Payback

94

Karr walked around the outside of the building, toward a window he thought would give him a good view of the hallway that led to where Lia was going. He guessed — as Rockman clearly hadn’t — that she was going to take the cards out of the envelope before swapping them. The guard was obviously standing over her shoulder making the swap difficult.

School was out today, but there were plenty of people inside. A nurse was holding some sort of clinic at the back of the first floor. As Karr watched through the vertical blinds, three people entered the room — a young girl, seventeen or eighteen at most; a nurse; and a well-dressed man whom Karr took to be a doctor. They closed the door, blocking off his view of the hall.

As Karr pulled back from the window, he saw the doctor take what looked like a pair of small balloons from a drawer at the side. His imagination stuttered; he couldn’t quite piece together what was going on.

When he saw the girl take one of the balloons and hold it to her mouth, Karr finally got it — the kid was being prepped to take drugs to smuggle north to the U.S. The actual drugs weren’t handed over here; it was more on the order of a job interview, with the applicants being screened.

Beautiful world, he thought to himself, moving on.