Page 289 of The Black Trilogy

The dodgy coke was cut with levamisole, a veterinary dewormer that could be fatal to humans. It killed off the white blood cells that made up the immune system, meaning small things like a cut or mouth ulcer escalated into deadly infections. The end result wasn’t all that dissimilar to AIDS. And if the user didn’t die from that, there were the added side effects of seizures and damage to the heart muscle.

Nice.

The flow of the drugs into the area hadn’t been constant. Every couple of months, another batch turned up and more users died. Dan had interviewed a couple of them in the hospital a year or so back, an unpleasant task by all accounts, and one she’d told me about over a working lunch.

“They had these huge open sores covering their faces and bodies. One guy could have been an extra in a horror movie. And the dude in the morgue had pus leaking out all over the place.”

I hadn’t got past the appetiser.

The tipping point in the case had come a month back with the death of Steven A. Trent, a young, wealthy, and very stupid investment banker. In his case, the A stood for Addict, because according to his acquaintances, he couldn’t get through a party without snorting a few lines. Not only was he rich, his levamisole-induced death got extra coverage because he happened to be the son of a prominent New York senator.

The day after the funeral, Herman Trent had announced his mission to win the war on drugs.

I spent the afternoon reading through our files before my video conference with the DEA at five. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the notes, but I wanted to refresh my memory. Black had been one of the previous investigators, and his connections with that scene were better than mine, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to add a lot to the party.

But I needed a project to get my teeth into, and as with everything in life, I’d give it a good go.

“So, do you have any new ideas?” I asked Damon Belcourt, my primary contact at the DEA.

He twiddled his pen around on his fingers, a nervous habit he’d had for as long as I’d known him.

“Nothing but whispers on the street, and most of those contradict each other. The lab’s done chemical analysis that shows all the bad coke’s come from the same source, but we’re no nearer to finding where that is than we were two years ago.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“What you usually do—rattle a few cages, shake a few trees. See what comes loose. You’re not bound by the rules of paperwork like we are, and we’re short of manpower. Everyone’s too busy taking out low-level street bums so we can make it look as if we’re fighting Herman’s crusade.”

I hated having to read through Black’s notes. His spidery scrawl, not the easiest to decipher but something I’d learned to read with ease over the years, would never straggle across the page again. But I trusted his instincts, so I needed to know what he’d written. He believed the coke was being cut with the levamisole before it got to the States, which was strange in itself because smugglers usually liked the drug as pure as possible when they shipped it. It took up less volume that way, making it easier to hide.

Why the smugglers wanted to cut the drugs at that stage was anyone’s guess. Black hypothesised that the smugglers had a misguided belief the levamisole would act as a fungicide and prevent the coke from going mouldy when it was shipped in damp conditions, and nobody had come up with a better theory.

I’d got through most of the files when Tia bounced into my office, beaming.

“I spotted a shoplifter. He took a bottle of vodka, and I saw him getting arrested and everything.”

“I’m proud of you. Are you done for the day?”

“I can hang around with the guys downstairs if you’ve still got stuff left to do.”

“No, we can go home.” She wouldn’t be in town for long, and I wanted to enjoy the time we had together. “You want to get pizza? Watch a movie?”

“Awesome!”

At least when we got back to Little Riverley, the house was back to its rightful state. Bradley would be keeping his car after all.

“You want to go back to the surveillance centre?” I asked Tia the next morning.

“Can I? The guys said they’d buy me a donut for every thief I spot.”

“Sure. You want to try and up their offer, though. I’d hold out for at least a Happy Meal.”

While Tia headed off to work, I took a trip to New York. I spent the day tracking down acquaintances, something easier said than done when I’d been out of the game for so many months. Some had moved on, others had changed occupation, more had simply disappeared. The highlight of my afternoon was winning two hundred dollars in an underground poker game. By early evening, I’d got no further with the drugs case, but I was sick of hanging out in dive bars, so I got one of Blackwood’s pilots to bring Tia into the city to catch a Broadway show.

After Phantom of the Opera, we went out for dinner.

“How was work?” I asked.

“I loved it! I caught two shoplifters today. One of them ran off and the security guard rugby tackled him. Can I come and work for you when I leave school?”

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