“Want help with your things?” Marshall steps forward, his hands out as if he’s going to touch Lynch’s bike.
“We’re good,” Lynch growls, and Marshall looks uneasy for the first time since arriving. He’s not as stupid as I thought.
“Still on for poker night?” Parker asks to calm the tension.
“Oh. Of course. See you on Wednesday after church.” Marshall quickly walks away, whereas his little dog isn’t as enthusiastic to be heading back toward the house across the street.
“Topher?” I grit when Parker turns back in our direction. He grins while Lynch chuckles. “I should gut you right now for that bullshit.”
“Grab your shit,” Lynch urges. “Let’s get inside before another person walks up to greet us to the fucking neighborhood.”
We collect our things and follow Parker into his house.
“I don’t know if buying such a place is all that great of an idea,” I say as I walk inside and see the luxury layout of the residence. The marble entryway and elegant curve of the staircase are amazing, just not what you’d expect from a mid-level drug dealer. “Kind of a red flag when you don’t have a real job or legitimate income coming in.”
Parker snorts. “I have a real job, man. I’m a software developer.”
He says the last two words with finger quotes.
“Besides, this house is in my grandmother’s name.” Lynch laughs again. “Follow me, fellas. All the good stuff is downstairs.”
Crossing the threshold between the gourmet kitchen and the stairs to the basement transitions us from upper-middle-class suburbia into a pristine pharmaceutical industry. Unlike the movies I’ve seen where the women are stripped down and completely naked while they package the drugs, the women down here are clothed, but the skin-tight spandex material they’re in leaves nothing to the imagination. For instance, the girl smiling at me from across the room has twin piercings up top and a barbell down below.
“Nice, right?” Parker nudges his shoulder against mine, and it has me questioning his professionalism.
“How far are they cutting it down?” Lynch asks as he walks around the room. He doesn’t give the women a second look as he circles the huge metal table in the center of the room.
“We go down to sixty percent purity,” Parker responds.
“Sixty? It won’t be worth shit by the time it makes it to the street. Your sub-dealers will cut it again—”
“No one under me cuts my shit a second time.” Parker looks up at Lynch. “My people know it’s in their best interest to let my stuff hit the streets exactly how they receive it. I’m getting a buck and a quarter a gram, and even though it’s on the higher end, my clientele always come back for more. They know they’re getting good shit when they get that bag.”
He points to a stack of small baggies with a black four-leaf clover on the front.
I don’t say another word because a hundred and twenty-five dollars a gram is damn good business, better than we’ve ever managed in Detroit before.
“What are you cutting it with?”
“Creatine. It’s cheaper, not as dangerous, and doesn’t draw as much attention as the levamisole the guy before me was using.”
“Smart,” Lynch praises, and Parker just laps it up like a kitten at a bowl of cream. His shit-eating grin irks the hell out of me.
“You can move eight in the next three weeks?” I ask as I step up to an empty spot at the table and pull my kilos out of the duffle.
“Easily,” Parker says. “We could probably manage up to twelve right now, and probably closer to twenty in the next couple of months. We’ve already acquired several smaller enterprises in town, and have four more on the persuasion list.”
Lynch pulls his coke from his bag and deposits it on the table beside mine.
“Let’s let these ladies get back to work. We can talk upstairs.”
Parker and I follow Lynch who is walking across the room as if he owns the place, and I guess, in a way, he does.
When we settle on the plush living room sofas, we both accept Parker’s offer of a drink.
“Any issues I need to know about?” Lynch asks as Parker pours us both a whiskey.
“Nothing I can’t handle.” Parker must sense Lynch’s need for him to expound, because after turning with our drinks in his hand, he continues to speak. “We had a street dealer skimming his returns.”
“And what did you do with him?” I ask.
“I put him to ground,” is Parker’s simple response.
Lynch takes his drink, speaking as Parker settles in a recliner across from him. “If you’re getting a buck and quarter for a gram, what are you doing with the extra money?”
Parker, unaffected, sips his own drink. “Are you asking if I’m taking the extra for myself?”
I have an urge to look around again at the opulence of the sitting room, but my gut tells me to keep my eyes on the dealer.