He was pretty sure who wasn’t inside. There was a pickup truck in the drive, a late-model candy-apple red Dodge Ram, and the presence of a rebel flag decal on the back window gave Court the impression that the operation in the house probably wasn’t being conducted by the D.C. Blacks, the Crips, or the Bloods.
But Court didn’t really care about the occupants themselves; all that really concerned him was the security of the property, because he planned on making entry on the house. He wanted to know about any booby traps, false access points, mantraps, or other fortified areas. At this point he wasn’t really thinking about the presence of guns because he knew there would be guns—no self-respecting drug dealer would operate in the United States without an arsenal within arm’s reach—but to Court, this was not a problem.
In fact, he was counting on it.
He checked his watch. Twenty minutes till midnight. For a second he considered hanging out there until three a.m., when the average person’s body clock was at its lowest. But almost immediately he decided against waiting. Meth heads kept weird hours, after all, and Court knew they might well be more wired and ready at four a.m. than at four p.m., so he made the decision to act now.
He left the darkness of the playground and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
He didn’t go directly to the stash house. Instead he backtracked half a block, returning to an unlocked garage he had noticed as he was tailing the street dealer through the neighborhood. He entered the garage, felt his way around, and came across a pull cord for a lamp on a worktable. Before he pulled the cord, he took off his jacket and threw it over the lamp, so he could control the amount of light the bulb gave off.
He pulled the chain and then moved his jacket so that only a faint glow reached the rest of the little one-car garage. He saw a few items on the table, and a few more on a wooden shelf, and he took what he needed, turned off the lamp, and felt his way back to the exit.
Minutes later he crossed the street in front of the drug house, his hands empty and nonthreatening. As he approached he heard the sound of industrial heavy metal music coming from inside. He walked up the little driveway, passed the bikes and the Dodge pickup, and climbed up onto the porch. By now the frantic noise was blasting, which was impressive to Court, considering the windows were boarded and the door could not have been more secure.
Looking the door over, he tried to determine the security measures at this entrance. There would be dead bolts and multiple chain locks, and there would be a drop bar or a “dead man,” a large metal shank that secured the door to the wall.
Court knew he would not be entering through that door unless someone on the inside wanted him to, and he didn’t see much of a chance in that.
He banged four times, and the dog in the backyard barked like a maniac.
Seconds later, a four-inch-high and twelve-inch-wide slit opened in the center of the door at chest height, firing a bolt of light across the porch. From the inside, Court heard the loud metal music, and above that a voice high and harsh like a coffee grinder. “What the fuck you want?”
Court leaned down to look into the slot. A bald-headed, shirtless man in his thirties stood back a few feet from the door. His chest and neck were tattooed and glistening with sweat. He held a lit cigarette in his left hand.
Pure white trash.
Court looked over the ink on the man’s chest quickly. The numbers 1 and 2 rode high above his left pec. Court knew the significance. The numbers represented the first and second letters of the alphabet. AB.
This asshole was Aryan Brotherhood.
Court also noticed the man was hiding something in his right hand behind his thigh.
“I said, what do you want, fuckhead?”
“I need a hit.” Court was winging it; he didn’t know the street lingo for meth these days; he’d been out of the States for several years and had never bought meth in his life. He saw the paranoia in the white supremacist’s eyes now as the man realized this wasn’t one of his regular street dealers.
He said, “Get lost.”
“Your guy told me to come here. He said he ran out of stuff.”
“What guy?”
“Skinny dude over at the Exxon on Savannah.”
A younger man stepped up behind the bald man at the door. He had stringy hair and was wearing a wifebeater, and his arms were sleeved with shamrocks and the number 12. He also had 88 on his neck, and Court knew these numbers were representations of the eighth letter of the alphabet. HH.
Heil Hitler.
Charming.
The younger man said, “He’s talkin’ ’bout Junior.”
“Junior, that’s right,” Court confirmed helpfully.