“Just came to his senses, I suppose,” Dickie said. “Realized he was getting more and more involved and started to get scared.”
“So what's the deal? Mo sells out his friend for a reduced sentence?”
“I suppose, but it hasn't actually gotten to that yet. Like I said, I'm just setting up a line of communication. And I advised Mo of his rights and the consequences of his participation.”
“So maybe these ski mask guys aren't protecting Mo anymore. Maybe sentiments have changed and now they're trying to find Mo before I do . . . Very noble of you to remain as counsel after being threatened.”
“Fuck noble,” Dickie said. “I'm off this gig.”
I dropped a card on Dickie's desk. “Call me if you hear from anyone.”
I found myself smiling in the elevator, comforted by the fact that Dickie had been harassed and threatened. I decided to continue the celebration by paying another visit to Mr. Alexander. If Mr. Alexander could make my hair orange, surely he could make it brown again.
“Impossible!” Mr. Alexander said. “I'm totally booked. I would love to help you out, lovey. I really would, but just look at my schedule. I haven't a free moment.”
I held some orange frizz between thumb and forefinger. “I can't live like this. Isn't there anyone here who can help me?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“I've got a gun in my pocketbook. I've got pepper spray and an electric gizmo that could turn you into a reading lamp. I'm a dangerous woman, and this orange hair is making me crazy. There's no telling what I might do if I don't get my hair fixed.”
The receptionist hastily thumbed down the day page. “Cleo has a cancellation at two o'clock. It was only for a cut, but she might be able to squeeze a color in.”
“Cleo is a marvel at color,” Mr. Alexander said. “If anyone can help you, it's Cleo.”
Three hours later, I was back in my apartment building, and I still had orange hair. Cleo had given it her best shot, but the orange had resisted change. It was a shade darker and perhaps not quite so bright, but it was still basically orange.
Okay, fuck it. So I have orange hair. Big deal. It could be worse. It could be ebola. It could be dengue fever. Orange hair wasn't permanent. The hair would grow out. It wasn't as if I'd wrecked my life.
I was alone in the lobby. The elevator doors opened, and I stepped in, my thoughts turning to Mo. Speaking of someone who'd wrecked his life. If Dickie could be believed, here was a man who'd lived his entire life selling candy to kids and then had snapped in frustration and made some bad choices. Now he was stuck in a labyrinth of judgment errors and terrible crimes.
I considered my own life and the choices I'd made. Until recently those choices had been relatively safe and predictable. College, marriage, divorce, work. Then, through no fault of my own, I didn't have a job. Next thing, I was a bounty hunter, and I'd killed a man. It had been self-defense, but it was still a regrettable act that came creeping back to me late at night. I knew things about myself now, and about human nature, that nice girls from the burg weren't supposed to know.
I traveled the length of the hall, searched for my key and opened my front door. I stepped inside, relieved to be home. Before I had a chance to turn and close the door, I was sent sprawling onto the foyer floor with a hard shove from behind.
There were two of them. Both in masks and coveralls. Both too tall to be Maglio. One of them pointed a gun at me. The other held a lunch bag. It was the sort of soft-sided insulated bag an office worker might use. Big enough for a sandwich, an apple and a soda.
“You make a sound, and I'll shoot you,” the guy with the gun said, closing and locking the door. “Shooting you isn't what I want to do, but I'll do it if I have to.”
“This isn't going to work,” I told him. “Mo is talking to the police. He's telling them all about you. He's naming names.”
“Mo should have stuck to selling candy. We'll take care of Mo. What we're doing is for the good of the community . . . for the good of America. We're not going to stop just because an old man got squeamish.”
“Killing people is for the good of America?”
“Eliminating the drug scourge.”
Oh boy. Scourge removers.
The man carrying the lunch bag jerked me to my feet and shoved me toward the living room. I thought about screaming or simply walking away, but I wasn't sure how these lunatics would act. The one seemed comfortable with his gun. It was possible that he'd killed before, and I suspected killing was like anything else . . . the more you did it, the easier it got.
I was still wearing my jacket, still carrying my shoulder bag, the warning of retaliation ringing in my ears. I still had the blister from my last meeting with Mo's vigilantes, and the thought of being burned again sickened my stomach. “I'm going to give you a chance to leave, before you do something really stupid,” I said, working to keep the panic out of my voice.
The guy carrying the lunch bag set it on my coffee table. “You're the stupid one. We keep reasoning with you and warning you, and you refuse to listen. You're still sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. You and that lawyer you keep visiting. So we figured we'd give you a product demo. Show you the threat firsthand.” He removed a small glassine packet from the lunch bag and held it up for me to see. “High-quality boy.” The next item to be removed from the carrier was a small bottle of spring water. Then a bottle cap with a wire handle fashioned around it. “The best cooker comes from a wine bottle. Nice and deep. The dopers like this better than a spoon or a soda bottle cap. Do you know what boy is?”
Boy was heroin. Coke was girl. “Yeah, I know what it is.”
The man filled the cap with water and mixed in some of the powder from the packet. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and held it under the cap. Then he produced a syringe from the carrier and filled the syringe with the liquid.