Free The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella) by Craig Schaefer Page B

a measly two grand to play his errand boy and put my neck on the line while he sits back home in Vegas. And the more I think about it, the more it sticks in my craw.”
    “Which part?” Caitlin asked, the tip of her straw brushing her bottom lip. “The two thousand dollars, or playing the errand boy?”
    “Both. Sure, I could do my magic-detective routine, lay Monty to rest and collect my pay, and put this whole mess in the rearview. And you could rip Dino’s throat out to keep Tanesha safe—which makes you pretty much the most hardcore music fan alive, by the way. But we’re
both
thinking too small.”
    “Enlighten me,” she said.
    “We know Dino’s hooked up with some shady customers, and based on that second phone call, we know he’s got a new coke deal on the horizon. Probably the same scam he pulled on Curtis Rake: sending his “roadies” along with the drugs stashed in the tour cases. Selling blow at every stop, making bank, and the artists are none the wiser.”
    “Unless they’re found out, in which case Dino can blame it on the musicians,” Caitlin murmured, frowning. “Walking away with clean hands.”
    “Bottom line, there’s about to be a lot of money and product swirling around Dino’s orbit.” I lifted my glass. “So how about we wring him dry and burn him down?”
    Caitlin showed her teeth. Her glass clinked against mine.
    “All the way down,” she replied.
    We hit the streets bright and early the next morning, tracking down the grocery store on Dino’s phone with a reverse directory search. We followed the trail to East Los Angeles, down a warren of twisty streets lined with bodegas, bars, and broken windows reinforced with chicken wire. The Red Bee was a smallish store, windows plastered with the daily deals scrawled on big sheets of construction paper, shaded by an angled cherry-red plastic roof. The dusty sign on the door said
Open
, but the locals were staying away in droves.
    “Not a popular place to shop,” Caitlin mused.
    “I’m thinking groceries aren’t their main line of income. See that alley? Pull around. I want a look at the back of the store.”
    Loading-bay doors. A delivery truck in faded paint, rusting away in the morning sun. And a few employees hanging out, smoking and kicking loose rocks around. Most grocery stores made you wear an apron and a name tag. These guys wore a uniform of bandannas, matching gym shoes, and prison ink on their shirtless chests, and they turned to give us hard-eyed stares as we rumbled on by.
    “Keep going,” I said to Caitlin. “And turn left at the corner. Hopefully they’ll just assume we’re a couple of lost tourists.”
    “What did you see?” she asked.
    “Trouble,” I said and dug out my phone while Caitlin drove.
    When it came to recreational substances of the forbidden variety, Jennifer Juniper was my faithful guide in the wilderness. Yes, that was her real name. Her parents were hippies. She picked up on the fourth ring.
    “Hey, sugar,” she drawled, sounding just a little bit off.
The old wake-and-bake
, I thought.
    “Hey, Jen, question for you. Out in LA, what set wears blue Chucks and blue and black bandannas?”
    “Narrow it down for me. See any ink?”
    “Yeah, but we didn’t get close enough to read it. I did see one guy with a big tat on his chest, a hand with the pinky and index finger sticking up. Like throwing up the horns at a metal concert.”
    “Ooh. Sounds like MS-Thirteen, or a set claiming to be down with ’em. Steer clear, Danny—those guys are bad news.”
    “Define ‘bad news.’”
    “They’ll kill your whole family for looking at ’em sideways. Bad enough news for ya?”
    I winced. “Yeah. They make any waves in the coke game?”
    “Sure. They’re arm in arm with the Sinaloa Cartel.”
    There it was. Dino’s supplier. His contact at the “supermarket” must have been his link to the cartel and their cocaine pipeline. I thought back to Dino’s phone call and a detail that stuck