The Filthy Few: A Steve Nastos Mystery Read Online Free PDF

windows.
    She had never been here before but it would have been a good place for her to work. A large open area, subtly rolling hills with isolated trees backlit by lampposts casting shadows through a condensing fog. To the north there seemed to be a steep incline, but it was hard to tell from this distance. Thick air smelling of heated asphalt and burnt marijuana filled her lungs, reminding her of prison.
    Walker had chosen this place because most of his clients had spent time inside the Addiction Centre. They were the easiest sales, the ones who were trying to get clean, and he had little sympathy for them. This time was different. This time they were looking to buy.
    She parked the car and turned off the headlights. Walker opened his door a crack but turned to her before getting out. “Freedom. When I come back, we’ll pack then get the hell out of here.”
    â€œBracebridge,” she said, the word still sounding awkward.
    â€œBracebridge. We’ll gram it out, pick up another kilo every month. In a year we’ll go straight. No looking back.” Again the infectious optimism. He fumbled for the handle to open the door. He was fidgety, full of nervous energy, like a little boy who couldn’t get to the theme park fast enough.
    The duffle bag slung over his shoulder, he walked through the park, disappearing into the shadows. Her decision to get out of the car and follow from a distance was a mistake that became evident to her only much later.
    While many women might have been afraid of the night, Falconer lived there. Having worked as a prostitute, she’d been beaten, once attacked with a knife, threatened with death, choked unconscious. These abuses she suffered came from the street hustlers who became self-appointed pimps and from the clients, everyone from Bay Street lawyers looking for excitement in their boring lives to men fresh out of federal penitentiary where sex had come to them only after beatings and torture. Girls like Falconer did all they could to avoid suffering vicarious revenge as the ex-cons tried to reclaim their manhood.
    After the time she spent a night locked in a damp crawlspace because a convict took some magic mushrooms and thought she was a zombie trying to eat his brain, Falconer feared nothing.
    She moved through the trees between the drug users and punks trying to look dangerous to the secluded area where Walker had gone. Her eyes began to adjust to the dark. In the distance she observed the Rec Centre. There was a dark-coloured pickup truck parked against a long, plain brick wall. Walker was just taking a seat in the passenger side. The windows were tinted, too dark to see inside, so when he sat down and closed the door it was as if he was enveloped by a black void.
    She thought the transaction would have gone much faster. How long did it take to count the money and take the drugs?
Walker, even if the kilo looks light, just take it,
she implored. She glanced east and west. There were stray people walking around but none near this truck. For the first time she noticed that parked further south was an SUV . It pulled close to the pickup, close enough to make her take a harder look. The passenger’s phone screen lit up and she saw that there were two men inside, rough looking, humourless. The one playing with the phone kept running his fingers through his blond spiky hair. The other glared at the truck ahead of them.
    She felt more than heard a deep thud, then another, coincidentally at the same time as flashes of light from the inside of the pickup shot into the dark like sheet lightning. She was confused and honestly didn’t know then that he had been shot. It was like she had completely forgotten what a gun was or what one sounded like.
    Later she would say it was like her life began in the darkness of the woods. That she felt like a child who had never been anywhere or seen anything before. She felt as if she had just come to exist as she stood there in the