Judas Horse Read Online Free PDF

call.
    And Darcy DeGuzman, my new undercover identity, is born.
    The woman turns on a dime, feet planted like a fuzzy pink ninja.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Get over here.”
    “What?”
    A shaved head sticks out of the truck. “Jennifer? We got a problem?”
    Right on cue. They’re wearing hidden microphones.
    “Tell your old man to chill.” I swagger up to where she stands in the fluorescent wash of the drugstore window. “This is what I’m talking about.”
    I flash a twenty from the money I have been given, pretending it is counterfeit.
    “So,
Jennifer
?” I say. “You got copies good as this? I know a buyer.”
    I feel ridiculous, acting out a role in the middle of real America. But she takes the bill and examines it closely. Maybe she is giving me a chance to be creative. Or, hell, maybe it really
is
counterfeit.
    “Jennifer!” calls the guy in the truck.
    The woman in pink raises her eyes and searches mine.
    “I don’t know,” she says warily.
    Great acting.
    “I need a million dollars.” My confidence is building. “Top-quality.”
    Jennifer nods slowly. “I have a friend.”
    I press the advantage. “One condition. I have to see the operation.”
    “No way. Are you nuts?”
    I shrug. “That’s what my boss wants. He said to check out the source, make sure the bills aren’t traceable.”
    “They’re not traceable.”
    “I can’t take your word.”
    I give her apologetic. She understands. We are both in the same fix: men.
    She shakes her head. “They’d never agree to something like that.”
    “Ask. Nicely.”
    She hesitates. “Wait here.”
    She confabs with the guy in the truck and comes back and tells me the “friend” wants $100,000 in cash, for the million in fakes.
    We are inching toward a deal, but where to get the money? There is one more clue, waiting in my pocket.
    I say I have to make a call.
    She accompanies me to a pay phone, where I dial the number I was given in the van. A voice I do not recognize says,
“Yeah?”
I do not break character as I tell my “contact” to bring a hundred grand in cash to the mall. Twenty-five minutes later, a low-rider Chevrolet, driven by a black man I have never seen, pulls up and parks away from the lighted rim of stores. A hip-hop bass seems to fill the empty space of the parking lot.
    “Be right back,” I tell Jennifer, aware that I am approaching an unknown individual alone.
    The window is down. He watches with glittering eyes, fingers flicking the wheel. He is thirty, taut, wearing a do-rag and chewing gum. When I get close, I see his nose is running, and his hand trembles as he draws it across chapped lips.
    “You it?” he says.
    “Guess so.”
    “You
guess
? Who sent you?”
    He is out of the car. So we were to play another scene for Jennifer and her husband?
    “Hey, motherfucker,” I muster. “What’s your problem?”
    He is wired and I am slow. He slams my chest against the door and cracks my neck in a reverse chokehold.
    “No disrespect,” I gasp.
    “Don’t make me nervous.”
    “It’s cool, it’s cool.”
    I am feeling nauseous, seeing sheets of light.
    His cell phone goes off. He glances at the number.
“Fuck!”
    He lets me go, spins back inside the car, and hands a gold-embossed Gucci briefcase through the window.
    “You best not be fucking with us.”
    “No way, bro.”
    My throat aches from where he brutally compressed the trachea. When I get back to the Academy, I am going to find out who this asshole is.
    “It better be righteous blow, or I’m coming to get your kids.”
    Blow? Wait a minute. The deal is counterfeit money, not cocaine. Wrong scenario. Right?
    I stare at him.
    “I know where you live.”
    Then he is gone.
    So are Jennifer, the white truck, and the man with the shaved head.
             
    I stand in the middle of the deserted shopping center, gripping the Gucci briefcase the brother thrust at me, which is allegedly stuffed with cash. I’m hatching a brand-new plan: I will hop a ride