Something Coming Through

18. Blue Fairy

Mangala | 25 July

Vic cruised the irregular blocks and alleys of Junktown, eventually spotting the guy he was looking for and pulling over and honking the horn. Rolling down his window as the man ambled up, saying, ‘Hey, Dodger. What do you know, what do you say?’

‘Let me sit in the back, Mr Gayle. I can’t be seen talking to you here.’

Roger ‘Dodger’ Day was one of Vic’s confidential informants, a long-term meq addict with a shock of grey dreadlocks and the gentle shambling manner of an absent-minded academic. He sprawled low in the back seat while Vic drove to a nearby industrial estate. Although Vic kept the window rolled down, Dodger’s funky odour of sweat and woodsmoke and the tang of burnt metal filled the car.

Vic bought him a cup of coffee and two doughnuts at a cart, and they sat in the car and talked about Cal McBride and Danny Drury and the ray-gun murders. Roger said that the McBride crew were up and working again, although they were buying their shit from another crew.

‘They cut it down to almost nothing,’ Dodger said. ‘But they work late at night, when most other crews are off the streets. If someone needs a hit, and that’s all there is…’

‘So they still don’t have a cook.’

Dodger shrugged. He had eaten the first doughnut in two big bites and was licking powdered sugar from his fingers. His nails were crested with black; his palms were like tanned leather.

‘After what happened to the last one I suppose it’s been tough, finding a willing replacement,’ Vic said. ‘You heard how he was killed?’

Dodger shrugged again, took a bite from his second doughnut.

‘He was nailed to a wall, and then he was shot in the head,’ Vic said. ‘Maybe you could ask around, find out if anyone on the street has been talking about it. Was he killed by Drury because he wanted to quit? Or was he killed by McBride, to fuck up Drury’s meq business?’

The idea had come to him while he’d been talking to Skip: the man who’d killed the cook probably didn’t have the ray gun that killed Redway. McBride would have used it on the cook to send a message to Drury; Drury would have used it to put the murder on McBride. Find who’d done the one murder, you’d know who was up for the other.

He said, ‘I’m also wondering how this new man, Drury, has been enforcing his crews. Has he been dumping bodies we don’t know about?’

Dodger thumbed the last of the second doughnut into his mouth. A rime of powdered sugar clung to his beard. ‘Are you short of work, Mr Gayle?’

‘Is that supposed to be a joke, Dodger?’

Dodger shrugged.

Vic said, ‘How much is his crew charging for a bag of their weak shit?’

Dodger hesitated. ‘Twenty. Around that.’

Vic stared at him.

Dodger looked away, looked back. ‘Sometimes they go as low as ten.’

Vic held out a twenty-euro note. ‘Hang out on one of their corners, pick up any chatter. Anything about the way Drury runs his crews. Does he show up at the corners himself or does he have someone else do it? Who did he get rid of when he took over from McBride, and where were the bodies dumped? Does he have a beef with any drug crews, and especially, does he have a beef with McBride? And see what you can find out about that poor dead cook, too. It’s a sorry day when we can’t make someone answer for something like that.’

‘That’s a lot of work for twenty, Mr Gayle. Especially if I’m supposed to use it to buy their weak shit.’

‘I’ll come find you in a day or so. If you have something new and interesting to tell me, you’ll be handsomely rewarded. You need a lift back?’

‘I’ll walk.’ Dodger paused, then added, ‘Can I show you something?’

‘I didn’t have you down as a weenie wagger, Dodger.’

‘This is serious shit, Mr Gayle,’ Dodger said. He cupped his hands together, studied them with a frown of concentration. After a moment something flickered there. A blue flame, elongating into a spiral that turned on its axis.

Vic stared at it. ‘That’s a neat trick.’

‘You can see it,’ Dodger said, with obvious relief. Points of light were reflected in his eyes. ‘I call it the blue fairy. It started a couple of days ago. I wondered if it was just meq heads who could see it. I don’t know anyone straight. Except the corner boys, and you can’t ask them anything. But if you can see it, I guess it’s real…’

The spiral flame was about five centimetres high now, slowly turning. More detail resolved as Vic stared at it, sinuous waves running along the edges of its turns, ghostly lines multiplying out into the air.

Dodger opened his palms and the flame vanished. Vic blinked away after-images and said, ‘Can any of your friends do tricks like that?’

‘If they can, they didn’t show me. But I’ve been doing meq longer than anyone else I know,’ Dodger said, ‘so maybe it’s just a matter of time.’