“Heroin?” Lionel said.
She turned her head, looked at him, her cigarette dangling from between her fingers, her body loose and puddling. “Yeah, Lionel. Sometimes. Sometimes coke, sometimes Ex, and sometimes”—she shook her head, turned it back toward the rest of the room—”whatever the fuck.”
“Track marks,” Beatrice said. “We would have seen track marks.”
Poole patted Helene’s knee. “She snorted it.” He flared his nostrils, slid them over his cigarette. “Didn’t you?”
Helene nodded. “Less addictive that way.”
Poole smiled. “Of course it is.”
Helene removed his hand from her knee and stood up, crossed to the refrigerator, and pulled out a can of Miller. She opened it with a hard snap and the beer foamed to the top and she slurped it up into her mouth.
I looked at the clock: ten-thirty in the morning.
Broussard called two CAC detectives and told them to locate and begin immediate surveillance of Chris Mullen. In addition to the original detectives searching for Amanda, and the two who’d been assigned to locate Ray Likanski, the entire CAC division was now clocking overtime on one case.
“This is strictly need-to-know,” he said into the phone. “That means only I need to know what you’re doing for the time being. Clear?”
When he hung up, we followed Helene and her morning beer onto Lionel and Beatrice’s back porch. Flat cobalt clouds drifted overhead and the morning turned sluggish and gray, gave the air a moist thickness, a promise of afternoon rain.
The beer seemed to give Helene a concentration she usually lacked. She leaned against the porch rail and met our eyes without fear or self-pity and answered our questions about Cheese Olamon and his right-hand man, Chris Mullen.
“How long have you known Mr. Olamon?” Poole asked.
She shrugged. “Ten, maybe twelve years. From around the neighborhood.”
“Chris Mullen?”
“’Bout the same.”
“Where did your association begin?”
Helene lowered her beer. “What?”
“Where did you meet this Cheese guy?” Beatrice said.
“The Filmore.” She took a slug off the beer can.
“When did you start working for him?” Angie asked.
Another shrug. “I did some small stuff over the years. ’Bout four years ago I needed more money to take care of Amanda—”
“Jesus Christ,” Lionel said.
She glanced at him, then back at Poole and Broussard. “—so he sent me on a few buys. Hardly ever big stuff.”
“Hardly ever,” Poole said.
She blinked, then nodded quickly.
Poole turned his head, his tongue pushing against the inside of his lower lip. Broussard met his eyes and pulled another stick of gum from his pocket.
Poole chuckled softly. “Miss McCready, do you know what squad Detective Broussard and I worked for before we were asked to join Crimes Against Children?”
Helene grimaced. “I care?”
Broussard popped the gum in his mouth. “No reason you should, really. But just for the record—”
“Narcotics,” Poole said.
“CAC is pretty small, not much in the way of camaraderie,” Broussard said, “so we still hang out mostly with narcs.”
“Keep abreast of things,” Poole said.
Helene squinted at Poole, tried to figure out where this was going.
“You said you ran dope through the Philadelphia corridor,” Broussard said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Who to?”
She shook her head.
“Miss McCready,” Poole said, “we’re not here on a narco bust. Give us a name so we can confirm whether you really muled for Cheese Ol—”
“Rick Lembo.”
“Ricky the Dick,” Broussard said, and smiled.
“Where did the deals go down?”
“The Ramada by the airport.”
Poole nodded at Broussard.
“You do any New Hampshire runs?”
Helene took a hit off the beer and shook her head.
“No?” Broussard raised his eyebrows. “Nothing up Nashua way, no quick sales to the biker gangs?”
Again Helene shook her head. “No. Not me.”
“How much you hit Cheese for, Miss McCready?”
“Excuse me?” Helene said.
“The Cheese violates his parole three months ago. He takes a ten-to-twelve fall.” Broussard spit his gum over the railing. “How much you take off him when you heard he got dropped?”
“Nothing.” Helene’s eyes stayed on her bare feet.
“Bullshit.”
Poole stepped over to Helene and gently took the beer can from her hand. He leaned over the railing and tipped the can, poured the contents into the driveway behind the house.
“Miss McCready,” he said, “word I’ve heard on the proverbial street the past few months is that Cheese Olamon sent a goody bag up to some bikers in a Nashua motel just before his arrest. The goody bag was recovered in a raid, but not the money. Since the bikers—hale fellows all—had yet to partake of the contents of the bag, speculation among our northern law enforcement friends was that the deal had gone down only moments before the raid. Further speculation led many to believe that the mule walked off with the money. Which, according to current urban lore, was news to the members of Cheese Olamon’s camp.”
“Where’s the money?” Broussard said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Care to take a polygraph?”
“I already took one.”
“Different questions this time.”
Helene turned to the railing, looked out on the small tar parking lot, the withered trees just beyond.
“How much, Miss McCready?” Poole’s voice was soft, without a hint of pressure or urgency.
“Two hundred thousand.”
The porch was silent for a full minute.
“Who rode shotgun?” Broussard said eventually.
“Ray Likanski.”
“Where’s the money?”
The muscles in Helene’s scrawny back clenched. “I don’t know.”
“Liar, liar,” Poole said. “Pants on fire.”
She turned from the railing. “I don’t know. I swear to God.”
“She swears to God.” Poole winked at me.
“Oh, well, then,” Broussard said, “I guess we have to believe her.”
“Miss McCready?” Poole pulled his shirt cuffs from underneath his suit coat, smoothed them against his wrists. His voice was light and almost musical.