* * *
Gus was alone in the store. Outside, the sun was down but the sky was still light. Undoubtedly, the store was busier later when the sky was dark and the dorms were swinging.
Randal put the paper bag on the counter without ceremony. “We got two keys. You want both?”
“I said one.”
“Four hundred.”
“You can front it to me.”
“Five-fifty if we front it.”
“Billy never charged me like that.”
“Billy isn’t in business any more. There’s always a cost for risk. Business one-oh-one.”
“There’s no risk. You know where to find me.”
“I’m not discussing it. Four now or five-fifty next week.”
“I don’t have four on me.”
“That’s my problem, how?”
He licked his lips and stared at the bag for a minute. Then he said, “I got to test the product.”
Randal sighed. “Give me a bag.”
Gus pulled a paper bag from under the counter and Randal slid one of the plastic bags from his bag into Gus’s.
Gus disappeared into the back room.
A minute later, A whiff of acrid smoke drifted through the store. Gus wasn’t subtle.
Randal rolled his eyes at me and shouted, “Finish it later. We got to roll.”
“Go ahead,” Gus said. “We’re finished here.”
“We’ll be back next Wednesday to pick up our five and a half.”
Gus didn’t reply.
As Randal was strapping the remaining key to his sissy bar, he said, “He has to take it on commission because he smokes as much as he sells and he’s been buying retail since he ran out of Billy’s last key. We’re going to have to keep an eye on him.”
“Did I understand right? We’re going to make fifty dollars profit next Wednesday?”
“We’re going to lose fifty dollars. Don’t forget Wanda’s premium. We end up paying her six hundred a key. And we do that well only if Gus pays up. If he stiffs us, we’re out the full six hundred.”
“He can’t stiff us. We know where he is.”
“Yeah, right. Like he’d never quit and take off with the whole key for himself. Like Billy did.”
“Yeah. And Billy got killed for it.” Guts chopped up like hamburger.
“You think? If Gus skips out on us and we track him down and kill him, we’re still out six hundred bucks.”
Randal was right. There was no profit in killing a man who owed you money. That led directly to another thought. “So, if Billy had ripped off Wanda for a key, would she have killed him if she caught up with him?”
“Most likely.”
“Wouldn’t she have wanted the money that he stole? He didn’t look like he ever had much money on him.”
“Wanda has to make it clear to everyone that ripping her off is a bad idea. Her rep as a woman not to be crossed would be worth more to her than the couple hundred that the key was worth. She would have killed him.”
I thought about that for a minute. “She seemed surprised that he was dead. If she had done it, she would have known. And made sure that everyone else who deals with her knew, too.”
“That’s a point in her favor,” Randal said. “I’ve been thinking about something else.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I been thinking about Johnny Paul.”
“Billy’s brother?”
“Yeah. Billy’s brother.”
I was stabbed by a pang of guilt. I’d accidentally stolen seven bucks from the gas station where he worked and I’d never mailed it back to him. “What about him?”
“He works with the public, just like Gus, here. Billy had to have more people to distribute for him than just Gus. I’m wondering about Johnny.”
I thought for a minute. “I don’t know about that. We talked to him. He didn’t know anything about what Billy was doing. What little he did know, he didn’t approve of. I can’t see him dealing drugs for Billy.”
“He didn’t know us. He wasn’t going to confess to being a drug dealer to a couple of strangers. My saying that I was in business with Billy wouldn’t carry much weight. Anyone could say that. What Johnny said was more important. As near as I remember, he didn’t actually say when he saw Billy or how often or that he wasn’t getting kilos of weed from him.”
I couldn’t contradict any of that, but I still wasn’t sure.
“I say we find out,” Randal said.
“How?”
“We go up there to Russo and offer Johnny the other key. If he takes it, he was one of Billy’s dealers.”
“And if he wasn’t, he calls the cops and we get busted.”
“Nah. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Randal gunned his bike to life and began rolling down the street before I had a chance to ask him how he was going to work that.