Vicki tried to visualize it. "So this guy just stands outside, in the hole?"
"Yeah."
"I guess the overhead's low."
" 'Cause there's nothin' overhead," Reheema said, and they both laughed.
More bonding! Bonding like crazy! Then Vicki sobered up. "They won't do business outside forever, will they?"
"No, not for long. They're just gettin' a hold. Established. They'll move into one a the houses soon."
"When do you think?"
"Soon as they find one." Reheema snorted. "Hell, I'll sell 'em mine."
Vicki assumed she was kidding. "And that will be the end."
Reheema didn't say anything.
Vicki set the camera down and skimmed the Filofax notes she'd made today, in her lap. She had counted foot traffic again, and business was better than yesterday; sixty customers in the past hour, even in the bad weather. At sixty bags an hour, for a dime bag, which was conservative, the dealer made six hundred dollars an hour. Vicki looked up from her notes. "Wonder when the go-betweens will show up, the black leather coat or the Eagles coat. They're late."
"Maybe he stocked up because of the snow."
"Funny that they started an outside business in winter."
"Lotta competition in the city right now. Everybody wants to open a new store." Reheema's tone was so certain, Vicki had to wonder.
"How do you know that?"
"Just got outta jail. The FDC's fulla crack dealers. All the talk is turf, who's stealing customers from who. Who's expanding, who's not."
Vicki considered it. "Maybe we can put the word out in the FDC. See what anybody knows about Jay and Teeg, or Brown-ing's operation in general."
"Did that already."
"You did? When?"
"Soon as it went down with my mother."
Vicki felt a twinge. "Did you learn anything?"
"No. Everybody's afraid to talk about it. Hey, Cal's back." Reheema raised the binoculars, and Vicki raised the camera to watch the young man walk out of the hole, hands thrust in pockets and head down, his dreads coiled into a thick rope that came to a point like an alligator tail.
"What's with the hair? This would be a black culture question."
Reheema snorted. "Don't ask me, I hate it. Cal had his that way since high school. Hasn't been washed in five years."
At almost the same moment, a shiny maroon Navigator turned onto Cater from the opposite direction and powered toward the vacant lot, spraying fans of fresh snow in its wake, like a speedboat. "Lookout," Vicki said, taking a photo, and Reheema whistled behind the binoculars.
"Nice ride!"
"Four-wheel drive."
"We got Daddy's car today!"
Vicki snapped another close-up as the Navigator stopped in front of the hole and the driver's door opened. In the next instant, the short man in the black leather coat and cap stepped out into the snow. Vicki took his close-up when he turned. She had never been so happy to see a criminal before. "Bingo!"
"Goody!" Reheema said.
Vicki let it go and took another photo. "Do you know him?"
"No."
"Damn."
"More like it," Reheema said. Vicki looked though the telephoto lens to see him better. Mr. Black Leather had large, round eyes, a short nose, a tiny little mustache, and photographed rather well. He hustled inside the vacant lot, raising his knees high to avoid getting his feet wet, kicking snow as he went. The Navigator idled in the street, sending a chalky plume of exhaust into the air. Vicki eyed it through the camera but, because of the snow's glare on the windshield, couldn't tell if somebody was in the passenger seat. Only a drug dealer could leave a car like that unlocked and running in this neighborhood.
"He might come past us on the way out. Get down." Vicki lowered the camera and slunk down in her seat, and Reheema laughed.
"Sit up. You're embarrassing yourself."
Vicki edged up in the slippery seat and watched the scene again through the camera. Moore was at the top of the block and turned right. "Wonder where he lives. Do you know, from high school?"
"We didn't travel in the same circles."
"He wasn't in National Honor Society, huh?"
Reheema shot her a look. They fell silent in the next minute, and Vicki raised the camera again when Mr. Black Leather reappeared, hustled out of the lot, and to the Navigator, knocking snow off his shoes before he climbed inside. The Navigator backed out the way it had come, and Vicki raised the camera to see if she could shoot his plate number. When the Navigator turned at the top of the street, she tried to catch a glimpse, but it was too far away.
"Rats!" Vicki said, and Reheema's only response was to start the engine of the Sunbird, which struggled to life.
Half an hour later, the women sat parked in a space on Aspinall Street down from Jamal Browning's house, and they were on their second girl stakeout. Unlike Cater, there was no activity on Aspinall; it was a static scene of a snow-covered city street. No one had answered the row house door when Mr. Black Leather went inside, and there were no comings or goings for Reheema not to identify people. Vicki had taken all the pictures she needed and none of them mattered. In short, she was beginning to doubt the viability of Phase II.
"Cheeto?" Vicki offered, discouraged, pointing the fragrant end of the bag to Reheema. "It's lunch. And dinner."
Reheema didn't say anything.
"You're not feelin' the Cheetos?"
Reheema didn't smile.
"You didn't want the Doritos either. You off carbs, too?"
"No, just food that glows in the dark."
"Seems unduly restrictive." Vicki brushed orange dust off the front of her parka. She had consumed one 64-ounce Wawa coffee, and six hundred thousand calories. The Sunbird reeked of Cigar-Smoke-in-a-Can and her Master Plan sucked. Vicki scanned the cars parked in front of the house, but they were covered with snow mounded like sugar frosting. "Wonder which car is Browning's. They use the crappy ones for work, right? So which is the crappiest?"
"Ours."
Vicki eyed Browning's row house, her frustration intensifying. "This isn't going well, none of it. You know, I feel like your neighborhood is right on the brink of something. Like it could go either way, up or down, depending on what happens on Cater. You know what I mean?"
Reheema didn't say anything.
"The crack dealers get established in the hole, making addicts, then they buy a house and sell crack in it, making more crack addicts, and there goes a perfectly fine neighborhood, with law-abiding people and Christmas wreaths. And if that happens all over the city, pretty soon the city is lost. And city after city, it happens all over."
Reheema still didn't reply.
"That's why I want to shut them down, get them behind bars. Not only because of Morty and your mother, but because we can actually save your neighborhood."
"It's not my neighborhood," Reheema said, finally. "You keep saying Devil's Corner is my neighborhood, and it's not. I told you, I'm only living there until I sell."
"It's my dad's old neighborhood."
"Oh, I get it. That's why you care." Reheema snorted. "You're doing it for your daddy. To get Daddy's approval."
"No. He hated it there."
Reheema faced Vicki, her sunglasses masking her eyes. "Then why do you care?"
"Why don't you?" Vicki asked, glad for some reason that she was wearing sunglasses, too. Suddenly, something caught her attention at Browning's house. The front door was opening. She grabbed the camera and snapped a photo as a man emerged. But it wasn't Mr. Black Leather, it was Eagles Coat. "Here's the other go-between. So they take turns. Alternate, like last time."
"So there's two on a shift," Reheema said, from behind the binoculars. "And two shifts a day, maybe three. I don't see anybody at the door."
"Me, neither." Vicki took a photo anyway, then lowered the camera and watched Eagles Coat walk to the Navigator, get in, pull out of the space, and take off. This time she got a clear shot of the license plate and lowered the camera. She knew cops who could run the plate for her, and maybe Dan would have an idea. Then she realized she'd gone the whole day without thinking about him; she'd even left her phone turned off. She was in Married Man Rehab.