Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

"Now we go get the parcel, and I'll show you what you've been sitting on all week. We'll send it to all the newspapers, to the police and the mayor. Once the information is out, they can't use it to blackmail Max anymore, and Max won't be able to hurt me."

"Just like that, you're turning against your conspirators?" I asked.

"That's the only way I'll ever be safe," she responded.

"Okay, but first you'll have to get yourself cleaned up. The place where I have it hidden is a classy establishment," I said.

"You won't get any argument from me," she replied. "A nice warm shower sounds just like heaven right now."

Lily disappeared into the bathroom, and soon after I heard the shower start. This left me alone to think about what she had just told me. It was possible that she was telling the truth, but on the other hand, it was equally possible that she was playing me to get her hands on Cobb's box and turn it over to the blackmailers.

It stood to reason, at least in my mind, that if she was telling the truth, it didn't matter if she came with me or not; as long as I went public with whatever data was in that box, the outcome would be the same either way. She only had to come along if she was planning on double-crossing me.

It made sense at the time, but considering what happened later, I never got to find out which was really the case. Looking back, however, I replayed that same line of reasoning over and over in my head, but it never did much to keep me from wondering if things would have turned out differently that night if I had trusted her.

But anyways, I made up my mind to slip quietly out of the condo while Lily showered and went back to Violet's car alone.

"How did it go?" she greeted me.

"Well, I could use a drink," I replied. "You're not in any rush to get home, are you?"

28. Dispenser

I was worried that the man in the blue car might have somehow followed us after leaving Lily's, so I decided to kill a couple hours at the Casbah with Violet before getting down to business. We traded shots, took over the jukebox, and danced like a couple of spastic monkeys. I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed myself so much.

Finally, I decided I'd waited long enough to proceed without arousing the suspicions of anyone who might be watching.

Violet was in the middle of a heated - if slurred - debate with the bartender Maggie about the relative merits of Steinem vs. Paglia or some shit like that when I abruptly announced, "I gotta hit the head. Hey Mags, did they get around to fixing that condom machine yet?"

The two women simultaneously whipped their heads around to look at me in disbelief. "Oh I don't think you'll need to worry about it tonight, dear," Maggie replied.

I staggered back to the restroom, laughing all the way. After relieving myself into the porcelain trough, I walked over to the condom dispenser and pried open its face.

Cobb's blue box was hidden in the change repository. Holding it carefully, I pushed in on each end. One side sprang back out, revealing a small drawer containing a USB flash drive. I stuffed it into my pocket with Lily's memory card, then replaced the box in the condom machine and closed it all back up just as it had been.

When I returned, Violet had already gathered up her coat and purse and was leaning unsteadily against the bar.

"Are you ready to leave?" I asked. "I don't think you're in any condition to drive."

"You can drive, then--," she said, then added playfully, "--to your place. Did you get the machine to work?"

"No."

"Pity," she replied, then grabbed me by the neck of my shirt and pulled me in to give me a sloppy, passionate kiss.

Ten minutes later, I was pressed up against my front door, reaching blindly behind myself with my keys in one hand, trying to find the keyhole as Violet wrapped her legs around me and kissed me hungrily. I finally managed to get the door open, then staggered backwards into the room. I carried her over to the kitchen counter while she sucked on my earlobe, not missing a beat. Then, as I set her down, I unzipped her skirt and worked off her panties while kissing down her neck. Dropping to my knees, I lifted her left leg and licked my tongue along the leather of her knee-high Docs until I hit the smooth, creamy flesh of her legs. I planted a series of kisses and bites along the skin of her inner thigh, working my way up, enjoying the way my lips felt against her burn scars. Finally, I reached her pussy and propped her leg up on my shoulders as she leaned back and spread herself open.

I lightly teased her vulva with my tongue for a while before moving on to firm, rapid licks, gliding my tongue between her lips, tasting her juices and savoring her scent. At first I felt her hands running through my hair and the gentle rocking of her pelvis as her body responded to me, and she let out some quiet, breathy gasps. Soon, however, I noticed she stopped responding.

I lifted my head to find her slumped against a cabinet, passed out cold. It didn't do a whole lot for my ego.

I carried her into the bedroom and tucked her into my bed, then returned to the front room.

Settling in at my desk, I loaded both the USB drive and the memory card into my laptop and successfully opened the contents of the drive, which was a folder labeled "Project Ariadne" containing a number of different files.

It took me a solid four hours to pour through them. In a nutshell, they detailed a vast smuggling operation that Max had been tapped into ever since his return stateside.

Records of financial transactions with foreign governments, Russian and Japanese mobs, and a whole host of other unsavory characters. Detailed logs of shipments Max brought in through the port in unmarked containers with forged customs seals, including dates, times, ship info, and even what was in the cargo. Most of the shipments were drugs. The rest were split pretty evenly between weapons and women, the latter coming from Asia, Latin America, and Easter Europe. All told, he averaged about a dozen shipments a year, each one painstakingly detailed and documented in the file.

How could he keep records like this? I thought to myself. Did he really believe they'd never be found?

Shaking my head, but with a huge grin on my face, I logged onto the dashboard for the Concrete Underground website. After a little digging, I found the blog Sharon had set up for me about a year ago, but I had never done anything with. I created a post titled "The Last Will & Testament of Patrick Cobb" and began uploading the thumb drive's files as attachments.

While I waited for them to transfer, I glanced back through the documents a second time, and something new caught my attention. Of all the shipments listed, there was only one that didn't give a description of the cargo. It was one one of the earliest, sent from Dubai. I went through the rest of the files; there were a few other documents that referenced that shipment, but none said what was in it. Instead, they were all related to the construction of a special underground storage unit at Asterion, designated 33.

My computer sounded a loud alert to tell me the upload was complete. Then I zipped the files and e-mailed them to everyone I could think of - the Morning Star, the major tech bloggers, the Smoking Gun, every left wing web site in my bookmarks, all the local TV stations, 24-hour cable news, the mayor, the Governor, the freaking White House. And of course a copy went to Max.

When I was done, I leaned back in my chair with a cigarette and a bottle of scotch, my sense of smug self-satisfaction overshadowing the near certainty that I had just signed my own death warrant. The first rays of sunlight were just starting to stream in through the cracks between my venetian blinds, and I knew it was only a matter of time before there was a knock my door.

Then there was a knock on my door.

I jumped up from the chair - and nearly jumped out of my skin - then ran to look through the peephole to see who it was.

Fucking Axelrod.

I opened the door to find the detective accompanied by two uniformed officers. "Gentlemen, what a pleasant surprise. Can I offer you some joe? Or maybe hair of the dog?"

"We're not going to be staying long," Axelrod replied. "Neither will you, for that matter. We're taking you in for questioning in the murder of Lilian Lynch."

I was taken aback but tried not to let it show. Had Lily really been killed?

"I'd love to help you out, detective, I really would, but I've got to get to work."

Axelrod's eyes dropped to the nearly-empty bottle in my hand. "You always go to work drunk?"

"Dedication to duty, detective. It's what separates great men like us from the rabble."

I heard the creak of a door opening behind me.

"D, is something wrong?" Violet asked, red-eyed and hung-over, wearing only her tank top and completely naked from the waist down.

That could have been timed better.

A wry grin spread across Axelrod's lips. "Is she the one who drives that Volvo parked out front?" Without waiting for an answer, he instructed the other cops, "Bring her, too."

29. Ghosts

Axelrod set a series of photographs on the steel table in front of me. The first one showed Lily naked and sprawled out on her shower floor, lying in a pool of her own blood. The second one was a close-up of her lifeless face, her lips parted slightly, her eyes staring off vacantly. The third was pulled back, showing more of the shower, the walls streaked with bright red blood. The last two were close-ups of her wrists with large, jagged gashes sliced deep into the skin.

I picked up the first one and pretended to study it closely, then screwed my face up into a sour expression. "Jesus, Axelrod, are these cum stains? Do you beat off to pictures of dead naked women?"

I flung the print back onto the table and smiled at the detective, who was leaning back on his chair and running his tongue along his teeth.

"Funny guy. I got one for you, stop me if you think you've heard it before. A faggot and a whore walk into a bar. But half an hour before that, this same faggot walked in and out of a dead woman's condo, right around the estimated time of death, walking right past the surveillance cameras in the front lobby."

"That's not very funny," I replied. "I mean, the material's good enough, but comedy is all about the delivery."

"How's this one? Earlier this week, a vagrant who got picked up for urinating in the middle of