The Last Flight(36)
Dex set his burger down, his expression serious. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Eva described how Brittany appeared to be strung out. The jittery way she spoke, and the scabs on her hands. “I guess my question is why you sent me someone you hadn’t vetted yourself. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”
Dex’s gaze darkened. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m pointing out that shortly after I met with a client you referred, I’m being tailed by a federal agent.”
“Fuck.” Dex tossed his napkin on the table. “I want you to stop everything. Don’t make or sell anything until you hear from me.”
“And how will you explain that to Fish?” she asked.
“I’ll handle him,” Dex told her. “My job is to keep you safe.”
Eva stared at him, weighing his words, knowing how this game was played. At the end of the day, if the choice was jail or selling out a friend, people in their business did what they had to do. She didn’t delude herself into thinking Dex would be any different, and she wasn’t entirely certain she would be either.
And yet, Dex had been the one to teach her how to evaluate risks, to identify who might be an undercover agent or an addict who could expose her. She couldn’t picture him leading her into an abyss that would surely pull him in after her.
*
They’d been meeting someone, several months after her expulsion, while she was still living in Dex’s spare bedroom and making the drugs on old equipment in his kitchen. They saw him, a shaggy-haired student, barely twenty years old, with headphones and sagging pants.
“Watch him,” Dex had said. They were tucked behind a bus kiosk, as if they were checking the schedule. The man had a tic of some kind, shrugging his left shoulder, shaking his head, almost imperceptibly, as he waited. In a low voice, Dex said, “You always watch first. You look for anomalies, like whether they’re wearing a sweatshirt in eighty-degree heat. Or if they’re wearing a tank top when it’s raining. These are clues, and you have to notice them. Check out his headphones. They’re not plugged into anything. See the way the cord is tucked into his front pocket, but the outline of his phone is in his back pocket?” Eva had nodded, filing these things away, knowing her survival depended on remembering them. Dex continued. “When you see anything like that, you keep going, because something isn’t right. Either he’s an addict or a cop.” He looked at her with a grave expression, his gray eyes locking onto hers. “Your number one priority—Fish’s number one priority—is your safety. It’s why he’s lasted as long as he has in this business.” Dex laughed quietly. “That and the ten people he has working for him inside the Berkeley and Oakland police departments.”
They’d stepped out from under the cover of the kiosk and turned away from the man without making the sale, leaving him on the curb, waiting for drugs that would never show up.
*
“Did you sell her anything?” Dex asked Eva now.
“No. She was off. Crazy. I told her she had me confused with someone else and got the hell out of there.”
Dex nodded. “Good. You’re taking a vacation until we figure out what’s going on.”
“It’s like this guy wants me to see him.”
“He probably does,” Dex said. “People make mistakes when they’re nervous, and he obviously wants to make you nervous. The fact that he’s so visible means he doesn’t have anything on you and he’s getting desperate.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Let him follow you. He won’t see anything, and eventually he’ll look somewhere else.”
Dex tossed a couple five-dollar bills onto the table for a tip. Around them, the room erupted in cheers, all eyes on the television, where someone had just scored a touchdown. Eva started to rise, but Dex said, “You should stay a little longer.”
Eva sat back and watched him leave, fighting down a growing panic, like someone waiting her turn to get on a lifeboat and realizing she was going to be the only one left on the sinking ship. Dex was already trying to distance himself.
Around her, the college kids drank and laughed, their biggest worry whether Cal would go to a bowl game. She had never in her life felt that relaxed. Even when she was a student, she’d been guarded. Quiet. Growing up in a group home, she learned from a young age that it was safest to observe rather than jump in with loud laughter or a witty joke. The sisters at St. Joe’s encouraged them to be studious. Respectful. Which Eva had become, all the while figuring out how to break the rules more quietly.
But it wasn’t a home. The sisters were older. Strict and uncompromising. They believed that children should be silent and compliant. Eva remembered the cold hallways of the dorm, tucked behind the sanctuary, smelling of candle wax and damp. She remembered the other girls. Not their names, but their voices. Harsh and bullying, or soft and scared. She remembered the crying at night. How, at the end of the day, each of them was alone.
Eva took a final sip of her beer and stood, weaving her way toward the stairs that led up to the main dining room. She eyed the emergency exit, imagining the sound of the alarm, which was already screaming inside her head. But she bypassed it, knowing now was not the time for anything so desperate. Not yet.
*
As she pulled into her driveway, she saw Liz locking her door and heading down the front walk toward her car. Eva glanced up and down the street, forcing herself to slow down and act normal.