The Shadow Box (36 page)

“You're falling off, Michael. Head up.”

Megan's voice brought him back to the present. He
realized that she'd been watching him. He eased the bow into the wind.

“Tell me you were thinking about me,” she said.

She said it with a smile. But he thought he heard a hint
of jealousy.

”I
hard
l
y
stop
thinking about you.”

“Except just then.”

“
I was
...
remembering an old friend. From years
ago.”

“Will you ever tell me about her?”

He had to laugh. “You're something else, you know
that, Megan?”

“What do you mean?”

”I only just learned your name, for Pete's sake. When
do I find out about you?”

  
”I told you. You will over time.”

  
He made a face.

 
“Well?”

 
“Well, what?”

 
“Will you tell me about her?”

 
”I might. I might over time.”

 
She curled a lip, then stuck out her tongue at him.

 
Gotcha, Megan Cole. Gotcha.

Chapter 22

It
took
Mohammed Yahya just one afternoon, one visit to the Bronx, to make three new connections. Two of them were wholesale distributors. One was only
a discount pharmacy.

The pharmacy, however, had the most interesting prod
ucts and seemed to have them in good supply. It also, as
a sideline, rented wheelchairs to convalescents and had an
exclusive contract to service other wheelchairs that were owned by the several hospitals in the area. An exclusive
contract, nearly always, meant that bribes had been paid
and that hospital personnel, therefore, had been compro
mised. This was another good sign.

Best of all, on the window of this pharmacy was a
bright orange decal with blue lettering. The decal said, “These premises protected by Parker Security Services,
Inc.”

Mohammed Yahya smiled all the way back to Brooklyn
and Villardi's Seafood Palace. Mr. Johnny, he thought,
will be very pleased.

“Johnny had things to do,” said his brother. “Tell me.”

Y
ahya would have preferred to speak to the younger
Giordano. Of the two, Mr. Johnny was the more respectful.
Nonetheless, Yahya told him of the afternoon's events.

“Just like that?” Fat Julie asked. “You walked in off the street and they hired you?”

Best proof, thought the Pakistani, wounded. ”I did not
always drive a crane, sir.”

“Even so . . .”

“All three tested my knowledge of pharmacology. They
were most impressed. Mr. Giordano . . . this is not stand
ing on street corners selling little bags of crack to drivers
of cars from New Jersey.”

“U
m
...
no offense, Mohammed.”

”I am not without credentials. I am an educated man.”

Christ.

“Mohammed . . . have some orange juice.” He signaled
the waiter.

As Julie had suspected, there was more to Yahya's get
ting hired than he wanted to admit. A couple of Yahya's
paisans—who
did
sell little bags—had vouched for him.
But his ace-in-the-hole reference had been the Giordano
brothers.

Yahya's problem was that everyone knew that he'd been
running a crane. This was a blue-collar job. It hurt his
pride. All this time, therefore, he'd been telling those Bronx Pakistanis that the job on the docks was only a
cover for the benefit of his parole officer. His real job
had been more in the nature of a disciplinarian for the
Giordano brothers.

Yahya, no doubt, had flicked a thumb across his throat
as he said this. But he also said that the job was distasteful
to a man of his entrepreneurial bent. It was time to strike
out on his own again.

Fat Julie had no problem with the embroidery. It's good
that Yahya admitted it because someone might check. But
he was much more interested in what Yahya would be
selling for this drugstore that was protected by the people
who killed Jake.

”I will be selling these,” Yahya told him.

Yahya reached into the gym bag that he had brought with him. He produced two pharmacy-sized bottles, one of white pills and one of capsules.

“The capsules are Prozac. They are certainly counte
r
feit. The white pills are Vicodin. These may or may not
be genuine.”

“Prozac.” Fat Julie had heard of it. “Isn't that the stuff
that makes you crazy?”

”A canard. No doubt spread by competitors.”

“Bullshit. I seen it on TV. They said how some users get violent and a bunch of them killed themselves.”

“Not a bunch, Mr. Giordano. A handful out of perhaps
five million. This should surprise anyone? The drug, after
all, is taken for depression.”

“All the same . . .”

“Even your Food and Drug Administration has declined
to take action. They said you don't throw out the baby for
a few bad apples.”

Fat Julie doubted, somehow, that these were their exact
words. But let's move along here. “These are both from AdChem?”

“So one would infer.”

Julie nodded. That decal on the window, “Protected by
Parker,” did not suggest a tolerance of competitive lines.

“The Prozac. How can you tell it's bogus?”

The Pakistani opened one bottle and took out one cap
sule. It was half white, half pale green. The green half
showed the maker's logo. The white half showed the brand
name and dosage.

“Here.” Yahya pointed. “You see twenty milligrams?
The abbreviation, 'mg,' is followed by a period. Some
pills put a period after 'mg' but not Prozac. The typesetter
made a mistake.”

“So they go cut rate or what?”

Yahya shook his head. “Full price, but only through
street dealers. No hospitals. A doctor would not notice the
error but a med nurse probably would.”

Fat Julie raised an eyebrow. “You said five million
users?”

“Worldwide, more like ten.”

“And you think they're all hooked?”

“Hooked is not the right word. They simply want to feel the way it makes them feel.”

“Prozac's still fairly new. What's the potential?”

Yahya pointed to the sky.

“There are that many depressed?”

The Pakistani smiled.

Once again he was the teacher and that made him feel
good. In this country, to see dark skin is to see an inferior. But that dark-skinned inferior might speak five languages.
Most Americans can barely speak their own.

“Prozac,” he explained, “is for subclinical depression.
That means you feel a little bit bad. For fifty cents, Prozac
makes you feel much better. You are more confident, more
aggressive, and you can have more fun at parties.”

“Sounds like cocaine,” Fat Julie noted, frowning.

“Better,” said the Pakistani.

Mohammed Yahya had gone back to work, a bonus of
twenty crisp new fifties in his pocket. Fat Julie reviewed
what he had scribbled on his cocktail napkin. Johnny was
right. Notes do help you collect your thoughts. You just
want to be sure you don't leave them in your pocket.

Vìcodin, which Yahya had to spell for him, did not
seem all that interesting. You take it for pain but it also
numbs the mind. No high, no rush, you just get this cozy,
warm glow all over. There's money in it, Yahya says,
because you keep needing more. Before long, you need a
fix of a hundred pills a day to get the same feeling you
got from four when you started. To get prescriptions for
that many, you'd have to spend all day going to different
doctors and that gets expensive. Or you forge prescriptions
or you break into drugstores, both of which put you in
jail. Better to buy them on the street.

But the street dealer can't make a living selling Vicodin
alone. He needs to find people who are seriously hooked
and there aren't that many of them out there. The distribu
tor had made Yahya take it on because, like distributors
anywhere, they won't let you sell their top-of-the-line
products unless you agree to take a dog or two as part of
the package.

What makes Prozac top of the line, better even than
Xanax, is that
everybody's
going to want it. Yahya says it's already very hot in all the big cities and on all the
college campuses. He says forget about people who are
looking to get high. He says Prozac is for people who are
just a little bummed out—which is basically every teen
ager, every college kid, every adult who's ever been shit
on, and anyone who's a fan of the Chicago Cubs. He says
go to a cocktail party and ask around. He says try to find
a salesman or a stockbroker or a guy in advertising who
isn't on Prozac already.