Free The November Criminals by Sam Munson Page B

modularly, as needed. I could, at the height of my industriousness, bag and seal a pound in under an hour. You develop horrible neck cramps; your hands ache. The one unpleasant drudgery I faced in my occupation. I raced myself, to keep it interesting. That day I shaved seven seconds off my previous best.
    Digger had stalked upstairs when I started my process. She doesn’t like to be around while I do that kind of work. I heard her wander around, opening and slamming cabinets, looking for food. Her steps have a recognizable, martial time signature: 2/2. I shit you not. She clipped downstairs as I finished—she knew how long it took me to deal with a package; she’d been through this with me before—already talking. “I had to go to this thing for my mother, like a surgery-appreciation thing. Did I tell you?”
    “No, did she like win the Joseph Mengele Lifetime Achievement Award or something?” I’m a funny guy! Digger ignored this, as she pretended to ignore the handfuls of bags I was shoving into my safe. I keep it in my closet, hidden in plain sight. It’s not like my father ever inspects my room, anyway. She whipped out her blood-colored pipe, which I packed with some loose weed, making foppish hand gestures. And then we got high. A rhomboid of the day’s last sunlight tracked its way across my counterpane.
    “What up, Mr. Money,” Digger asked. She makes this remark every time I resupply. I never have a retort. Digger’s voice, if you heard it without seeing her … I mean, she’s feminine . I mean in her character. And also she has gigantic tits, for someone as short and small-framed as she is. But her voice is ambiguous. It can carry real overtones of hurt and anger, just because it’s so throat-heavy.
    Today, at last, I had something for her. I mean Noel’s story about Mike Lorriner. I wouldn’t have told her if she hadn’t made that Mr. Money remark, which is unfair. She knows I haven’t spent any of it on myself, or on anything else, other than resupplying. I now had some kind of countercharge to offer, to demonstrate my potency.
    “Come on. Noel said that? And you like believe it? Noel said it. Noel,” she crowed. I told her I did. Believe it, I mean. Just to tweak her. And suddenly I did believe. At least halfway. She—to my shock—stopped scoffing and started challenging me. Why didn’t I just tell the cops? What was I going to do about it? I tried to calm her down. But here was this opportunity to satisfy this urge that I’d made a whole speech about, and I was paralyzed! (Her sentiment, not mine.)
    “But it’s just Noel , man,” I said.
    “Yeah, but it’s either true or it’s not true, even if Noel says it. And you just said you believed it.” Her sudden partisanship of his theory bewildered me. Which shows how little I understand women. And the triteness of the story was suspicious. It made too much sense. Some bulky, black-hating cracker, on the town for the weekend and desperate to prove his credentials, a booze-powered party, shoving, shouts, slurs aplenty, Kevin being heroic and stolid in the face of persecution. Et cetera. But Digger persisted: “At least check it out,” she said, “at least check it out.”
    My subsequent decision, if it can be called a decision and not an act of drug-induced lassitude, not a proof of my inability to resist her, could be marked as our fulcrum moment. Yes, something that blank-faced and ordinary. Calling Information! Oh, you can convince yourself to do anything. It doesn’t even require any real effort. Just a moment of weakness or distraction. According to the 411 lady, there were nine Lorriners living in Maryland with listed numbers. Five of them lived in Baltimore, which Noel’s statement that Lorriner was a redneck ruled out. Two lived in Bowie, and though I remembered Noel saying Severn, I took down their info anyway. One was named Jason and one was named Brandon. So no good. One lived in Groton Woods. Her name was Kaneia. But one