The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“Are you?” asked Jim, his voice stronger and more clear. “I’m glad.”

Reuben was stunned, but he concealed it as he concealed the heat crawling under his skin.

Jim opened the briefcase and slipped out his laptop, and opened it on his knees, hitting a few keys, and apparently watching it connect with the Wi-Fi network of the hotel.

He set it down on the coffee table and turned it so that Reuben could see the screen.

A bright-colored photo of a young blond-haired man with sunglasses covering his eyes, and a San Francisco Chronicle headline: NEW PATRON OF THE ARTS IN TOWN.

Reuben swallowed, forcing the prickling to stop, to wait. “This is the guy,” he said.

“Fulton Blankenship,” said Jim. He slipped a folded piece of paper out of his jacket and gave it to Reuben. “This is his address. You know the area, Alamo Square.” He turned the computer, hit a couple of keys, and then turned it so Reuben could see it again. Big Victorian house, spectacularly painted, very impressive, something of a landmark, one of the witches’ cap Victorians they use in films whenever they can.

“Yeah, I know that house,” said Reuben. “I know exactly where it is.”

“This is what went down,” said Jim. “He’s a dealer, and his product is what they call Super Bo on the street, a mixture of cough syrup laced with every kind of junk drugs imaginable, selling for nothing at first and now for more than just about any other drug the kids can get. Highly concentrated. A test tube of it doctors a sixteen-ounce bottle of soda, sending kids to the moon after a mouthful. Perfect rape drug in larger doses, too. They’re coming in from the suburbs to buy it on Leavenworth and he’s signing up dealers just as fast as he can. About fifteen percent of those who OD on it die from it, and another five percent end up in a coma. Not a single one of those has ever woken up.”

He paused but Reuben knew better than to say a word.

“About two months ago,” Jim went on, “I started working hard on these local distributers, trying to get anybody to cop to who he was and what he was doing. Kids were dying!” Jim stopped because his voice had broken, and it took him a second or two to go on. “I was up and down Leavenworth every night. Last week, one of the boys comes to me, Blankenship’s lover, he says, sixteen, a runaway, a hustler, a junkie, who’d been living with Blankenship in that Victorian house. I stashed the kid in a suite in the Hilton, oh, nothing as fancy as this, but I charged it to Mom, Mom pays for my extras, and he was on the twenty-third floor and I thought he was safe.”

Again, Jim stopped, clearly on the edge of tears. His lips were working overtime and then he began again.

“The kid’s name was Jeff. He was on e-pills and Super Bo but he wanted to get clean. And I was all over the police and the DEA trying to get them to work with him, get him some protection, take his statements, put a cop on the hotel room door. But he was too druggy, too unreliable for them. ‘Get him clean,’ they said, ‘and then we’ll have enough for a warrant. Right now the kid’s a mess.’ Well, the boss’s men got to him yesterday afternoon. He was stabbed some twenty-two times. I told him not to call anybody—.” Jim’s voice broke again. “I told him!”

He stopped, and put his curled fingers against his mouth for a second, and then started again.

“When I got the call from the hotel, I went out the door immediately. And that’s when they came for me, and they got the priest staying in my apartment, a know-nothing innocent guy from Minneapolis on a layover on his way to Hawaii. A young innocent guy who wanted to see my parish, my ministry! A priest I hardly knew.”

“I see,” said Reuben. The heat in his face was unbearable and the pringling had become a fact of life. But he held the change at bay as he waited, marveling quietly that sheer rage and anticipation could bring it on as was happening now. He was marveling too at what was happening, at what this had done to his brother. His brother’s face, his brother’s tears were breaking his heart.

“There’s more,” said Jim, gesturing with one finger. “I’ve met the son of a bitch. I’ve been to that house. Right after the kid came to me, Blankenship’s lackeys forced me into a car and brought me there to meet with the man himself. They took me to the fourth floor of that house. That’s where he lives, this, this little tinhorn Scarface, this latter-day Pablo Escobar, this little rat-faced Al Capone with his big dreams. He’s so paranoid he’s backed himself into a fourth-floor apartment up there with one entrance and only a handful of lackeys admitted to the house. He sits there pouring cognac for me and offering me Cuban cigars. He offers me a million-dollar donation for my church, a million dollars, he has it right there in a suitcase, and he says we can be partners, him and me, just tell him where Jeff is. He wants to talk to Jeff, make up with him, bring Jeff back, get Jeff clean.” He broke off again, eyes dancing back and forth as he looked around the room, obviously struggling for calm.

“I didn’t challenge the little monster. I sat there listening, breathing that revolting cigar smoke as he talks about Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad and how he’s the new Nucky Thompson, and San Francisco is becoming again the Barbary Coast. San Francisco’s much more beautiful than Atlantic City ever was, he says. He’s wearing wingtip shoes like Nucky Thompson. He has a closet full of beautiful colored shirts with white collars. He gives twenty-five cents out of every dollar to charity, he says, right off the top. We have a future together, he says, him and me. He’d finance a rehab clinic and shelter at the church and I can run it any way I like. This million dollars is only the beginning. His heart goes out to his customers, he says. Someday soon they’ll make a movie about us, him and me, and this Delancey Street–style shelter that I’m opening with his money. If he didn’t sell to the rabble, somebody else would, he says. I know that, don’t I? he asks me. He doesn’t want anybody to be hurt, least of all Jeff. Where was Jeff? He wants to get Jeff clean, send him to an Eastern school. Jeff’s got artistic talent, I might not know. I got up and left.”

“I hear you.”

“I walked out of there and I walked all the way back home. And the next morning they tell me about an anonymous million-dollar donation to St. Francis at Gubbio earmarked for the rehab and shelter. It’s in the damned bank!”

He shook his head. The tears were thick in his eyes, a glaze.

“I didn’t dare go see Jeff after that. I called him, every day, twice a day. Lie low. Do not call anybody. Do not go out. And he verified just what I thought. There aren’t five people allowed in that Victorian house. Paranoia trumps greed and the desire for personal service. Three hardbitten henchmen do everything, and then there’s Fulton—except for the lab work in the basement. The Super Bo concentrate is thrown together down there by a team that works by day without a master formula; it’s whatever GHB, oxycontin, scopolamine they’ve got coming in. It’s poison! And they’re producing staggering quantities, everything going out on dollies to ‘perfume’ trucks. That’s the cover. A perfume company. The street distributers mix it with soda pop and sell out the same day they’re supplied.”