“I didn’t steal shit,” the youngest of the group, a the scrawniest of the bunch with a mop of blond hair and a wicked case of acne, making his milky skin red and puffy.
“Good to know,” I said, nodding. “But I was actually just wondering if you saw a bunch of cop cars and ambulances at that building on Friday night.”
“What you gonna give us for that kind of information?” the oldest and, clearly, the most street-wise of the bunch asked.
Tucking my protein bar on top of my coffee, I fished into my wallet with my free hand to pull out a twenty.
“Cop cars, ambulances, what did you see or hear?” I asked.
The kid reached out and snagged the twenty, tucking it into his pocket.
“There weren’t no cop cars or ambulances at that fancy-ass building.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I was scouting that night. Was there from like seven to five or six in the morning. Didn’t see shit.”
Maybe I should have lectured them about scouting for a gang or the mob or whoever the fuck they were working for. But, sometimes, a kid had to do what a kid had to do. You didn’t know what kind of home life they had, how much they needed that extra cash.
So I kept my mouth shut.
“Anything else weird?” I asked.
“Nah, man. It was a calm night. Just fancy-ass people in fancy-ass clothes going out into fancy-ass cars. Same old shit as any other night. Just maybe busier, being a Friday night and shit.”
“Alright. Thanks,” I said, nodding at them, then walking out of the bodega even more perplexed than when I’d gone in.
Could the kids have been bullshitting me to get some extra cash? Sure. But something about that kid’s certainty told me he wasn’t lying. And in affluent neighborhoods, the gang or mob or whoever was running the coke in the area, would have scouts around. Especially on a weekend night.
I ate my makeshift lunch in the back of a cab on my way to a much less luxurious area of the city.
Back to an area where I found another private investigator office right next to a bail bonds place and a few doors down from a kickboxing gym.
All of whom were owned by old buddies of mine.
Xander ran the private investigator firm. K operated the kickboxing gym. But it was the owner of the bail bonds place I was after. Gabe. Who I’d happened across on a case we were both working, just from different angles.
We’d both gotten our asses handed to us by a six-foot-six, four-hundred-pound bodybuilder, then nursed our wounds over a few drinks as we tried to work out how to bring the bastard in.
We weren’t close, not really, but he would get me some information if I asked.
His office was a nice place in a bad area, proving that bail bonds was still a solid business if you knew what you were doing. The walls were gray, and all the other accessories black.
It had been remodeled a bit since the last time I was around.
A woman sat behind a desk in the front behind what I imagined was some bullet-resistant glass. Directly beside that was a thick metal door that led to the back where Gabe and his office must have been if he was in.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked, giving me a friendly, but professional smile. The kind that said she might have worked with people who needed help with bail, but she didn’t date them.
“Is Gabe in?” I asked.
“Yes, he is, but he is busy. May I ask who is asking?”
“If you could just mention the blonde in Baltimore, that’d be great,” I said.
“Okay then,” she said, then reached for her phone.
I moved a few feet away, rocking on my heels, knowing he was on his way out.