Chapter Two #4
Yesterday.
“How do you know he’s turning to the dark side?” she asked.
“Saw him with some dude who deals black market crap.”
“Sorry?”
“Saw him, at the back of a bar, with some dude who deals
black market crap.”
“What do people involved with black market crap want with a
seventeen-year-old kid?”
Dutch felt his innards seize.
Because that was a good fucking question.
“Dutch?” she called when he didn’t say anything.
“Deal it for them,” he pushed out.
“Is he doing that?” she pressed. “Dealing for them? Do you
know that?”
“No,” he forced through his lips.
“Okay, I’m no authority on this, but I’ve done a few
articles on gangs. And gangs deal, and they’ll use a seventeen-year-old to
deal. Non-gang suppliers supply kids who deal in schools. These are easily
picked-off, expendable soldiers in that war. One goes down, three pop up. But
black market…”
She trailed off.
“No?” he asked.
“What’s their market?”
“Pharmaceuticals. Sperm. Maple syrup. Designer shit.”
“Okay, designer stuff, I can see. Kids want that. But Dutch,
who is a seventeen-year-old runaway going to deal sperm and maple syrup to? He
hardly has those connections and there is no way anyone who wants that kind of
thing wants to see a seventeen-year-old front man. And maybe they need all
hands on deck, they have so much product to move, but that’s thin. Especially
considering they’ve got their fingers in so many pots, there’s way too much at
stake to take on a recruit who’s so young, and green, what he can move would
not outweigh the dangers of him being a weak link that could lead to it all
falling apart.”
He could see she was a good journalist.
He could also see a hella smart
kid who was witness to whoever walked into his neighbor’s house before his dad
died, now out of that house, out of school, lots of time on his hands, spending
that time picking at threads until he found one that led him somewhere.
Dutch’s dad died when he was five.
But straight up, if he’d been twenty-five, or seventeen, and
the cops, or the Chaos brothers, did not take care of business…
He’d do it.
“Dutch?” she called.
“What?” he answered.
“You’re thinking about something.”
“It’s nothing,” he lied.
She didn’t say anything for a few beats before she asked,
“Now…uh, are you okay?”
He was not.
But this might lead him to being okay.
At least about Carlyle being something closer to it.
“All good,” he said.
“Since we’re on Speer, maybe I should give you my address,”
she noted.
“That’d be smart,” he joked.
She gave it to him, and he drove her there, both of them
quiet.
Dutch was reflecting.
Georgiana was not.
He could actually feel her watching him and trying to dig
into his head.
When he got to the address, he saw she lived in a high-rise
condo complex. An ugly one that was probably put up in the '70s or '80s, and it
would take at least another thirty, maybe forty years to make it retro cool.
Still, it was a hip location, even if the units probably
sucked.
He pulled into the loading area in front of the building and
stopped.
He also got out, even though she was out, standing on the
sidewalk, with her backpack over her shoulder and her bag on its wheels at her
side.
She smiled at him and he wished she didn’t.
“For once, I was faster than you,” she teased.
And he wished she didn’t tease either.
“You’re home safe, good luck with the article,” he said as
his goodbye, and began to turn to walk away.
“Dutch,” she called, and he really hated how her kinda husky, but still lilting voice carried his name.
It was like she was touching it…
Him.
Like a tap on his shoulder, a brush of his jaw, her lips
skimming his ear.
He turned back to her.
“I was a total bitch, and it’s totally worth using a curse
word. I’m sorry. I’m thinking I need a change in direction, that meaning
career, because I obviously can’t hack this, and if I can’t hack this, no way
I’m going to get where I want to go in journalism. And it’s been bothering me,
because I’m not rolling in the dough in a way I can take a year’s sabbatical
full of martini lunches with my girlfriends while I write the next Great
American Novel before I try to find another position again. And it’s freaking
me out.”
“Just ask for a different beat,” he recommended.
Her brows inched together. “Sorry?”
“Tell your editor you need a break from the kids and ask for
a different beat. You need something fresh. I can tell you’re good at what you
do, you care about it, you clearly got a passion for it. It’d suck, you gave it
up because you had a tough story that tweaked you, for whatever reason it
tweaked you. Move away from that beat. You got something fresh to sink your
teeth into, you’ll be fine. Even Dan Rather sat at a desk after being a
correspondent for years. Everyone needs change, and now’s that time for you.”
Her expression was open, and no other way to describe it, glowing
by the time he got done talking.
“So you’re a young budding biker guru,” she said on another
smile and more teasing.
“No, I’m just not neck deep in it so I see it clearer,” he
replied, not smiling and wanting to get the fuck out of there, because her
smiling, teasing, glowing meant he needed to get the fuck out
of there.
She must have sensed his desire because her smile faded, he
wasn’t thrilled to watch it go, but he didn’t say dick.
“Your wisdom I feel made my apology get lost, so I’ll repeat
it. I was a bitch, Dutch, and seriously, I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I
guess I was just at my end, and you caught that.”
“I’m a biker, something you got issues with ’cause you got a stick up your ass about shit you don’t
know, issues for you, and undoubtedly with your sister having fun with one. A
biker who walked up to you, so you felt open to smack me with your shit because
I don’t matter. I’m just a biker. That is what happened and that’s
what you’re apologizing for.”
At his words, she was the one who looked like she’d been
smacked. Her head jerked with it, the whole thing.
Jesus, shit.
“Right, well, okay, guess I deserved that,” she whispered.
“But thanks, truly. And good luck with Carlyle. I hope you break through.”
She yanked up the handle on her bag and had started rolling
it away when he called her name.
“Georgiana.”
She turned back and gave him no shot to apologize.
She said, “You know, you were right. This was a one-time
thing, thankfully short, and now over. But really, good luck with Carlyle
and…whatever else you do with your life.”
He didn’t call out again as she jabbed a code into a box,
shoved through the front doors and went right to the elevators.
When she disappeared in one without even glancing his way
was when he rounded his truck and got back in.
She’d been a bitch, and she’d apologized.
He’d been a dick, and it was left at that.
And as much as that burned in his chest, and fuck, but it
burned and he had no idea why it burned so hot and so deep, leaving it like
that…
He was going to leave it like that.
Whatever else you do with your life.
Yeah, there it was.
Whatever else he did with his life.
Which was nothing.
He was doing nothing with his life.
He had no drive.
He had no goals.
He had no mission.
He had no passion.
He had dick.
On that thought, he started up his truck and headed for the
Chaos Compound.
There was beer there. Tequila. Brothers.
He wasn’t big on getting drunk.
But for once he was feeling like tying one on.
Dutch did as he planned.
He didn’t get puke-and-act-like-an-asshole drunk, but he’d
gotten to the point he’d had to crash in his room at the Compound instead of
getting in his truck and going home.
But after he woke up the next day, brushed his teeth,
splashed water on his face and got dressed, he went home.
To his laptop.
Which he opened while the coffee was brewing.
And he pulled up The Worldist
website.
Then he read an article about student loans that had
Georgiana Traylor’s byline.
He found he was right.
She was good at her job.
Because the article was succinct, but thorough, he was keen
to read the next installment that was coming the next day, and the father
didn’t come off as a total jackhole.
He came off, subtly, as a complete bastard.
Dutch read the article again.
Then he made himself a cup of coffee and took it to the
bathroom, since he was going to shower.
And after that, go to the offices of Nightingale
Investigations.