Devils in Exile

Kool

Lash showed up late at the shoot house in Mattapan. This one was full service. You go in through the front door and choose door A or door B. Door B was unlocked and led to a warren of rooms inside, each one worse than the next. That was the shooting gallery, where you shot, snorted, or smoked whatever you bought through the pay hole in door A. That door had been reinforced with a cage soldered into a steel frame, two hinged slots cut into the backing wood, one at eye level, the other at hand level.

Door A was open and warped now and wouldn’t close. A table inside had been knocked over, a bag of Doritos spilled on the floor, along with Baggies and cellophane and powder. All this amid a drying pool of urine.

DEA agent Novack was inside waiting for him. “Still here, huh?”

Lash nodded. “Still got me bouncing.”

“How long?”

“Any day now.”

Novack said, “Hope you like tortillas.”

Lash nodded. Mexico was the current hotspot. Also Afghanistan. The War on Terror had rejuvenated the Golden Crescent — Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran — now producing 90 percent of the world’s opium.

Lash said, “The issue is — do I want to go back overseas, leave my boy? Or maybe it’s time to just walk away?”

Novack was surprised. “I can’t remember life without the shield.”

“You and me both, brother.”

Paramedics were attending to the only guy left inside, bleeding lazily from a gunshot to the thigh. Whiskers jutted out from his parched brown skin, too tired to grow anymore. He smoked a Kool.

The guy was already under arrest. He was more offended than anything. “You gotta get this freak, barging into my house.”

“Your house?” Lash said.

The guy shrugged. Another abandoned property colonized by zombies. A neighbor had buttonholed Lash on his way in. “People going in and out all night and day.”

Lash told her, “Why you neighbors always wait until the police show up to drop a dime?”

He looked at the blood being photographed on the floor. “Anyone shoot back at him?”

“No chance, no time,” said the Kool smoker. “Dude efficient.”

“You get a good look?”

“White-ass mutherfucka. Came in, did a buy first. Feeling it out. People don’t respect nothing no more, not a locked door, nothing.”

“I need more than skin color.”

“Wore an eye patch. Silly-ass pirate disguise. And an army-type cap. Camouflage on it. Dude was circumcised.”

Lash said, “Come again?”

“Whipped out his dick and pissed on my stash. You gotta get this freak.”

“He took money, but not product?”

The Kool guy pointed to the mess on the floor.

Lash said, “You said an army cap?”