Page 15 of I Will Ruin You
Gerhard said, “You Raisin-Branned us.”
“I what?”
“We did the inventory,” Gerhard said. “You came up short.”
“I don’t understand,” Billy said.
“We’re short Flizzies,” Gerhard said. “Our southern friends, they told us what they sent, we looked at how much we got, and we found what you might call discrepancy.”
“Guys, come on,” Billy said pleadingly. “You saying I dipped into the shipment? There’s no way. You treat me fair and square, pay me good. I’m not gonna mess with that. What’s supposedly missing?”
Gerhard said, “It’s not supposedly missing. Andrea, do we supposedly think it’s missing, or do we know it’s missing?”
Andrea said, “We know.”
“I’ve never even peeked inside a shipment. I don’t know what’s in there and don’t want to know what’s in there. The fuck are Flizzies?”
Although Billy was playing dumb, a role to which anyone who knew him would say he was well suited, he did know what Flizzies were because on one visit Gerhard had a free pack in his hand, like he’d been sampling his own merchandise. Powerful little pills that looked like candy, that were disguised as candy, and were often packaged to look like candy. But they were not candy. They were, in fact, tablets of fentanyl—a wonderfully potent synthetic opioid that could make all your pain go away—that had been manufactured to the highest standards in a Tijuana lab, put in a carry-on bag, flown to a small regional airport south of Hartford that handled international flights, and retrieved discreetly by Billy the baggage handler.
Billy, pointing to a six-foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling set of lockers along the back wall next to the workbench, said, “I bring it back, it goes right in there, and that stays locked all the time.”
Andrea asked, “Who else uses this garage?”
“Nobody.”
“You’ve got a wife. You saying she never comes out here?”
“Yeah, sure, sometimes, but Lucy doesn’t have the locker key.”
“Lucy,” Andrea said.
“Yeah, but I got the only key. Lucy’s working all the time anyway at the hospital.”
“She a nurse or a doctor?” Gerhard asked.
“Cafeteria.”
It was true, about Lucy not having her own key. Although there were times, Billy thought but did not say out loud, when he left his full set of keys by the front door or next to his bed or didn’t know where the fuck they were. He was always calling out to Lucy, asking if she’d seen them. But that didn’t mean she’d ever used the key.
“Kids?” Andrea asked. “You got kids coming in here, thinking they could eat that shit?”
“No kids around here. All we got is some nosy old lady next door.”
Gerhard said, “People snooping around here at night?”
“Why would anyone be snooping? No one knows what’s in here. Anyone broke in, they’d steal my tools, and nobody’s touched those. I keep the garage doors locked whenever I’m not around.”
“The airport, then?” Andrea asked. “You leaving our shit unattended before you bring it back?”
“No way. Never let it out of my sight once I pick it up. When I know it’s a flight with your stuff, I’m the first one there to unload.”
Andrea looked at the Camaro. “You got friends that help you work on this piece of shit?”
Billy blinked. “Nope, nobody.”
Although, he thought, Stuart was often here. But what she’d asked was, was there ever anyone who helped, and Stuart was about as helpful as a rash on your nuts. He’d open up a folding lawn chair, the one with the disintegrating webbing, half his butt hanging through the seat, watching Billy work on the Camaro. But did Stuart even know where he stashed the stuff? That it was in the locker? If he did, would Stuart be dumb enough to rip him off if he could somehow get his key when he wasn’t looking?
Shit.