Mayhem & Mistletoe, стр. 46
“Do you give them to him?”
“Honey, nobody got time for no freebies.” Chantelle shook her head so vigorously some of her hair shifted, making me realize she was wearing a wig. “We don’t make a living as it is. We just trying to keep alive.”
“If he knows you don’t give out freebies, why does he keep trying?”
“It’s part of a game,” Sally Anne replied, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “Everyone in these parts plays a game. That’s how we survive ... and entertain ourselves. You probably don’t understand that.”
“You’d be surprised.” I thought back to the way I bullied Fish at the office. “Everybody has to play certain games to survive.” I meant it. “Our circumstances decide what sort of game we have to play.”
“And what sort of games do you play?” Sally Anne challenged.
“Games in which the stakes are nowhere near as dire as those you face on a daily basis. I don’t envy your life. I also don’t think I’m better than you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, girl, let’s not pretend.” Sally Anne was calm. “It’s obvious you think you’re something special. You got that ... air ... about you.”
I opened my mouth to argue but she kept talking and didn’t give me a chance to speak.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” she explained. “I like a woman who has good self-worth. You clearly do.”
“Oh, she has it coming out of her yin-yang,” Chantelle enthused. “I saw this thing about her on the TV. It was like a greatest hits thing or something. It was all highlights of her torturing this politician. He racist, so he had it coming. She did some funny stuff and he tried to strangle her a few times.”
“Is that so?” Sally Anne’s expression was hard to read. “You must be fun at parties.”
“It depends on who you ask.” I was growing increasingly uncomfortable talking to them about the disparities in our lives. “I’m one of those people you either love or hate.”
“What’s the ratio?”
I smirked. “Two-to-one ... in favor of hate.”
Sally Anne took another drag. “Why you worried about the halfway house? Has Cal gone and gotten himself into trouble? I saw the cops there last night.”
Oh, well, this was definitely getting awkward. “That wasn’t Cal. That was a dude named Van. He kind of lost it when Cal wouldn’t allow him into the house after hours.”
Sally Anne’s eyebrows hopped. “Were you there?”
I nodded. “We were tracking a man we believe was found dead in Macomb County the other day.”
“You believe?”
I kept going. Who were they going to tell? I figured it was better to be straight with them than risk getting caught in a lie. “Did you hear about the Santas found by the train tracks?”
Sally Anne straightened. “You think someone who lived at that house was one of the Santas?”
“We don’t have confirmation yet, but a representative of the sheriff’s department let one name slip. Beau Burton.”
“Beau?” Chantelle turned to stare directly at me. “Are you kidding?”
“I take it you knew him.”
“Everybody knew Beau. He was a stone-cold pervert. He liked to grab things as he was walking by ... as in these.” Chantelle jiggled her rather impressive rack. “I threatened to break his fingers the last time he tried.”
“He sounds like a prince,” I noted.
Sally Anne snorted. “Yeah, he was a real peach.” Unlike Chantelle, who seemed genuinely surprised, her response was more measured. “Why would Beau be in a Santa suit?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I never knew him to like kids and there’s no way a mall would hire him with his background.” She was thoughtful as she took another drag, her eyes on the house. “Want to know what’s interesting?”
“Always.”
“Cal’s place had what you might call a robust reputation up until a couple months ago.” She seemed to be thinking hard, so I didn’t interrupt her. “Most of those places are full of guys who come in for a week or two and leave. He had some who stayed for the duration.
“I mean, we’re not talking good dudes,” she continued. “They weren’t pillars of the community or anything.” She let loose a hollow laugh at her own joke. “Cal managed to keep a lot of them on the straight and narrow.”
“He did,” Chantelle agreed, bobbing her head. “Most guys don’t finish those programs. They go back to the streets or jail. He had a lot of people ... what do you call it? Um ....”
“Graduate,” Sally Anne supplied, grimacing. “I don’t know the numbers, but he had a lot of people finishing up the terms of their release while under his roof.”
“He was pretty solid for a skinny white dude,” Chantelle supplied.
“Something happened to change that, though,” I surmised.
Sally Anne nodded. “About six months ago, his people started leaving. I don’t know if he had bad luck with a rough crew or something, but he started getting in a group of guys who spent a lot of time rolling the streets together.”
I wasn’t certain what that meant. “Rolling how?”
“You know ... rolling.”
My television-learned lingo was failing me. “Drugs?”
“That’s the word on the street,” Chantelle volunteered. “They say he was running Hypno.”
Now I was really confused. “I don’t know what that is.” I looked to Sally Anne for an explanation. “Is that a new drug?”
“It’s more like two old drugs,” she replied. “It’s basically acid, but in liquid form, cut with heroine.”
That sounded absolutely terrible. “And what does that do?”
“Gives you one heckuva a trip. Like ... a trip to Disney World without leaving your couch.”
“So, a hallucinogen.” I ran the information through my mind, debating what to do with it. “What’s the heroin do?”
“Makes the pain go away,” Sally Anne replied on a shrug. “Hypno was supposed to make all the people in neighborhoods like this not hate their lives. It was a new drug, so it was cheap at the start. Now ... not so much.”
That