CHAPTER 17

David Boreal was trouble. He slouched out of the courthouse, wearing baggy pants, an oversized jacket, and a Dodgers cap pulled sideways across his head. His face was long and gaunt, and tufts of hair sprouted from his face like he couldn't quite muster up the attention span to grow a whole beard. He stopped his slow strut when I called his name, and he peered at me, blinking slowly like he was trying to match my face to a sluggish parade of mug shots in his brain.

"You don't know me," I said as I walked up to him. "But I'm your ride."

"Nah, man, I'm good," he said, waving a hand at me. "I got someone coming."

"Okay," I said. "I'll wait with you."

"You . . . you don't need to do that." He shuffled away from me.

The automatic doors to the courthouse opened, and a florid man in a leather jacket and boots came stomping out. He had a round face and a round head that was mostly bald. What hair he had left was long and stringy and pulled back in a weasel tail that lay limply down his back. "David!" Weasel Tail hurried over to us, his boots clicking against the pavement.

"Aw, man, what?" David pulled at his pants, which slipped back down as soon as he let go.

Weasel Tail looked me over. "You the boyfriend?" he asked.

"I guess I am," I said. Why not? I was already impersonating a DEA agent.

"I put up the bond for you, David," Weasel Tail said, which made him Hack's bondsman, Tortes. "If you don't show next week, they keep that money. And then your sister's going to owe me, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," David said.

"I should be locking you up in my basement," Tortes said. He looked at me again. "I must be out of my mind," he said. "This kid's a total flight risk."

"Where's he going to go?" I asked. "Dad's dead. Mom's gone nuts. Dolly is all he's got left, and she gave everything up to watch over him." I glared at David. "To make sure he didn't fuck up."

David opened his mouth to protest.

"And yet, here we are," I said.

He closed his mouth and stared at the pavement.

"He's not going to run," I told Tortes.

"Yeah? And who are you to make sure that doesn't happen?" he asked.

"I'm the guy who will find him, break his leg, and make him walk back. And if he whines, I'll break the other one."

Tortes stared at me, trying to decide if I was serious.

"What? You want me to snap a finger right now to show you I'm not fucking around? One of yours or one of his?"

He blinked several times as my questions sank in, and then his round face split into an open-mouthed laugh. "You are a funny man," he said, slapping me on the arm. "He's all yours. But I need him back here on Tuesday."

"He'll be here," I said.

Tortes waggled a finger at David. "Twenty-five K," he said. "That's what I'll be getting from your sister if you aren't here. Got it?"

His point made, Tortes waddled back to the courthouse, leaving me and the expensive pothead on the sidewalk.

"Twenty-five K," I said. "That's a lot of dime bags."

"It's nuthin," David muttered.

"Must be nice to know how much you're worth to someone," I said. I pointed toward my car, parked across the street. "Come on, 25K. Let's go for a ride."

"Don't call me that," he said.

"Earn a different name, then, bitch," I said, bumping him with my shoulder.

Was I being hard on the kid? Probably. But he reminded me of myself, years ago. Too frightened and too proud to admit it. All caught up in his own business. Not able to see past the brim of his baseball cap. And because I knew that he had no clue what it meant to have someone give a shit about him.

"Put your seatbelt on," I told David when we got in the car.

He ignored me, staring out the window at the traffic moving past the courthouse.

"I could put you in the trunk," I said.

"You going to break my leg first?" he asked. There was some defiance in his voice.

I sighed and started the car. "I was kidding," I said.

"No, you weren't," he said. And then, quietly, but not so quiet that I couldn't hear him over the throb of the engine: "Asshole."

It was going to be like that, apparently.

He remained slumped in the seat, refusing to look in my direction, as I navigated out of the downtown core, but when I drove past the onramp to the highway, he sat up a little straighter. As we drove out of town, he started to fidget. "You missed the onramp," he whined.

"I didn't," I said. "We're taking the scenic route."

"Aw, man, really?"

"You got a pressing appointment this afternoon?" I asked.

"No, man, it's just . . . fuck, really? The scenic route?"

"We need to have a chat, you and I," I said.

"No, man, I don't want to chat. Oh, shit. Man. This is no good. Can you just—can you take me back?"

"You want to go stay in Tortes' basement?"

"No, man, I don't want to stay in that dude's basement. I just want to go home. I just want—Jesus, can we just go back to the highway?"

"Is there something you're worried about?" I asked.

"You're going to take me out into the woods and rape me, aren't you?"

I laughed out loud. "No, I'm not going to rape you."

"You're not?"

"Is that what you think I'm going to do? Because I called you ‘bitch' back there?"

"Isn't that what it means? You're going to make me your . . . you know . . ."

"Where did you get that idea?"

"I—it's just—you know . . . it's what happens in prison." He plucked at his jacket. "I'm soft, man. Look at me. They're going to send me away for all that weed, aren't they? And some bad dude is going to . . . to . . ." He started to sniffle. "It's just weed, man. I don't deserve to get fucked in the ass for that."

"You're not going to get fucked in the ass," I said. "Not by me. Not by anyone in prison. If you even go to prison. Look, you're not there yet. Sure, the sheriff's office wants to put you away, but come on, how many times have they tried that with you? Two? Three?"

California laws about weed were ridiculously harsh, especially when you're caught with a carload of pre-filled baggies. His juvenile record was probably filled with offenses involving smaller amounts, and while he was younger than Dolly, he'd been past that age for awhile. He didn't strike me as the sort of criminal genius who managed to avoided incarceration for the better part of a decade, which meant he'd managed to wriggle out of trouble a few times already. Maybe done probation and a bunch of community service.

This time, though? He was going down unless he could cut a deal.

Enter Butch Bliss, ersatz boyfriend and undercover DEA agent who was going to make all that happen, right?

"Let's figure out a way to keep you out of prison, shall we?" I said.

He slithered around in the seat, angling his body toward the door so he could stare up at me from under the brim of his cap.

"Talk to me," I said. "We've got some time before we get back to Los Alamos. Tell me an interesting story. Maybe I can help."

He licked his lips, but didn't say anything.

I was going to have to prod him, but what did I know?

"The Crazies know you are dealing weed?" I asked.

He flinched, which was answer enough.

I nodded, like I had known that all along, and I stared out at the winding road for a bit while I waited for him to start talking. Hack was involved in the weed business in this area, as was David. But there was more to it than that, and Hack was starting to get nervous. It had to do with the CMFMC in some fashion, and the simplest scenario said the CMFMC were running coke up and down the coast—probably using The Rose, near Los Alamos, as their club house. They probably had a pretty solid setup, and were now looking to diversify into other drugs. However, Team Weed wasn't so keen to get absorbed by Team Coke.

So where did David Boreal—wastrel weed wizard and all-around asshat—fit in this scenario?

He worked at—what had Dolly said?—a Shell station in town. I thought about what I had seen during my ten-minute tourist drive through Los Alamos, and I dimly remembered seeing one of Shell's yellow signs. It had been a gas station-slash-garage, with a couple of bays for car service. Stack of tires on a rack beside the building. David was barely qualified to pump gas, but maybe he had some hidden talents with a wrench and an oil pan.

It reminded me of my job at Speedy's Car Wash. It had been a good setup. Lots of cars coming and going. Nobody notices a car wash. They're like dump trucks—part of the infrastructure no one notices in their neighborhood. A small-town garage off a major highway wouldn't attract too much attention with strange cars coming and going.

"What are you doing for them?" I asked.

"Nuthin," he said. "I don't do nuthin."

"So why all the fuss about the weed then?" I asked. "And where'd you get it? You growing your own? You got your own basement project?"

He shook his head at all my questions. Stonewalling me.

We were out in the country again, heading along the road that would eventually get us back to Los Alamos. The turnoff to Sisquoc was a few miles ahead. Nothing but vineyards and oil derricks. A dull drive if David was going to be all sulky.

I glanced in my rearview mirror as sunlight flashed off something behind us. David reacted to my change in posture, and he shot up in his seat. He twisted around, looking out the Mustang's back window. "What is it?" he whined.

"Nuthin," I said, aping his tone.

The road behind us curved less than a quarter mile back, and for a moment, that stretch of road was empty.

The road ahead of us was straight for another quarter mile or so, and I put my foot down on the accelerator, and the Mustang's engine throbbed in response. I glanced at the rearview again, and spotted three dots behind us. Too small for cars, and they were spread out across the road, instead of in a single-file line.

"Oh, fuck," David said.

Bikers. Crazy Mother-Fuckers.