“Bingo,” McCrory said. “Short black male, medium complexion. Coke-bottle glasses and a scraggly beard. That’s our guy. The kid looks not even twenty.”
“You see those eyes?” Kennedy asked.
McCrory watched the kid through the rearview mirror. “Uh-huh.”
“He’s damn sure hopped up on something.”
“Uh-huh. Can’t really walk a straight line.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Looking up and down the street. And now looking at us. And . . . and now he’s coming back this way.”
“And probably packing.”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Kennedy grunted. He gestured across the street. “Or, more appropriately, a junkie in a bucket?”
Both men pulled their department-issued Glocks from their hip holsters. They were sitting on their seat belts, which were buckled beneath them to allow for them to exit the vehicle more quickly, despite the canned message regularly broadcast over police radio to “always wear your seat belt—the life you save could be your own.”
McCrory, who wore black leather gloves, placed his 9-millimeter semiautomatic on his lap under a New England Patriots knit cap; Kennedy crossed his arms, concealing his under his massive left bicep as he held on to it.
“Okay. He’s crossing the street and coming at us,” McCrory said.
McCrory bumped his window down a quarter of the way. An icy draft crept into the car. He kept a wary eye on the kid’s hands.
The kid approached the open window. The wind carried his body odor.
Ugh. Reeks of weed, McCrory thought, and no bath in who the hell knows how long.
The kid leaned in closer, his dilated, bloodshot eyes darting between the men as his fingers wrapped over the top of the window. McCrory saw bruises and scabs on the top of his hands, the telltale pockmarks of needle tracks along the veins.
The kid mumbled, “What the fuck you doin’ here, man?”
McCrory slowly leaned back, pressing against his seat, and thought, Oh, man! That breath’s foul . . .
“Pookie said you had something for us,” McCrory said.
“Pookie?”
“Yeah, Pookie. Said he’d texted you that we were coming because you said you had something for us.”
He thought for a minute, then said, “Pookie, he’s all right. What you want? Oxys? Xannys?”
“No. Pookie said you wanted to talk.”
“Talk? About what?”
“Dante Holmes.”
The kid’s eyelids drooped, and he stuck a thumb and index finger behind his glasses and rubbed them. Then he said, “Dante? He from around here?”
McCrory grimaced, then sighed.
Need to try a different approach, he thought.
“How much for Oxys?” McCrory said.