Bait: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

sense of smell wasn’t so wrecked already he might have sniffed a clue. Blow was always cut with something worthless, that much was true. You couldn’t avoid it these days. Pollutants bought from dollar stores caused purity to plummet everywhere. Felix preferred something like powdered baby laxative in his order when he was getting shortchanged. A few extra visits to the crapper he could deal with. This shit, though, jammed up his nose, was all kinds of wrong. Forty bucks well misspent, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
    Don’t you dare blow your nose,
he thought.
Don’t waste a goddamn milligram now. The pain will pass. Wait it out.
    His eyes watered before glazing. There it was—the kick, the payoff that he worried might not come. Felix shuddered, teeth grinding, gums flexing, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth.
    “Fuck yeah.”
    He rubbed his nose, trying to derail the unreachable itch forming halfway to the back of his throat. The kick was surprisingly decent, but not nearly enough. Felix had to have another. The stairwell of his run-down apartment building was not the wisest spot to indulge. Even so, he crammed himself into a dusty corner, unable to wait another minute. Coke was the appetizer, the link in the chain that connected him to his true anchor, something to tie him over until he got settled in his apartment where he could cook.
    “Double down,” he muttered and pulled a tiny vial from his jacket pocket.
    He tapped another bump into the concave of his long pinky fingernail and pressed it to his nostril. With a piggish snort he vacuumed it into his head. There was pain again, though not as severe as before. The kick was less too, but piggybacked the previous one nicely. It gave Felix’s exhausted legs the energy to bound two steps at a time up the three flights to his floor.
    At his landing he considered a third bump. These weren’t proper rails he was snorting, mere sprinklings at best. He looked at the vial again, half full with cheap cocaine, and swallowed the bitter chemical that leaked into his throat from his sinuses. The coke called his name again and again. Felix’s better half, now shrunk to less than an eighth, chastised him for listening.
    You can’t wait thirty seconds until you’re in the privacy of your own damn home? What the fuck’s wrong with you, nigga? Get a grip.
    Felix ran that squeaky angel off his shoulder nine times out of ten these days, but he let it cruise this time. Privacy was something he was becoming less mindful of and might pay the price for if he didn’t take care. Cops were always looking for an easy bust and Felix, black and male and addicted, was enough of a target already. The vial found its way back inside his pocket.
    “. . . I’ll keep you updated, sir.”
    An unknown voice up ahead. Felix rounded the corner into his hallway and stopped. Six doors down, shuffling away from his apartment door, was a mystery man. White and suspicious, that was all Felix took into account. He was slipping something into his back pocket as he tried to leave the scene. Felix had no doubt the guy had just been fucking with his front door.
    “Hey!”
    Felix quickened his step as he approached. The man looked over his shoulder and their eyes met. Felix tried on his mad dog glare, the one he used around the neighborhood regularly to warn others to give him a wide berth. It didn’t create an ounce of concern in the man’s reciprocating gaze. Felix got within three feet of him and reached out to grab a shoulder.
    “Hey, what the fuck do you think—”
    Felix had been a boxer at one point in his life, back when it had been important for a sample cup of his piss to come up clean. He saw the right hook coming, despite the uncanny speed of the delivery. Felix weaved, feeling knuckles graze his neck. He countered with a poorly timed uppercut that connected with the man’s sternum instead of his chin. The man grunted, but was otherwise unfazed. Felix tried for a