Cracked (12 page)

Let Darren and the millions of police look for Matty and Luke their way. I was going to find them my way. Even if it was at the end of a crack pipe. This is where it started for Ginger, and the Sunny Jim was where it ended.

And once I settled into the motel room, with or without Dom, I would call Darren. I knew it was cruel to make him worry any more than he was already. But he could focus on the boys, and I could focus on Ginger. Besides, it was all the same. Whoever killed Ginger either took the boys or had something to do with it. The law of averages didn’t allow for that kind of coincidence.

Dave came back with our drinks, and the three of us sat shooting the shit for about ten minutes. I was sitting on pins and needles, willing Dom to get up and go to the payphone to call his guy.

“What time is it?” I asked Dave. I still didn’t know, and bars like this tended not to put clocks behind the bars. Too much of a reminder to the clientele that they were getting loaded when they were supposed to be eating dinner with the ball and chain. Dave looked at his watch.

“Almost five. Shit. Shit. I’ve gotta bust a move, guys,” he said. “I’m late for work.”

Work? He was more than half in the bag. I hoped he wasn’t a bus driver.

“Where at?” I said, adopting their grammar. That’s me, a barstool chameleon.

“Pawn shop, two doors down,” he said. “Hey. Come see me later.”

“Cool. I will,” I said. I got up and gave him a sisterly hug. “Thanks for distracting me from myself, Dave. You’re good people.” People who hang around in bars like this make friends easily. Sometimes it’s actually real. This is how I met Gene, and he was about as close as it got.

Gene. Where the fuck was he? As soon as I got a room, I would try calling him again.

“How much you want,” Dom asked as soon as Dave had walked out. Good. No messing around.

“A ball?” I said. An eightball. Three and a half grams. In Toronto, it went for anywhere from two hundred to two hundred and fifty bucks. But I knew it varied wildly, depending on supply and demand and where you were. “How much?”

“Two hundred,” he answered decisively. “But, Big D. You gonna share with a brutha?” I laughed. I was happy. I was going to smoke crack. And I was going to find something out about my sister, and where the boys were. A package deal. The only way to fly.

“You betcha,” I answered. Even if I didn’t want to try to milk Dom for info, I wasn’t a huge fan of smoking alone. “How long’s it gonna take? For your guy to get here?”

“She’s already here,” Dom said. “You got the two hundred? All I got left is about half a gram of powder, but I’ll throw that into the mix. Got no cash left, only ten for gas.”

“I feel you, my brother,” I said. I did, too. If it wasn’t for the windfall courtesy of my sister, I’d be in the same boat. Thank you, Ginger, I thought. You always did come through for me. I had my purse on my lap under the table. I counted out ten twenties by feel under the table, folded them up in my fist and pretended to hold Dom’s hand so I could pass the money to him. Dom nodded, got up and sauntered into the men’s room. He would have to count the cash before he talked to the dealer.

Who was obviously the only woman at the bar, if she was already here. She was so good, she hadn’t so much as glanced our way the whole time, as far as I could tell. From what I could see, it looked like she was nursing a cola, or maybe it had booze in it. She was a Latina of some variety. From the glimpses of her profile, she wasn’t young, and wasn’t old either. Dressed respectably enough, in decent jeans, new-looking sandals, and a modest white shirt.

Dom came out of the bathroom and slid onto the stool next to her, leaned over as though to kiss her cheek, and then I could see him whisper to her as he dropped what was obviously the money into her purse, which was sitting on her lap. Dom nodded in my direction, which pissed me off. What if she was an undercover cop after all? I had to trust him, though.

I’d done these deals in public before when D-Man was out of stock, but this was new territory, and I liked being the observer. Without turning around, the woman fished around in her purse as though looking for a tissue. It was fascinating to watch. She was undoubtedly counting the twenties, and at the same time grabbing the eightball. Dealers who work out of bars tend to do that – they only carry certain pre-packaged amounts, so if you want half a ball, for example, you’re out of luck. She pretended to blow her nose delicately on a tissue, then placed the tissue on the bar and asked the bartender for another drink. While his back was turned to reach into the fridge behind him, Dom grabbed the Kleenex and put it in his pocket.

Done. Simple.

I was finishing my drink when Dom came back to the table.

“We’re on?” I said.

“We are right the fuck on,” Dom answered. “Let’s go and have us a party, Big D.”

“I like how you think, Dom,” I replied as we walked out of the bar. I turned and waved goodbye to the bartender as I left, and he waved back knowingly. He either knew about the deal and kept his eyes shut to it – and got a cut, which was most likely – or he was innocent of the whole thing and thought Dom was going to get lucky.

The woman was looking at the TV behind the bar, and didn’t glance in my direction once. That I could see. But I had no doubt that she had me memorized, sized up and classified. If she was worried about me, she would have been out of there by now.

Or I would have been on the bathroom floor with a knife in me.

Dom wanted to drive to the Sunny Jim, but I told him no.

“You’re a bit drunk there, sweetie-pie,” I said. “I don’t ride with no drunks. You feel me?”

“That’s cool,” he said, putting his keys back into his pocket. “Everybody’s got their quirks. It’s only a couple of blocks down,” he said.

“You have a pipe?” I asked, stopping. Shit. Making one would require a visit to a convenience store and ten or fifteen extra minutes, and in the excitement back at the house I didn’t think to grab my own.

“Do I have a pipe, she wants to know,” Dom said to the sky. “Girl. What kind of man do you think I am? Of course I’ve got a motherfucking pipe.”

I laughed. Oh joy. And I found it amusing that the closer he got to smoking crack, the blacker this white boy was sounding.

Ah. America.

I had a flash of Ginger, and Darren, and even Detective Miller as we approached the motel office. Ginger was dead. I had a weird burst of pre-crack elation – Darren couldn’t reach me, I didn’t have a cell phone. For all I knew, the police had found the boys by now. I had met a new friend, and he had an eightball and a pipe in his pocket. I would get high, and I would get information. At some point I would call Darren because I knew he’d be worrying, but I wasn’t going to tell him where I was. Even if I found what I was looking for. Especially if I found what I was looking for. It was possible Dom had some kind of idea of who had killed Ginger. It was possible I would find out who killed my sister, who took my nephews. But first I would get high.

And in eight or ten hours I would be crashing like a derailed freight train. But who cared, because right now was all that mattered.

This was the hotel where my sister had been murdered. There were two or three other motels within walking distance, but this was where I had to be.

“I would like your finest room, please, sir,” I said to the man behind the counter. He was obese in a way that you usually only saw on American reality television. Like soon he wouldn’t be able to move and he would become fused to his couch.

“Wow,” he said. He grabbed a key from behind him, not taking his eyes off me. Or standing up either. That would have been a lot to expect. “You look like somebody.”

My heart beat faster. “How much? Somebody who?” My hands were sweating as I rifled through my purse.

“Seventy a night, laundry facilities on the second floor, two dollars a wash, two dollars a dry,” he replied. “Somebody dead.”

“What?” I was counting out the cash, hands shaking. I shoved eighty at him. I wanted to get out of there, but fast.

“You look like somebody who’s dead,” he repeated.

“Thanks,” I said, snatching the key from the counter. “You know how to flatter a girl.” I knew what he meant – I looked like Ginger, especially if she was trying to look like me. But had he seen her body? Did he know her?

Dom and I walked quickly to Room Four, and it was only my need for the pipe that stopped me from going back to talk to the desk clerk again.

Later, I told myself. When I wasn’t feeling any pain.

Once inside the room, Dom and I didn’t waste any time lighting up. All conversation was gone now. It was all about getting high as quickly as possible.

I took the first hit and held it in, closing my eyes. Thank you, thank you. The smoke filled my head, my limbs, and my heart, making everything easier to bear. Dom turned the TV on. I let myself be high. I sat and looked at
SpongeBob SquarePants
and thought about what I would say to Dom, how I would ask what I wanted to know. I had to be careful, doubly so because of being high. Even I knew that.

About an hour later we’d gone through half the eightball. I didn’t feel quite as chatty as I usually did on crack. Either we were smoking a huge amount, or Dom was pocketing some. I found I didn’t really care. I lit another hit and closed my eyes again, savoring the rush, thinking about sending Dom out for more. It was only, what? Six-thirty or so? Maybe seven? Surely that dealer chick would still be at the bar.

When I opened my eyes, Dom was standing over me, his fists clenched.

“Who the fuck are you,” he said. He didn’t look so friendly anymore. I coughed. Crack lung. “Your name isn’t Danny.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I swear.” I really hoped he wasn’t going to hit me. I tensed my thighs, ready to tackle him and avoid a punch. I didn’t know if my body would work or not, but I had already been hit once in the head today.

He threw the plastic wallet into my lap. When had he gone into my purse?

“That,” he said, pointing to it, “is not a picture of you on there. That’s a picture of Danielle.” He cocked his arm back as though to land a good blow at the middle of my face.

“Wait, wait,” I said, as calmly as I could. The crack had slowed down time. I was sweating, and my heart seemed to be going too slowly. Way too slowly for being high. “That’s my sister.” Dom didn’t put his arm down, but he looked unsure.

“What do you mean,” he said. “She’s dead.”

I started to cry for real. “Did you kill her?” So much for staying cool and collecting information.

“What?” Dom was yelling now, but he’d put his arm down. “Fuck are you talking about? Danny was my
friend
.”

“Your friend,” I repeated. I wasn’t crying anymore. Crack brain. I couldn’t process what was going on. Sometimes I felt more coherent on crack, able to make great mental leaps. This was not one of those times. My brain felt slow and foggy. Too slow and foggy, in fact. Something was wrong.

“Wait a minute,” Dom said. He moved away and sat on the other bed looking at me. “When you first come into the bar, Dave and I, for a minute we both thought that you was Danielle. That you
were
Danielle,” he corrected himself. Was it just me, or was he speaking in slow motion? “But then we saw that you weren’t as pretty. No offense,” he added.

“None taken,” I said. None was. I wasn’t as pretty as Ginger. “Her name is really Ginger.”

Dom shook his head. “Nope. Her name was Danielle.” I didn’t wonder why Ginger had used my name. It made sense. I was her twin, and I was an addict. For whatever reason, Ginger was becoming me.

“My name is Danielle. Well, Danny. Remember?”

We continued with this Who’s-On-First routine for a bit. I knew Ginger. She didn’t do anything by half measures. If she was going to live like me, she was going to become me, ID and all. And as much as she loved me, I thought that loving her boys as much as she did meant that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do the things she had done as Ginger Lindquist. She had had to leave Ginger altogether to be in a place like Lucky’s, or the Sunny Jim. If, indeed, she had even gone there under her own steam.

“Did my sister used to go into that bar?” I asked Dom. “Is that how you know her?”

“Lucky’s? Yeah. She come in about six or eight months or so, I guess. Maybe more. She took a shine to us. She was like one of us.”

I was lying down on one bed by now, and Dom on the other. We were both on our sides facing each other, trying to talk. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. My tongue was getting thicker.

“Dom,” I said carefully. “Did that dealer know Ginger? I mean, Danielle?”

“Yeah,” he said. His eyes were closed now. “They were sorta friendly, I guess you could say. Not a lot of women come in, you know?”

“Dom. Dom,” I repeated, as loudly as I could. He seemed to be sleeping. “That taste like crack to you?” Crack has a particular taste when you inhale the smoke. Sometimes it has a faint baking soda taste to it, if it has been cooked with too much. But usually not. And this tasted like something else, but I couldn’t remember my words. And the effect had been the same.

Dom didn’t answer. “Dom,” I repeated. I closed my eyes, too. “I think we might be in trouble.”

I woke up and it was pitch black outside, but a lamp was on in the room. I started violently throwing up on the spot, my head turned to the side. All over the polyester bedspread, the floor, myself. I was a puker from way back, long before drugs. A puker, as well as a fainter. Anything could set it off. First day of my period, certain smells and tastes. Cilantro, for example.

I kept my eyes shut as my body emptied itself.

When I opened them, I started shaking.

Dom was on the other bed, soaked in blood. It seemed to have come from his mouth, but there was so much of it, I couldn’t be sure. His eyes were bulging open. He was so white he looked blue.

There was no doubt he was dead. I didn’t have to check.

He was the first dead body I would ever see.

Something caught my eye in the mirror. “Hi, Danny!” was written there, in large friendly script. With blood, or red lipstick.