were about the greatest internal threat that the country faced.
When he was even younger he’d also believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
Now . . . he still believed in the gangs. Ten years of stalking grade-A scumbags and seeing just what they did to the people around them left precious little room for illusions about his fellow humanity. Some dealers were just ethically impaired entrepreneurs working in a shady high-risk field, attracted by the potential for high profits. But you had to have a ruthless streak to take that level of risk, or be oblivious to the suffering around you, and the dangers of the field seemed to repel sane people after a while. The whole business of illegal drugs was a magnet for seekers of the only real drug, the one that was addictive at first exposure, the one that drove people mad and kept them coming back for more until it killed them: easy money. The promise of quick cash money drew scumbags like flies to a fresh dog turd. Anyone who was in the area inevitably started to smell of shit sooner or later, even if they’d started out clean. Even the cops, and they were supposed to be the good guys.
Ten years ago when he was a fresh-faced graduate with a degree in police science—and still believed in the tooth fairy, so to speak—he’d have arrested his own parents without a second thought if he’d seen them smoking a joint, because it was the right thing to do. But these days, Mike had learned that sometimes it made sense to turn a blind eye to human failings. About six years in, he’d gone through the not-unusual burnout period that afflicted most officers, sooner or later, if they had any imagination or empathy for their fellow citizens. Afterward, he’d clawed his way back to a precarious moral sense, an idea of what was wrong with the world that gave him something to work toward. And now there was only one type of drug addict that he could get worked up over—the kind of enemy that he wanted to lay his hands on so bad he could taste it. He wanted the money addicts; the ones who needed it so bad they’d kill, maim, and wreck numberless other lives to get their fix.
Which was why, a decade after joining up, he was still a dedicated DEA Special Agent—rather than a burned-out GS-12 desk jockey with his third nervous breakdown and his second divorce ahead of him, freewheeling past road marks on the long run down to retirement and the end of days.
When the doorbell chimed exactly twenty-two minutes after the phone rang, the Mike who answered it was dressed again and had even managed to put a comb through his lank blond hair and run an electric razor over his chin. The effect was patchy, though, and he still felt in need of a good night’s sleep. He glanced at the entry phone, then relaxed. It was Pete, his partner on the current case, looking tired but not much worse for wear. Mike picked up his briefcase and opened the door. “What’s the story?”
“C’mon. You think they’ve bothered to tell me anything?” Mike revised his opinion. Pete didn’t simply look tired and overworked, he looked apprehensive. Which was kind of worrying, in view of Pete’s usual supreme self-confidence.
“Okay.” Mike armed the burglar alarm and locked his front door. Then he followed Pete toward a big Dodge minivan, waiting at the curb with its engine idling. A woman and two guys were waiting in it, beside the driver, who made a big deal of checking his agency ID. He didn’t know any of them except one of the men, who vaguely rang a bell. FBI office, Mike realized as he climbed in and sat down next to Pete. “Where are we going?” he asked as the door closed.
“Questions later,” said the woman sitting next to the driver. She was a no-nonsense type in a gray suit, the kind Mike associated with internal audits and inter-agency joint committees. Mike was about to ask again, when he noticed Pete shake his head very slightly. Oh, he thought, and shut up as the van headed for the freeway. I can take a hint.