“A shrink? Really?”
“I think so.”
“Hmm. Like I told them, I’m more worried about coming up and finding somebody’s pointing a gun at my head,” Virgil said. “But then, I’ve got you to take care of me.”
“I will,” Rae said.
“I believe you,” Virgil said. “So—you got enough shoes?”
Rae snorted: “I’ll never have enough shoes. This is not an act, the shoe thing. I can’t afford a private jet, but with the right shoes, nobody’ll know that.”
“All right. I’ve got the energy for a couple more stores, but first, we gotta find a place to get a sandwich.”
They didn’t find a sandwich, but they did find a sushi shop, and as Virgil was dunking a chunk of raw tuna into a cup of wasabi, Rae said, “You sounded . . . smart . . . up there. In the meeting. Like a smart cop. With a hard nose. Giving shit to the feds.”
“Why not? I am smart,” Virgil said.
“You hide it well. Even when it’s just you and me.”
Virgil tried the shrimp: “Jesus, this stuff is good. Don’t much get good sushi in the rural Midwest.” He chewed for a moment and then said, “You know about the tall poppy syndrome?”
“Mmm, no. Does it have something to do with heroin poppies?”
“Any poppies, I guess. You hear about it mostly in Australia and Canada, but Minnesota’s almost Canada anyway—same people settled both places. Anyway, the tall poppy syndrome refers to the idea that the tall poppies in a field will get their tops cut off to make everything neat and equal. When it comes to a culture, it means that people who let their light shine will eventually get dragged down, and a lot of people will enjoy seeing that happen. If you’re in a tall poppy culture, it’s all right to be smart, but you can’t act smart. You can’t show it.”
“That sounds like girls in eighth grade: ‘You think you’re so smart?’ That kind of thing.”
“Exactly,” Virgil said. “If you grow up in Minnesota, you develop this cover. You know, you do well, but, ‘I’m an ordinary guy who got lucky, that’s all, I really like standing around on the street corner when it’s ten below zero having long conversations about the Vikings.’ Eventually, it becomes reflexive. You really sort of become that. The guy who likes to hang out on street corners, bullshitting. You don’t let the smart out.”
“Not exactly New York or LA,” Rae said. “In those places, they can’t wait to let you know how smart they are.”
“Different culture. That’s why we’re going to fuck Behan and his crew. They’re from New York. They look at us—we’re from Iowa, for Christ’s sake—and they can’t imagine that we’re anything but a lazy motherfucker and his ghetto girl. They’re too smart to make a mistake about it.”
“But they are.”
“And we’re gonna fuck ’em because of it,” Virgil said; a happy guy. He looked down at Rae’s plate. “Say, you want that octopus?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Behan, Cattaneo, Lange, and Regio gathered at Behan’s condo to celebrate: a hundred and ten kilos of heroin, worth something in the neighborhood of three and a half million dollars wholesale in New York, had come out of the ocean and were safely packed away in a high-security storage unit in Hallandale.
“We’re taking it north tomorrow,” Behan said.
The four of them were standing around with crystal whiskey glasses in their hands, all of them drinking scotch, except Behan, who had a bottle of water; all of them in sport coats and dress shirts and loafers. Behan’s low-rent designers had just installed ten of the world’s most famous black-and-white photographs down a long hallway, and they all pretended to be interested in them, though Behan couldn’t remember the photographers’ names. “Sandy and Steph are driving, they’re pulling the old lady out of the funeral home tonight.”
“That’s, what, a day and a half up 95?” Regio asked. He sniffed: the place smelled of lemon Pledge, and he was mildly allergic to it.
“Something like that,” Behan said. “I’ve never driven straight through myself. I’m told it’s eighteen or nineteen hours, going with the flow of the traffic. The storage place opens at six, they figure to be on the road before six-thirty, about the time it starts getting light. They wanna beat the rush out of town. They’ll drive until it gets dark, then do the rest of it the day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll be happy when New York gets it and we’re not responsible anymore,” Cattaneo said. “I’ll tell you, when Willy came up with eleven cans, I was so excited I almost shit myself.”
Behan turned his eyes on Lange: “What do you think, Matthew? You still worried about Willy’s credentials?”
“Less than I was, but . . .”
“But what?”
“We’re gonna get a test when the shit gets to New York. If Dougie’s standing there looking at all those bags and a hundred feds come crashing through the doors, well . . . it could be Willy.”
“Doug won’t get anywhere close to it,” Behan said. “It’ll go straight out to the A level, a kilo or two at a time and they’ll be the ones who have hands on.”
“Okay,” Lange said. “But if it does get hit, we’ll need a closer look at Willy. I-I-I guess I don’t think it’ll happen. After the other night, I think Willy and Ally are on the level. I’m just sayin’, if that cargo does get hit, we’ll need to take a real close look. Because, let’s face it, we all know each other, we’re all watertight. If there’s a leak . . .”
“’Nuff said,” said Behan. “You’re right. If the hearse gets hit, anywhere along the line, we’ll look to Willy.”
“Willy’s okay,” Cattaneo said. “He’s in as deep as we are, now . . .”
Behan was watching him closely, and Cattaneo faltered, then asked, “What?”
“An odd thing happened yesterday,” Behan said, “which is why I brought up the whole subject.”
He pointed at Regio. “You told me that you stopped by their place yesterday around what, three o’clock, to tell them to ease off the dope? And they just got back from Bal Harbour?”
“Yeah, our guy saw them in a Hollywood bar the night before, a block down the street from their apartment. A Willy-style shithole called Ouroboros. They bought some cocaine from a dealer named Richard. He’s a well-known dealer, been around for a while. Not a cop.”