“No way,” Cindy said. “That money is there until Bagman’s killers are convicted. I can get you a couple hundred bucks if that’ll help.”
“Forget it. Thanks, but no thanks. I said I needed help, and by the way, screw you,” said Sammy.
As soon as Sammy left the diner, Cindy paid the check and walked back to work. Sammy had finally gotten to her. The teenager’s fear could be druggie paranoia to the max, but Cindy was getting a different feeling — that Rodney Booker’s murder was tied to something bigger, something organized.
Which meant that she was out of her league.
She called a number she knew by heart. “Rich,” she said, “we’ve got to talk.”
Chapter 80
CONKLIN FOUND SKIP WILKINSON at MacBain’s, one hand in a bowl of peanuts, the other around a mug of freshly drawn brew. Wilkinson was a skinny kid with a buzz cut, went to the academy with Conklin. He was now in Narcotics and Vice, or as he called it, “Drugs and Whores.”
“So you want to talk about Bagman?” Wilkinson said.
“Anything you can tell me. He’s a homicide that’s going cold.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t tell you too much. We had a few brushes with him. He was strictly a small-time drug dealer.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Crack. I brought you his file.”
Wilkinson lifted a dog- eared folder out of his battered briefcase, passed it to Conklin. “We never had enough probable cause to arrest him. Sickening, what he was doing.”
“What was that?” Conklin asked. There was no arrest sheet, no mug shot, just handwritten notes stapled to the back of the folder marked BAGMAN JESUS. They hadn’t known his name.
“He was turning teenage girls into pushers. He had a network of them. Sent them out on the street to sell. I’m not sure he wasn’t having sex with them all.
“This is all from street talk, not reliable sources. So we planted a couple of female cops on the street, waited for him to take the bait, but he didn’t do it.”
“And you gave up? Look, I’m not being critical. We haven’t had time to work his murder more than a handful of hours —”
“We didn’t quit,” Wilkinson said. “But as I said, Conklin, he was small-time. Crack is bad, but we’re being overrun by meth, which is far worse. Kids were making it in their basements. It was easy and cheap, but since the crackdown on ephedrine, meth has become big business.
“It’s huge, going out of control. Organized crime is getting involved. The stuff is streaming in from Mexico. I don’t mean to chew your ear off, but it’s getting away from us. And it’s killing good kids. One hit, and they don’t stand a chance.”
Conklin said, “So Rodney Booker was a crack dealer. We didn’t have that.”
“We would’ve landed Bagman eventually, but we had bigger dogs to worry about. And then someone got to that bastard first. And I say great. Glad they took that fucker down and made sure he was down for good.”
Chapter 81
AT JUST BEFORE EIGHT on a gray morning, Cindy stood between me and Conklin, pointing her finger in the direction of a young woman striding up Fifth Street.
“That’s her. Red shirt, blond braid. That’s Sammy.”
Sammy heard her name, turned her head, saw Conklin sprinting toward her, and took off like she had jets on the heels of her shoes. She flew off the sidewalk and into the street, ducked in front of a fish truck that was accelerating as the light turned green.
I thought the truck might have clipped her — but the gears ground into third and the truck sped up as Conklin rounded the tailgate. I was running, too, slipping through openings in the clogged street and sidewalks, barking out, “Police! Step aside!” as I ran.
I could hear Conklin huffing, that’s how close I was, when a crack in the sidewalk grabbed the toe of my shoe and I went down. My breath left me.
I staggered to my feet, and then a citizen pointed the way. By the time I caught up with them, Conklin had boxed Sammy into an alcove between two buildings, was yelling to the wide-eyed and panting kid, “Stop running and listen.”
A cluster of homeless people rose up from the sidewalk outside the soup kitchen, some sidling away, others circling around Conklin and Sammy. It was a menacing crew, and there were a lot of them. I flashed my badge, and the grumbling crowd backed off, gave us room.
“We want to talk to you at the station,” Conklin was saying to the girl. “You’ll come in, be a good citizen. Understand? Cooperate, and we won’t book you.”