Kisser (2010)

“You’re supposed to taste this, aren’t you?”
    “Lick your finger, dip it in, and taste.”
    Mitzi did so. “What’s it supposed to taste like?”
    “Exactly what it tastes like.”
    “Is it pure?”
    “Of course not. It would take your head off if it were pure. It’s been cut; all cocaine is cut. Don’t worry, your friends will love it.”
    “Okay, if you say so,” Mitzi said. She put the two packages in the safe, closed it, and turned the handle. “Thank you very much, Derek,” she said. “I believe that concludes our business.”
    “I believe it does,” Sharpe said, still looking as though he might be arrested.
    “If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.”
    “Sure, let me know if you want more.”
    “I’ll see what my friends think,” she said. “Come, I’ll show you out.” She walked him through the living room and to the front door. “See you soon,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
    Sharpe seemed too nervous to kiss her back or grope her. “Bye-bye,” he said.
    Mitzi closed the door behind him, leaned on it, and heaved a big sigh. Then she walked down the hall to the kitchen, where Tom, Emma, and Stone were waiting.
    “He was as nervous as a cat,” she said, “and he tried to hold out on me, but we got it done.”
    “He won’t be so nervous next time,” Stone said.

40
    DEREK SHARP STARTED sweating in the elevator, and when he hit the lobby he had to will himself not to run. His car was waiting where he had left it, guarded by the doorman to whom he had given a hundred-dollar bill.
    He looked up and down Park Avenue for something that could be an unmarked police car. Across the avenue a garbage truck was loading the trash from another building, and one of the sanitation workers seemed to look at him for a long time. The man wiped his face with his sleeve and seemed to pause for a moment with his wrist to his lips. Was he speaking into a microphone?
    Sharpe’s hands were shaking, and he had trouble getting the key into the ignition, but he finally got the Mercedes started. He pulled into traffic, and, looking more into the rearview mirror than ahead, he made it down Park a couple of blocks to where the light was just turning red. He floored the car and, tires squealing, made a hard left turn before the uptown traffic could block his progress. Anybody following him would have to wait for the light to change to make that turn.
    He drove across town to Second Avenue and turned downtown just as the light changed, still watching his rearview mirror. It seemed safe, but that was what they wanted him to think, wasn’t it? Now he would have a ten-block head start, chasing green lights, which were set to a thirty-mile-an-hour speed. He was feeling very pleased with himself until he finally had to stop for a light, and a blue Crown Victoria with two men dressed in business suits in the front seat pulled up beside him. It was an unmarked police car, no doubt about it.
    Sharpe contemplated making a left and running, but he was frozen with fear. Then the light changed, and the blue car pulled away from him and continued down Second Avenue. He was startled by a horn from behind him and got the car moving again. He cut across three lanes of traffic and made a right. When he got to Lexington Avenue, he turned downtown again. The cops in that car had probably not been looking for him, he thought, then he started looking down Lex for the car, wondering if they were going to drive across town and cut in front of him.
    When he finally got downtown to his building, after suspecting a dozen other vehicles along the way, he drove around the block twice before using the remote control to open the garage door on the ground floor of his building. Only when the steel door had closed behind him did he feel safe.
    He took the big lift up to his studio and let himself in. Hildy was stretched out on a sofa at the end of the big room, which covered the width of the building.
    “How did your business go?” she asked, yawning.
    “Very well,” he replied. “Has anyone come to the door?”
    “No, it’s been very quiet.”
    “Any phone calls, especially with the caller hanging up?”
    “The answering machine took a couple of calls,” she said. “Messages were left.”
    Sharpe went to the machine and replayed the messages, both routine calls from an arts material supplier and a stationer. He walked from the studio into the office, where two middle-aged women worked keeping books and