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“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
Nye thought that was so funny he laughed for a good half minute. It annoyed him that I didn’t join in.
He asked, “So, what you want, McKenzie?”
“You were busted for dealing meth.”
“What of it?”
“Who do you think ratted you out?”
“Coulda been lots of folks.”
“Could have been Merodie.”
“Coulda been. If it was, I gotta tell ya, it was the best thing she ever did for me.”
“Is that right?”
“Dealin’ meth was a good living, I ain’t gonna lie to ya. Before I got boxed, I moved a whole pound of methamphetamine every month. At a thousand to fifteen hundred per ounce, that’s a lot of tax-free coupons, baby! And I wasn’t just dealing to speed freaks, neither. My customers, I had yuppie businessmen, bored housewives, college kids on a rave—anyone who wanted a two-, three-hour ride. Basically the same customers who made cocaine such a big thing. One customer, a woman, bought a quarter gram of crank the last Friday of every month cuz that was when she cleaned her house, one of those big Victorian mothers with three floors and eighty rooms. She’d swallow the meth and then go into a Speedy Gonzales routine, cleaning that sucker from top to bottom in a single day.
“Only between the Mexicans and the fucking bikers, it wasn’t exactly a healthy lifestyle, you know? Besides, crank is bad, man. Messes you up real good. Makes you paranoid, makes you think everyone’s out to get you. ‘Course, in my case, that turned out to be true, didn’t it?” The laugh again. “ ’Cept I don’t know who dropped a dime on me. Coulda been Merodie. Coulda been the Mexicans. All I know is all of a sudden the county cops were all over my ass, searching my car until they found my stash hidden behind the hubcap. Eleven months, three weeks in the Anoka County Correctional Facility, doin’ nothing but pumping iron and watching cable.
“But I got clean. I got outta the game. And I ain’t goin’ back. That ain’t no lie. You could say I learned the error of my ways. I didn’t get religion, okay? I didn’t turn into no pussy in eleven months. Only meth, man, that ain’t no way to live. Don’t need no building to fall on me to learn that, no sir. And if Merodie is responsible for that, well, thank you, Merodie.”
“Is that why you went to her house after you got out of the joint?”
“Who said I went. . .?”
“Were you looking to thank her?”
“Fuck you, McKenzie. You think I don’t know why you’re here? I know why you’re here. Merodie killed her old man and you want to jam me up for it. Ain’t gonna happen. No way. Merodie’s goin’ down. And listen to me. Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. You don’t believe me, just ask my friend the county attorney.”
Nye placed a fist on his hip, posing for me.
“You and Tuseman are pals, are you?”
“Hell, yeah. Me and him, we’re like this.” He crossed his fingers and held them up for me to see. “Fact is, he wants me to testify against ol’ Merodie.”
“Does he?”
Nye liked the surprised expression on my face and was disappointed that it didn’t last. “That’s right,” he said. “So back off.”
“Does he know you were at Merodie’s house the day Eli Jefferson was killed?”
Nye paused before answering.
“I was not at—”
“You were seen.”
He grinned as if he knew a secret I was too dumb to grasp. “I was nowhere near Merodie’s house the day Eli Jefferson was killed, and there ain’t nobody around no more to say otherwise ‘cept Merodie, and who’s gonna believe her?”
Ain‘t nobody around no more to say otherwise—how can he be so sure? my inner voice wondered. While I was thinking it over, Nye leaned in close.
“Besides”—he was still grinning—“I got an alibi.”
“What would that be?”
“Not a what. A who. I was with my girlfriend that whole day.”
“How convenient.”
“Ain’t it, though?”
“What’s her name?”
“Debbie Miller.”
Nye pulled a torn slip of paper from his pocket and shoved it at me. On it he had neatly printed Miller’s name, home address, business address, and telephone numbers. He smiled when I took it from him.
“She’s waitin’ for you, too,” Nye said.
“Is she?”
“I told you, you was expected.”
The radio switched off automatically when I shut down the Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot of the small shopping complex at County Road 10 and Round Lake Boulevard. I wasn’t listening to it anyway. Instead, I had been thinking angry thoughts about Richard Nye. Maybe he was involved in Jefferson’s death, maybe he wasn’t. I sure would enjoy sending him back to jail for something.