Breaking Character by Mark T. Conard

Author:Mark T. Conard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I stopped sleeping at all, even trying to sleep, after Levy’s party. It wasn’t just the weird encounter with the Gibbons girl. It was the whole mess: Schrödinger and Levy against Petrenko, Levy’s game with me—whatever it was, Petrenko’s visit to Lauren. Armstrong ready to bust me for possession if I didn’t help him with his investigation. How had I gotten sucked into all of that?

Nishka’d sent over another package of coke, so I had a plentiful supply. I was doing lines and chasing them with whiskey. I put myself on a schedule, so I wouldn’t overdo it: I set the timer on my cell phone. Every half hour another line, two lines an hour. I didn’t measure out the bourbon. That seemed to disappear fast. Anyway, the point was to keep myself even, keep my head as clear as possible, so I could think through everything I was involved in.

Days passed like this, maybe weeks. I wasn’t sure.

I sat in front of my laptop doing internet searches and smoking cigarettes. I was lighting one butt off another. The nicotine buzz helped.

First, Ken’s murder. The story had gone cold, but when it first happened it got mentions in the Times, the Daily News, the Post. All the reports aligned: he was shot in the back of the head. Robbery seemed to be the motive. He’d had an altercation earlier in the evening with a suspect-still-at-large, and the Daily News and the Post both ran a publicity photo of Paul taken from an ad for a play. Ken had ties to a reputed drug dealer. The cops didn’t have any new suspects or any new leads. For them, Paul was it.

Next, Petrenko: he was all over the internet, particularly in sites devoted to mobsters. He appeared on the New York scene in the nineties, working for the Brighton Beach Russian mafia, but also the Little Italy Italian gangsters, who were just about dried up by that point. He had seven murders unofficially attributed to him. His specialty in the last few years was an exotic form of Ex so expensive that he had a specialized clientele. (All this was speculation, so far as the sites were concerned; the police had never done any raids or made any arrests.) None of this was of any use, though, in helping me figure out how to deal with him or how to keep him away from Lauren.

Third, Schrödinger: a faceless drug kingpin. I found wild speculation all over the web as to who he really was. Some sites said he was Colombian, others said he was Chinese. One or two claimed he didn’t really exist, he was the creation of conservative politicians to keep the war on drugs funded. No one anywhere made any connection to Levy.

The alarm on my cell rang, so I went to the kitchen island and did a line of coke and chased it with a slug of bourbon. I checked the time. It was almost eight in the evening.

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