The Spider Inside (17 page)

Eventually the tide went out, and one by one they awoke. It
was Cherry that opened her eyes first. She lay where she was for a while,
enjoying this quiet time in Jim’s arms, despite her throbbing bladder. She
finally got up and peed. She refused to look at her pee because she knew the
color of it would probably scare her, and she even closed her eyes when she
flushed. From the bathroom she heard a cough that she knew came from Jim and
when she went back out she found him sitting up, his hair mashed and crazy. She
smiled at him and he lit them both cigarettes. Despite the fact they had only
been out ten hours or so they both agreed they felt quite refreshed.

Nik heard their voices from his room, where he was reading.
He had been up for some time, counting his money, having not indulged quite as
much as the others, he had been able to sleep deeper.

“So what the fuck, people?” Nik asked, standing in the
living room, looking around. Doug and Soup were stirring. Two Step looked dead,
but that was just how he slept.

“Kinda hungry,” Jim said.

“I could eat,” Cherry said.

“Wanna go get some breakfast,” Nik asked. “My treat.” He was
feeling so good, and he’d made so much fucking money lately, he felt one of his
rare impulses of charity and wanted to share this wealth, if not the true
source of it, with his friends.

“If y’all won’t shut the fuck up and let a brother sleep, I
guess I could eat,” Two Step said from the floor.

“Oh, come on, Precious,” Nik said. “We’ll get you that Moon
Over My Hammy you’re so crazy about.”

“Fuck that,” Step said with a laugh. “Pancakes.”

“You can eat the waitress’s tight little asshole if it’s on
the menu,” Nik said. “Dougie-boy? Soup? You down?”

Doug and Soup exchanged a sour look. “Not hungry, thanks
though man,” Soup said. “I could use a couple more hours of sleep, tell you the
truth.”

“Me too,” Doug said.

“All right boys,” Jim said, standing up.

“You can’t go out like that,” Cherry said, looking up at his
hair.

“Here,” Nik said, tossing him a black beanie.

“Satisfied?” Jim asked. Cherry answered him with a kiss.
Soup looked at Doug and rolled his eyes.

“You guys sure you don’t want anything?” Nik asked.

“Nah, man,” Soup said. “I’m straight.”

“That’s not what your father tells us,” Step said and stuck
his tongue out. Soup laughed along with everyone else, but could feel his face
turning red.

“Okay, we’ll be back,” Nik said, and they left.

Soup sat on the couch and lit a smoke.

“Fuckin Dougie-boy?” Doug asked. “And what was that shot about
your dad?”

“I don’t know,” Soup said. “Fuck it.”

“You moved down here and made friends with a buncha
assholes, Mike,” Doug said. “They call you
Soup
? That’s fucked up.”

Soup nodded his head and said nothing. He’d been called that
for so long he couldn’t remember who started it. Probably Jim. He seemed to
give out a lot of nicknames. He hated being called Soup, as the source of it
was the thing he hated most about himself; his dentures that didn’t fit, his
aching gums, and the fact that one day inside he’d broken the dentures and
could only eat soup until the DOC replaced them. He’d made the mistake of
confiding this, and the name had stuck. He hated it,
fucking
hated it
,
but had always found the more you let someone know something bothered you, the
more they would use it against you. So he’d ignored it, but it fucking stuck
anyway.

Doug looked around Tattoo Nik’s apartment. Soup had seen
that look before, and his heart started beating a little faster.

Doug looked at him; that was all it took. They didn’t speak
about it. They both just stood and Doug opened the door and Soup started
unhooking wires and the first thing they carried out was the television, then
the stereo, amp and speakers, the CD changer and then the DVD player, the Xbox.
They took the CDs and DVDs and video games. They took all the beer from the
fridge, and the three cartons of smokes in the freezer. They took the microwave
and the toaster and the blender and the coffee machine and the silverware. They
loaded the lamps into the back of Doug’s truck, and the recliner Tattoo Nik had
just purchased, along with everything else. Out of the bedroom they took the
clock radio and the smaller stereo and another lamp. They found more CDs in
there, and grabbed them too. Under his bed were his works and a glass vial of
dope. They took the dope and left the needle. They took the swords hanging on
the wall and the Samurai shield and a box full of knives, butterfly knives and
a couple switchblades, some flick knives...nothing major, but they could
probably get a couple bucks for each.

In his closet they found his stash, his bought and paid for
sack of meth, already separated into the little plastic vials.

“Oh shit!” Soup cried, digging his hands into the sack and
letting the vials of drugs bury them and run through his fingers. They started
laughing louder now, and Soup knew he could never come back. There would be no
more California for him, no more Los Angeles, no more beach and ocean, no more
of the Hollywood sign he liked to look up at as he drove past. All of this was
gone forever if he went through with it.

Fuck them, Soup thought, and tied the plastic shopping bag
full of dope shut.

Out of the bathroom they took all the toilet paper just to
fuck with him and a bottle of generic Valium and the expensive electric razor.
On the sink was a little cup with Nik’s toothbrush in it. Doug dipped it in the
toilet and they were laughing even harder by the time he put it back in the
cup.

Laughing and feeling like he mattered again, feeling like he
was someone, Soup climbed into Doug’s truck and they pulled away, Doug telling
him how he had this great fence up in Portland they could use and Soup shook
out a couple bumps and they drove straight through, only stopping for gas. By
the time they were out of L.A . Soup was no longer Soup, he was back to Michael
or Mike or even Mikey, and he smiled, because that was okay by him. The drive
took a little less than twenty-four hours.

Jim knew something was wrong as they approached the front
door of Nik’s apartment, which was slightly ajar. Jim could feel the air around
them change from the warmth of good humor and camaraderie to the coldness of
suspicion. He could feel the edges of rage seeping into their circle, and he
braced himself.

“What the fuck is this?” Nik asked aloud when he saw the
door. He looked back and forth between Jim and Two Step as if they might hold
the answer. Both of them shook their heads. Cherry held onto Jim’s hand a
little tighter. She could feel it too, things were about to go sideways in a
bad way.

Nik strode forward and pushed the door open all the way and
walked inside. The others followed.

“What the fuck?” Nik asked the empty apartment. His words
seemed to have picked up a little echo since last they were here.

“Oh no,” Cherry said.

“What the fuck!” Nik screamed, going from the living room to
the bedroom. “That mother fucker!”

Jim looked around in awe. Everything that could feasibly be
stolen was gone. Even the fucking clock off the wall was gone.

“There’s no way,” Two Step said. “There is just no way.”

“Tell that to Nik,” Jim said.

“I’m gonna kill that cunt-faced toothless cock sucker!” Nik
screamed, pacing back in forth. The veins and tendons in his neck were standing
out, his face a dark red color. Jim wondered if he would give himself a stroke.
“That backstabbing geeter head little fuck!”

“Hey,” Cherry said, turning to Two Step. “What if he takes
all your shit, too?”

“What was that?” Nik asked, stopping in front of her.

“I just said--”

“No, I heard, let’s go.” Nik started pulling and pushing at
the three of them, moving them toward the door. “Come on! Give me your keys,
Step.”

Two Step handed over the keys and the four of them ran back
down to the car. Nik gunned the engine and pulled away from the curb with a
scream from the tires.

“He’ll still be there,” Nik said, to no one, to all of them,
to himself. “He’s gotta get his clothes and shit, there’s no way he’s staying
in L.A. He knows I’ll find him and fucking crucify him, right?”

The city itself seemed to sense the urgency with which Nik
drove, for it opened up to him. The lights turned green, the old people changed
out of their lanes, the buses were somewhere else. No one else was at any of
the four-way stops, and most of all the entire city, at least between Nik’s
house and Two Step’s, seemed to have been purged of cops.

Nik pulled up onto the dying grass in front of Two Step’s
building and killed the engine, yanking out the keys. By now the rest of them
had been infected by the rage that boiled in their friend’s blood, the
indignation, they all felt the slight was against them, as if they had come
home and found all of their things packed up and gone instead of just Nik. As
they ran toward the building Nik pulled a shiny silver pistol out of the back
of his pants.

“What the fuck?” Jim asked.

Nik didn’t answer.

Two Step unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped
aside. Nik kicked it and went in like the fucking feds, pistol at the ready,
eyes blazing, checking behind the door and in the blind spots before moving on
to another room. Jim had no doubt that had they found Soup there that day, Nik
would have shot him. While it stung Jim that Soup would do this, while he was
as pissed and confused as the others, he was glad Soup had already gone.

“Anything missing?” Jim asked, as Nik searched the
apartment.

“Not that I can see,” Two Step said, looking around. And why
should there be? Anything they had, Tattoo Nik had a nicer version.

It turned out the only thing that was gone were the clothes
Soup had been wearing. He hadn’t even bothered to come back here and get the
rest of his own belongings.

Jim, Step, and Cherry sat on the couch as Nik tore apart
Soup’s room, but even he seemed to sense it meant nothing.

When he was done, Two Step broke out his emergency stash and
a pipe and the four of them smoked some meth. It seemed like the only thing to
do.

Over the next few weeks they were only able to score a
little bit at a time, just enough to get off and keep going and looking and
making calls and waiting, the endless waiting that every addict knows.

For the most part it was just Two Step, Jim, and Cherry
getting high. Nik was scrambling, looking for a way to replace what had been
taken from him, and thought it best to keep things like shadow monsters and the
gray police as far from entering his mind as possible until he got things
sorted out. It wasn’t that he owed money on what was stolen, he refused to buy
weight like that on credit, specifically in case something like this happened.
He wondered what would have happened to him if he’d had to sit down and explain
to Xander: “You know that huge bag of gack you fronted me? Well it’s gone, and
I was going to sell it to make the money I owe you, but that’s not going to
happen either.” He wondered about Xander a lot, where he came from, how he got
that scar slashed across his lips.

Jim had offered to loan Nik the money, but Nik had put that
on hold. He didn’t want to be in debt to Jim. He didn’t like to be in debt to
anyone, and more than anyone else, Jim was his friend, and he didn’t like to
borrow from friends, either.

The possibility was on the table, just in case, and this
allowed Nik to operate without going completely insane with frustration and
rage. As long as he knew that if he absolutely had to, he could get the money
from Jim, he was able to think clearly, see a couple moves ahead, remember who
owed him a favor and which of those people he could reasonably expect to pay
their debt.

For the others it was getting harder and harder to score,
and when they did score they went right through it. Jim didn’t think that he’d
slept for more than eight hours at a time since they’d come back to Nik’s
apartment and found it picked clean, and it was days in between. Two Step was
having the hardest time with the whole Soup thing, harder, Jim thought, than
even Tattoo Nik. Jim hadn’t expected it to happen, but when it did and he had a
minute to think about it, he wasn’t really surprised. In fact, he was surprised
it hadn’t happened earlier.

“It probably would have,” Cherry said, “If he’d had a truck
and someone to help him load it.”

Two Step, however, kept going over it and over it in his
head, finally deciding there had to be a reason Soup had done it. He was in
debt to some bad people or maybe someone close to him needed the money for an
operation or something. He refused to believe that Soup had ripped Nik off for
no other reason than he had the opportunity.

And what made it worse was the drug-slump all of L.A. seemed
to be in. One by one the people they usually scored from dried up...they either
had nothing, or were simply impossible to get hold of.

Unbeknownst to anyone but Soup, even still, Two Step had
started shooting up. He shot into his foot so he wouldn’t have to worry about
having track marks on his arms, not knowing that not too long ago, Nike had
been doing the same thing for the same reason. The first time he’d done it he
felt like he had the entire universe spinning at the tips of his fingers like a
god, and sure the come-down had been a little rockier than it was when he was
just smoking it, but that was to be expected. However, as the high from
shooting had hit a plateau, the comedowns got increasingly worse, and the raw
need he felt was getting stronger.

So it was Two Step then, of all of them, that panicked the
most when they learned of the massive bust that had taken place in the wee
hours of some morning, a morning that, coincidentally, they had all finally
crashed. This had been after almost four straight days of getting spun and
scoring and getting spun and scrambling and worrying and finally scoring and
getting spun again.

“We’re fucked,” Two Step said, pacing back and forth in
Nik’s living room. There was much more room to do so now than there had been before.

“Who’d they get?” Jim asked, looking up at Carmex. “Did they
get Lance?”

Cherry had brought her over to tell the story as she knew
it, for it was from her that they had first learned the news.

“They got Old School,” she said, her massive cold sore glistening
with whatever balm she’d slathered it with. “Paz is done, they got him, holding
like nine grams and over a grand in cash.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” Nik said, shaking his head, staring blankly at
the news.

“Yeah,” Carmex said. “That’s his third fall. He’s probably
going to get life, unless he starts rolling over on people, and even then with
the mandatory minimums...”

“Did they get Lance,” Jim asked again.

“No, not Lance...I guess they got Lego, they got Summer too
but that should be okay because that’s her first bust as an adult...she was
with Monster, so they got her...Oh, and they got Martin, of course, it was his
house everyone was at.”

“So was it a rat or what?” Two Step asked, still pacing.

Carmex shrugged. “No one knows,” she said.

“Nah, they didn’t need a rat to bust Martin...he just fucked
up,” Nik said. “That guy is straight worthless as a dealer. I’m just surprised
he made it this long without getting shot or busted.”

“They get anyone else?” Two Step asked, a defeated note to
his voice.

“Fuck! I almost forgot. They got Alice, and she is fucked,
because she was carrying weight, enough for intent, I heard. No surprise
really, after they took her baby she kind of went nuts, you know, just one big
party after another.”

“She lost her baby?” Jim asked, doing his best to sound
surprised, but not overly.

“Shit, we all saw it coming,” Carmex said. “It was a matter
of time. I’m actually surprised she kept her as long as she did.”

“That’s kinda fucked though,” Jim said. “That they can just
come in and take your kid?”

“Jesus Christ who gives a fuck!” Two Step said. “Who the
fuck we gonna score from, huh? Everyone we know went up the fucking river!”

“Nah, man, I can still go through Gomez,” Nik said.

“Oh my god, you didn’t hear?” Carmex asked.

“Hear what,” Nik asked, and he could feel the blood drain
out of his face.

“Someone rolled over on Gomez, because he got lifted out of
his house, right in front of his kids and everything. Last night, about nine
o’clock.”

“No fucking way!” Nik said. He’d seen Gomez yesterday, apparently
about six hours before he got popped.

“God DAMMIT!” Two Step screamed.

“Relax, dude,” Jim said, trying to look appalled. “We’ll
find something.” Inside Jim was comforted by Step’s outrage...it was exactly
how he was feeling and Two Step reacting the way he was served as kind of an
outlet for Jim, and he was able to rage vicariously through his friend while
projecting a demeanor of control over himself and his habit. It hadn’t really
been tested yet, but as he had been smoking it more and more, he was thinking
in the back of his head that it may have finally gotten hold of him.

“Who, Jim?” Step asked. “Who the fuck you know that’s going
to let go of weight at a time like this? Shit’s gonna be rare, man, and anyone
selling’s going to be charging out the fucking ass and I am about to need some
gack in a bad fucking way so you tell me Jimmy, who the FUCK we gonna score
from now?”

“Let’s get out there and find out,” Nik said. “We sure
aren’t gonna score from anyone here, so let’s see what we can dig up.”

The mention of digging made Jim think of Sammy, and that
would be his first stop.