Page 38 of Race With The Devil

I shouted, “Is he that desperate for money? He must have enough to retire ten times over by now.”

“Oh God oh God oh God,” Corey started to pant, his eyes squeezed shut.

Tanner persisted. “Are you behind the Illinois K2 deaths? Where were you shipping this crap from the FedEx by your apartment?”

“Oh God oh God oh God.” Corey began to slide down the wall. Tanner held him up by taking a handful of his hoodie. But the guy was collapsing, or at least pretending to.

“Is he faking it?” I asked.

“Not sure.”

“He looks like he’s having a seizure.”

Sure enough, Corey’s eyes were flickering, rolling into his skull. His hands turned into claws and flailed about like a perverted R. Crumb character. Tanner tried following him with the barrel on his trip down the wall, keeping the metal stuck up his nose. When he gave up and withdrew the gun, Corey fell in a slump, still seizing.

Frantically I yelled, “Did you drive Lavinia down to the University of Arizona?”

Tanner picked up on the theme. “Did Tutti take her to the Grand Canyon?”

We were a day late and a dollar short. I held the back of my hand to his open mouth. Nothing. I shook my head at Tanner.

Holstering his piece in the back of his pants, Tanner whipped out his phone. “Wolf,” he dictated into his text. “Go to all the nearest gas stations until you find some K2 called Scooby Bites. Bring it to Lytton or his chemist to test for lethal compounds.” He thumbed the END button.

I asked, “You think the K2 did this?”

Tanner shrugged. “That, or some more bad fentanyl. Either way, his own boss created it.”

“What’re we gonna do with this fucking body? We can’t call the cops.”

“Indeed, we can’t,” Tanner agreed lightly. He reached a hand out to me, but it was only to take Corey’s gun. “First thing, we get your prints off this.” He headed toward the bathroom. I traipsed behind, a newbie to death in my own apartment.

“Yeah, where are we going to put the gun?” I asked.

Tanner cradled the piece in my bath towel, rubbing ardently on both sides. He grabbed a spray bottle of Lancôme off my 1950s sink and lightly misted the gun. Then he rubbed again. “We’re going to replace it in his pants when we bring his body back to Tutti. I’m getting sick of pussyfooting around this Fentanyl King ballhead. He’s been beating the devil around the stump this whole time. He hasn’t told us a single word of truth.”

“We’re going . . . to Tutti’s compound?”

Tanner shrugged. “Sure. Why not? What’ve we got to hide? It’s obvious we didn’t kill this anusbrain. Have you been to his compound?”

“Oh, sure, for Lavinia’s bridal shower. But there’s an armed guard at the gate.”

Holding the gun in the towel as if it were a turd, Tanner headed back to the living room. “He’ll let us in if he knows what’s good for him.”

So much for sucking Tanner’s dick. Our affair wasn’t going smoothly by any accounts. Or did Tanner want an affair? Maybe, at the waterfall, he’d just wanted to display to me that certain men could be unselfish, that it was possible to put a woman’s needs first. Maybe he was just demonstrating one of his neurological ideas.

Maybe he just wanted to show off his diddling skills. He was so ego-riddled, that could possibly be it.

Then again, I was almost as ego-riddled if looked at in a certain light. I was a model. I wanted men to look at me and get off.

Could I blame him? Still, he’d turned me down when I’d begged him to fuck. He needed to make this right.