The place was sterile and nondescript. The office was in the kind of building where you’d expect to run into a herd of accountants. Marco and I stuck out like sore thumbs in this environment of cream walls and bad art reproductions.
In Gash’s other life, he was known as Trevor McMillan, and he worked as an IT analyst for a small security firm.
So how did Trevor become Gash? That was the question of the decade. There were plenty of rumors as to how he’d started Compulsion, just as there were a million stories of how he had earned the nickname he was known by—and I seriously doubted any of them were true.
Who the fuck knew? Did it really matter? The answer didn’t change the fact that he was one scary motherfucker for a scrawny IT guy who played club manager goon on the side.
Marco knocked on the door and went inside without waiting for an answer. Gash sat behind a plain wooden desk, his head bowed over a keyboard. He could have passed for someone’s pedophile uncle or a used-car salesman. He wasn’t particularly intimidating, just sort of smarmy . . . until he looked at you.
His cold, dead stare could make a lesser man squirm. I wasn’t too macho to admit I’d been close to pissing myself a time or two in his presence.
Marco closed the door and had a seat at one of the two upholstered chairs against the wall. I followed, hands shoved in my pockets, shoulders hunched defensively. You never knew what you were going to get when you had a meeting with Gash.
Some days he was fine, civil even, though he very rarely cracked a smile.
Then there were the days when you were waiting for him to pull a knife from his coat and slit your throat. He was unpredictable, which should have made Marco and me think twice before stealing from him. We should have been smarter than to mess with a guy like Gash. But as I said, money and drugs were a temptation neither of us could turn away from, sad, sick bastards that we were.
Marco handed Gash the slip of paper where he had written the address for the old school. Without looking at either of us, Gash turned back to his computer and started clicking away, looking at a map on the screen.
“Is this in a residential area?” he asked, finally looking at us. He turned his unemotional stare on me.
I shook my head. “It used to be, but the area is run-down now. Most of the houses have either been foreclosed or abandoned. Not many people still live there, and the few that do are old. No families. No kids,” I reported.
I curled my hands around the arms of the chair. I was sweating bullets. Damn, I needed another pill.
“Police?” Gash asked.
“The police station is on the other side of town. The force just laid off three officers, so they’re bare-bones right now. I don’t see much of a problem,” Marco piped up, filling in what I should have already known.
This is the sort of research I normally would have done. Marco was picking up the slack, and I definitely owed him one.
“I’ll get one of the guys to poke around a bit, see if there’s someone we can talk to about making sure we don’t have any problems on Saturday,” Marco said, glancing at me out of his peripheral vision. Could it be any more obvious I hadn’t done a thing?
And it wasn’t lost on Gash. He regarded me as though I were shit on his shoe.
“And what the fuck have you been doing while Marco has been doing your job? What the hell am I paying you for? A little painting here and there doesn’t cut it. Sit up and stop fucking slouching!” Gash demanded. I felt like a kid in the principal’s office. Would my punishment be detention or an ass beating?
I sat up in my chair slowly. I couldn’t help but be oppositional about it. I was a tit like that.
“I’ve had a lot of shit going on,” I offered by way of an excuse, though I knew it was lame at best. My pathetic justification obviously made Gash really, really angry.
He leaned over his desk, his lips peeled back to bare his yellowed teeth, lines forming between his eyebrows. “I don’t care what is going on, you have a job to do, so do it! Marco shouldn’t be doing the shit I pay you for.” Gash jerked his thumb at Marco, who had all but disappeared into the upholstery of the chair. Not drawing attention to yourself when Gash was pissed was a matter of survival, plain and simple.
I nodded curtly. “I get it; it won’t happen again,” I said.
“Vin said he dropped off the week’s product to you a couple of days ago. I want the money on Sunday. Not Monday. Not Tuesday. But fucking Sunday! I’ve got my eye on you and I’m not happy with what I’m seeing,” Gash warned, running his finger along the scar under his eye.
He had been stabbed in the face by a junked-out crackhead a few years ago. The crackhead was dead. Gash was still here. Point made.
I nodded again. “You’ll get it, not a problem.” Too bad it was actually a very big problem.
“You’re looking a little shaky. You all right?” Gash asked, eyeing me shrewdly. He was no dumb shit. I knew that he knew I was coming down . . . hard.
“It’s those downers. You need something to bring you up. Try this. Just get yourself together. I don’t need a damned junkie selling my shit. That’s a liability I do not want,” he growled, tossing a baggie of dried leaves in my lap.
I opened it and gave it a sniff. What was this? It didn’t smell like weed. Maybe it was some crazy hallucinogenic.
“It’s an herbal tea, dipshit. Ginkgo biloba, a little bit of ginseng. It’s good for the blood flow to the brain. Go home and make yourself a cup.”
I wanted to laugh my ass off at the irony. Gash, the biggest drug pusher this side of New York, was offering me a bag of herbal fucking tea.
I chanced a look at Marco, who was chewing the inside of his cheek as he also tried not to laugh at our boss peddling his hardcore herbal remedies.
“Sure, sounds great,” I said, tucking the bag in my pocket.
Gash pointed at me. “I’m serious, you have this weekend to show me you can still handle all of this. Because next week I’m getting a shipment of stuff up from Mexico that can make everyone a hell of a lot of money. I need to know you’ll do what I need you to do.”
Marco and I got to our feet. “You got it, Gash,” I promised.
“And drink some of that tea,” our boss instructed as we left. I patted my pocket in agreement.
Out in the parking lot, I wiped sweat off my forehead. I needed to get home. I needed to even myself out. Fuck the tea.
“You got off pretty easy in there, Maxx. You need to listen to what Gash was telling you,” Marco lectured.
I rolled my eyes, sick of hearing the same ol’ shit.
It’s only when I’d gotten home and had taken another couple of pills that I remembered Aubrey. Before passing out, I wondered if she had come by. Maybe I should call her. Explain what had happened.
But then the high took over, and I forgot all about Aubrey.
I forgot about everything.
chapter
twenty-four
aubrey
i was pissed.
No, I was livid.
I had gone by Maxx’s apartment last night and pounded on the door. He hadn’t answered. So I had waited outside. In the freezing cold. For hours!
And he had never showed.
I had tried phoning him, but the call went straight to voice mail. I had been tempted to call back over and over again, but I had controlled the urge.
So now I was not only angry and hurt but also ready to inflict bodily harm the next time I saw him.
Our relationship was only weeks old, but already we were failing at it miserably. What chance did we have when I was mired in distrust and wariness? I knew that if he wasn’t with me, he was most likely doing something that would break my heart.