Detective

kept staring. “You’re not a cop?”
    “No.”
    “Who are you?”
    “I’m a private detective,” I told her. “I want the guys who did Gutierrez.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the guys who hit Gutierrez also hit a friend of mine. I’m gonna find ’em and I’m gonna bring ’em down.”
    She believed me. She didn’t know I was an asshole. Hell, she watched television, too. She probably thought I could do it.
    “What do you want with me?” she said.
    “Alan Donaldson,” I told her.
    Again, I was the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
    “No,” she moaned.
    “Look,” I said. “I know he’s your connection. I don’t think he’s involved in this, at least not directly. I don’t want him. It’s the higher-ups I want. You cooperate with me, I’ll do everything I can to leave him in place.”
    “Is that for real?”
    “That’s for real. You in?”
    “What do you want?”
    “Now you’re talking,” I said. “Look, I know what your scene is. You’re gonna turn three or four more tricks until you’ve got enough to score, then you’re gonna call Donaldson. Frankly, I don’t want to wait around that long. So here’s the deal. I’ll give you the money you need to score, you call him and go score now.”
    “You shitting me?”
    “I’m on the square. How much you need to score?”
    She hesitated, and I could see her mind going. “400,” she said.
    “Don’t shit me,” I said, “or you go it alone. How much you really need?”
    She pouted, shrugged. “Two hundred.”
    “For what?”
    “An eighth of coke.”
    “Nice price, these days,” I told her. I hoped it was.
    “Because of Guillermo,” she said. “I pay the same as if I bought quantity.”
    “I can see why you’d hate to see Donaldson go down,” I said. “All right, you need two hundred to score. How much have you made so far?”
    She pouted, looked at me, shifted her eyes. “Fifty,” she said.
    “Come again.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “All right, a hundred.”
    “That’s what I thought,” I told her. “And I’ll bet it took you more than two tricks to get it. That’s why you took a chance on me. My hundred was all you needed to score.”
    She looked at me, said nothing. I took the hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket and held it in front of me. She looked at it, but it had kind of lost its thrill for her. She looked back up at me.
    “That’s all you want me to do?” she said. “Just score?”
    “No. You gotta find out something for me.”
    “What?”
    “How low his supply is and when he’s gonna score some more.”
    “Shit.”
    “That shouldn’t be so hard.”
    “You gonna cut off his source?”
    “Hey. A guy like him has lots of sources. I can’t protect the whole world.”
    “Yeah,” she said, dubiously.
    “Look,” I told her. “It’s not like you had room to bargain. You cooperate, he stays in place. You don’t, he goes down. Now let’s go.”
    We went. She wasn’t happy, but she went. She made the phone call from the corner. Then we got my car and drove over there. I let her out at the corner.
    “I’m gonna drive down the block and turn the corner, and park. You meet me there.”
    I gave her the money. She started to get out of the car. I grabbed her arm. “Remember, you don’t show up, he goes down.”
    She nodded, got out, and closed the door. I watched her walk down the street toward the townhouse. I pulled out and passed her as she headed up the front steps. I turned the corner, parked, and waited.
    She was back in ten minutes.
    “Well,” I asked, as she slid into the seat.
    She smiled at me. “Piece of cake,” she said. “He’s low. He’s gonna score tomorrow. He promised me he’d be holding by late afternoon.”
    I smiled back. “Nice work,” I told her.
    I drove her home. I figured I owed her that, and not just for the information. Maybe I’m just a sexist pig, but in my book any pretty girl who smiles at me and shows me her tits deserves a ride home.

20.
    I S TAKED O UT D ONALDSON’S P LACE at nine in the morning. From what Rosa had told me, it was a pretty safe bet he wasn’t going to score until the afternoon, but I wasn’t taking any chances. What if he went somewhere else first?
    Of course, I was being stupid. Guys who snort coke all night aren’t usually up at the crack of dawn, and if they are, it’s because they’ve been up all night and are just getting ready to fall into bed. There were no lights in Donaldson’s apartment, no sign of activity of