Sitting Around Doing Coke

The next night, in shock, I walked over to my connection's house on Derby. We sat around and since I didn't have any money they laid out some lines and gave me an import beer. I cleaned their pot tray and scrounged a couple of joints from the scrug. I thought about the time Adam came gunning for Henry and I stashed Henry and Clover and waited here in this house without curtains until the cops came.

We sat around doing coke trying to figure out who could have killed Luna. After all we had so many eyes on Telegraph Avenue where the murder happened. Luna had been beaten on the head with a portable charge card machine. You know, one of those sliding metal arm devices that would imprint the credit card onto a carbon backed sales slips.

We talked about any new comers to the Street. Any even more than normal weirdoes hanging out. Somebody mentioned a guy who called himself "Lord somebody" or "Sir somebody" that was getting too familiar too quick for everyone's taste. Maybe it was the coke, maybe it made us feel like wired Sherlock Holmes' but we agreed I would call the cops and tell them of our suspicions.

The detective I talked to was interested but not impressed. We really didn't know if the weird guy on the street was an infiltrator, cop or transient. I hung up thinking the cop knew who we were and we were grasping at straws.

Then the kid came in. He was a real runaway, one of the street kids that really did have something to lose dealing with the cops. To our amazement he described going to the store where Luna worked and thinking it was strange that the door was locked during business hours. He looked in the window and saw a big guy and no Luna.

Our jaws dropped. The kid was describing the former boyfriend of the storeowner, a big Native American guy with a grudge and who like to drink.

I called the detective back and said, "We got him." I told the cop the story the kid had related; the time line; the relationship to the storeowner; and that the kid was very frightened.
"Keep him calm,” the cop said. Sure, easy for you to say I thought.