Page 175 of American Hellhound
Roman bit his lip.
“Start talking, or I’ll take you back to them.”
Roman looked to Collier for help.
He shrugged. “Hey, don’t look at me.”
“Fuck.” Roman took a deep, ragged breath. “Yeah, shit, okay. I’ve been dealing with them about a year.”
“Ayear?”
“You wanna hear this or not?”
Ghost motioned for him to get on with it.
“A year, yeah. Their crops got busted.”
“Weed?”
“What the hell other kinda crops would I be talking about?”
“They’re farmers. I dunno. They might have…corn or some shit.”
“Theirweedgot busted,” Roman corrected, rolling his eyes. “Cops tore it all outta the ground, bagged it up, and took it away. They planted again, obviously, but the soil was bad or something, I dunno. So one day one of ‘em reaches out. I got sent to make the drop, and we got to talking. They wanted to trade: I give them weed, they give me meth, and let me distribute that.”
“Damn,” Ghost said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That shit kills people, dumbass.”
“So does coke, and we sell that.”
“There’s a big damn difference, and you know it.”
“Whatever.” Roman threw his hands up. “I took the proposal to Duane, and he said no. Big surprise. The idiot doesn’t do shit.” It was the first time Ghost had heard him say anything negative about their president, and it was refreshing. “But I thought it was a good idea. So I set something up.”
“You’ve been selling meth wearing a Dogs cut, without his permission,” Ghost said.
Here, Roman winced. “It gets worse.”
“I bet it does.”
“A couple months back, I got stopped at a sobriety checkpoint, and, uh, let’s just say I wasn’t sober.”
“Oh my God,” Collier sighed.
“When they hauled me in, they found the meth. And so, um, I…”
“You squealed on the Ryders,” Ghost supplied.
“They’ve been after them for a year! They never could tie the weed bust to them officially, not enough to make an arrest. I told them who’d cooked the meth and that I could give them the Ryders on a silver platter.”
Ghost wanted to say he was surprised, really he did, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure there was anything Roman could tell him that would come as a shock. “You’re a CI,” he said, flatly. “You wearing a wire right now?”
“No. Shit,no. It wasn’t formal like that. They tailed me to a drop and caught the Ryders with their hands full.”
“And they just let your ass go?”
“What’s a DUI when they got a major drug arrest?”
“Why wasn’t it on the news?”
