Chapter 14 #5
“They’re feds, you moron,” said the woman. “Their bodies show up and people start asking questions. Let me check with my guys. For now, take them upstairs and dose ’em—these two fuckers’ll break free if you let ’em.”
Dose. Oh shit. Dose. Joey had never known it was a fear.
Of all the ways he’d had to come to harm at his father’s hands, an overdose hadn’t been an option.
But he’d seen Crosby’s face, heard the story of how Crosby had been doing okay.
He’d been stabbed and stitched, had gotten into one hell of a fight, but he’d been doing okay—and then he’d downed meth-flavored water by accident and almost died.
And deep in Joey’s gut started the worry, the terror, that all the work he’d done to be smarter, to be a more compassionate human, to love his family in the SCTF like they seemed to love him, would disappear when the drugs hit his bloodstream.
He’d seen junkies. He’d tracked junkies, and sometimes they were sad, and sometimes they were mean, but never, ever were they the version of themselves they’d planned to be as children.
He’d rather lose his life than lose the person that Gideon took to his bed.
The thought was shocking beyond belief, but he couldn’t dwell on it because they were being dragged into a warehouse and up a set of wooden stairs to an office.
He didn’t need to study the place to spot the pallets of plastic-wrapped white powder that were stacked in plain sight right behind the bay doors.
Oh, these must be the Sons of the Blood, a group so deep in the police force they’d bought themselves a higher-up in the DOJ to force Crosby to recruit them into the nearest precinct.
But bad guys came in tangles—the dogfighting ring had taught him that—and Joey was not surprised when the biggest and oldest guy of the group that had borne them up here, kicking and fighting with every breath, stopped a younger, angrier guy from going to work on Gideon.
“But Garve!” the younger guy complained, his body primed to let a punch explode, as Gideon sat furious, zip-tied to an office chair, and glowered.
“Go ahead,” Gideon snarled before hawking blood from his already broken nose and spitting on the guy’s shoes. “You think a little pain is gonna save you now?”
“I’ll show you a little pain—Garve!”
Garve clocked the guy in the jaw and stood, body between Joey and Gideon, a force to be reckoned with. Joey thought unhappily that this guy was wasted as a hood, or whatever capacity he served under Sons of the Blood, because that was some solid-balls leadership right there.
“We’re dosing them,” he said. “If they die from heroin, it’ll be easier to deny we had anything to do with it.
If they live, they’ll be killed and dumped way far away from here.
I don’t know how they found us, but they’re feds, Rog.
Feds do check-ins. Somebody is gonna come lookin’ for ’em, and they’re harder to move when dead.
You gotta trust me on this. I know. So shut up and get the doses from Big Bitch’s drawer.
She’s always got four or five ready to go in case the boys get antsy.
Too many of our boys are methed out—the horse chills them until they can come down. ”
Crosby had told them about the meth, but the heroin—that was something new.
Joey marveled that he was storing all these facts in his aching noggin when odds were good he was going to die with his first needleful of heroin.
Garve had wrapped the constrictor around Joey’s arm first, and as he flicked the crux of Joey’s arm to get the vein to pop out, he leaned close.
“You let my kid go,” he whispered, so quietly Joey almost couldn’t hear him over the ringing in his ears. “For that you only get half a dose.”
Joey grunted. “If the other guy dies, I will burn this place to the ground.”
The man flicked surprised eyes to Joey’s, and Joey wasn’t sure what glared back at him, but he got one solid nod in return.
“’Sides,” Joey mumbled as the needle slid into the vein. “’Mm Stevie Carlyle’s kid. You kill me, he’ll burn your neighborhoods, your families, your whole family line. Only person who fucks with Stevie Carlyle’s kid is Stevie Carlyle.”
He heard the gasps—more than one—and Rog spoke up.
“Holy fuckin’ Jesus, Garve, you hear that? Stevie Carlyle will fuck us up!”
“Another reason to only give ’em half a dose,” Garve said, but Joey caught the reluctance there and wondered if that was because they were no longer square.
“Me and Gideon live,” Joey slurred as the drug made its way into his vein, “he’ll be too fuckin’ busy to ever hear your name.”
His eyelids flickered, but he kept them on the syringe and the needle. How much was left? Five mil? Three? Was it enough?
All the pain faded, so, so sweet, and then his vision darkened, soft and gentle, and he began to sing.
“I WAS not singing,” he protested later, in the hospital bed next to Gideon’s.
“Swear to fuckin’ God,” Harding told him, his voice harsh with worry—and with battle. Did their team come after them? Oh yeah, and they brought the fury of hell with them.
All Joey knew was one minute he was in the comforting arms of oblivion, and the next Harman Blodgett, Clint Harding’s significant other, apparently, a slender man with a charming smile, a receding hairline, and balls of adamantium, had his shoulder under Joey’s arm and was helping him down the back stairway of the warehouse while Iwo Fuckin’ Jima was going on in the front.
“Gid?” Joey had slurred.
“Right behind us—” Blodgett began, and then Gideon started screaming “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” at the top of his bloody lungs.
“Oh,” Joey said. “We’re doing that now.”
And then he joined him. But that was conscious, he told himself virtuously. Gideon was singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and Joey was his partner—they had to sing together.
“I mean, the Gordon Lightfoot thing,” Joey said, holding Harding’s eyes and nodding. “Had to do that. Right, Gid? Couldn’t leave you hanging.”
“My baby boy never leaves me hanging,” Gideon said, and he sounded sober as a judge too. Then he launched into “Right Hand Man” from Hamilton, and Harding took a deep breath and called for the nurse.
Joey and Gideon were grooving to Hamilton when the nurse showed up, and Harding asked if there was any fucking chance the two of them would be sober enough to go on an op in a couple of hours when he got the warrant.
It was a nice thing he was trying to do, let them in on serving a warrant to the top bad guys responsible for their shitty night.
Joey worked hard at keeping his voice on key so Harding would know how much they loved him.
The nurse had eyed them skeptically. “How much Narcan did you give them?” he asked Blodgett, who was staring at them in bemusement.
“Just the first dose,” Harm told him. “Maybe give them an hour of fluids, Clint, and let’s stitch their wounds and set Gideon’s nose at the very least. It’ll be a few hours before your judge wakes up enough to send you on your way. Might as well let them finish the concert.”
“D’you hear that?” Gideon asked. “Encore!”
“Oh God,” Crosby said, because God-for-fucking-bid Crosby be on an op without bleeding all over the fuckin’ place. He was gonna be okay, he’d assured them, but he wasn’t sure he knew enough of Hamilton to sing along.
“Your loss,” Joey said.
Now, as Crosby and Harding conferred, Blodgett went out to talk to the nurse, and Harding said—loud enough for them to hear—”Jesus, don’t you guys know some Led Zeppelin or something?”
So they got to change to “Immigrant Song,” and that was good too. Air guitar with that one!
But back to what Harding had insisted at the beginning of that conversation in the hospital. Joey Carlyle had not been singing when he’d been completely unconscious and stoned.
He had way too much dignity for that.
BY THE end of the day, he’d consigned dignity to the four winds. Had they gotten the fuckers who’d fucked them? Oh yes, they had—in an explosion of bullets and blood in a conference room of police plaza, they’d killed all but two of the bad guys.
One of those bad guys would have a very bad time in jail, and the other one, the one Crosby had wounded but not killed, on purpose because apparently their puppy had a mean streak, was probably going to die there.
Crosby liked that idea, and Joey thought better of him for the little bit of sadism that now laced his sweetness. It was that kind of move that could keep a puppy alive.
But finally, it was over. The upper-level Sons of the Blood were being subpoenaed by the other part of their team, and the part who had gone to One Police Plaza had surrendered their weapons and were slated for depositions in the next week.
And then there was lunch. Which on the one hand felt weird after the fuckin’ last week they’d all had, but on the other, sitting in a greasy spoon and eating steak and eggs with his colleagues—his family—felt like the thing that had been missing from his life.
Which must have been why he chose that moment to spill about his father.
It was either that or the heroin, but Joey hoped it wasn’t the heroin, because he and Gideon had sworn they’d come down off their high before accepting their weapons.
But there they were—him, Harding, Gideon, Crosby, and Garcia—plowing through some first-rate chow, battered, bloody, exhausted, and ravenous, when Gideon elbowed him.
“What’s up?”
Joey realized he’d been sitting in the same position, a juicy bite of steak dripping with egg poised halfway to his mouth, for a good ten seconds.
He glanced over at Crosby, who had spent some painful moments revealing his past to the entire squad so they would understand what they’d been up against in this last clusterfuck, and then at Harding, who had known about Joey’s past from the very beginning and still recruited him, had faith in him.
Welcomed him into his family.
And then he looked at Gideon, who had pretty much learned to read his mind in the last two years.