Payoff Read Online Free PDF Page B

history ground in, well, they’d all been painted on, and had come off that easily. He still smelled, but I was betting that was the clothes he was wearing; he’d always smelled like a rose when he wasn’t undercover.
    “Thank you,” Kubrick said to the waitress, as she dropped off a cup of coffee for him. She did a double-take and smiled uncertainly before taking our orders. As I remember, she was dating one of the beat cops from the area, and could be trusted to keep her mouth shut—or at least Kubrick had some kind of reason to believe that, or he wouldn’t have taken off the disguise where she could see him.
    So. Time to order. I got a soyburger with real pulled pork, real bacon and pickles, with Brunswick stew and home fries. Cherabino got a loaded baked potato with fried okra on the side and a large unsweet tea. And Kubrick got a salad. A big salad with every conceivable vegetable, and he ordered it like it was the finest ambrosia available. Maybe to him, it was. It certainly cost enough.
    “Funny seeing you here,” he told us. “You’re a little out of your territory. I assume Homicide has a pending case?”
    She nodded, her face a little softer. She was very comfortable with Kubrick—very, very comfortable; she wasn’t putting up the walls she usually did with the other cops. “We’re looking into the death of a college kid. It’s got connections to the system in Decatur,” she said. “The kid’s roommate says he’s involved in the drug scene, and that it was out there in the Plantation. Looks like a point-blank gunshot, a la drug execution. Doesn’t look good for your guys.”
    Kubrick frowned. “What does the student look like?”
    Cherabino gave a description.
    He nodded. “I’ve seen him. I’m surprised you even got a glimpse. This group is careful. They lock their doors obsessively, they clean up after themselves. You wouldn’t believe the hoops I had to jump through just to buy the first dose of drugs. They normally require a student ID, if you can believe it. Did you use the telepathy?” he asked me, in a tone of idle curiosity.
    I shrugged. He’d liked my “extras,” as he called them, back when we’d worked together bringing down dealers, but it had been awhile, and I wasn’t—under any circumstances—going to mention the sprained mind to him. Most normals feared telepaths, back in the back of their heads, whether they admitted it or not. I wasn’t going to give him or anyone else a reason to think I was weak.
    “Tell me about the dead kid,” I said.
    Kubrick sat up, rubbed his nose, thought about it. “He’s been coming to the Plantation as a party-goer for awhile. Rumor has it they’ve put him on a rub-a-dub.”
    “Rub-a-dub?” Cherabino asked.
    He sighed. “Give the kid some overpriced drugs on credit, get him good and hooked with a real big bill, then tell him the only way to work it off is to start dealing. You do it with somebody you don’t think is going to be easily suspected, somebody who’s hooked but not desperate, somebody good with street smarts who has contacts you think you can turn into money. Rumor has it he was supposed to be selling on the campus, but nobody there seems to know about him.”
    “So he can’t be selling much,” I said.
    “Or he’s doing it so quiet none of the guys are hearing about it. Campus PD is great at finding the drugs. They have dogs sometimes, they have people inside, and every year they pay a student to buy before they sting. That’s why the traffic’s out of the club, back there. It’s easier. Campus doesn’t have jurisdiction. That’s why they called the county narcotics unit, though; won’t be long—if you didn’t spook them too bad—before we have them red-handed.”
    “How much was Raymond buying?” I asked, out of curiosity. With his class load and that internship, and him still with his head above water, I couldn’t see him having a heavy habit, not yet. Things tended to fall apart in those