“I’m really sorry,” Ben said to me. “We give everyone nicknames. You know, long hours out front and we get a little nutty.”
“I understand,” I said, “and I hope you understand how sensitive this is for all of us.”
Ben bit down on his bottom lip and concentrated on his clipboard for a few seconds. He ran a finger up and down his list and then stopped, looked down and said, “Did you say your name was Kurt Riebe?”
“Yes,” I said.
He ran his finger up and down again, stopped, looked and said to Sugar, “And you’re Delmert Boggs?”
“Naw, man,” Sugar said. “Something cooler than…”
I put my hand over Sugar’s mouth. “Yes, he’s Delmert Boggs.” Ben made out two guest passes for us and then handed us both lanyards to wear.
“I appreciate this,” I said. “Brent will, too, I hope.”
“He’s very sweet,” Tiff said.
“Just make sure Delmert doesn’t sell any drugs inside,” Ben said. “And it would be good if Delmert didn’t show back up at some later date to try to sell drugs. Like at any of the frat houses.”
Sugar looked over his shoulder, as if someone was calling his name, and mumbled something unintelligible.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” I said.
Ben got up and opened the door into the tower with his key card and waved us in. Sugar started to talk just as soon as we were in the lobby but I hushed him until we were in the elevator.
“How’d you do that Jedi shit?” he asked.
“I don’t look like a drug dealer,” I said.
“That shit was wrong,” Sugar said. “That was some profiling shit right there.”
“Maybe don’t sell any drugs around here for a few months,” I said.
“You know what the market is out here? I could make my full nut each month just on Adderall and HGH, but I respect that this is an educational facility,” Sugar said. “Kids learning and shit. So maybe I drop a little weed in the area now and then, but it’s not like I got kids on the black tar, man.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said.
“You know what the kids really want, though?”
“A better life?”
“Ambien. They want that crazy Tiger Woods Ambien sex now. That’s my number one growth industry. Stupid cuz you can go to the doctor, tell them you’re not sleeping and Mom and Dad’s health insurance will pick it up for four bucks a bottle. So I get a huge markup.”
The problem with talking to Sugar about anything related to his business was that it constantly reminded me of why I didn’t like him in the first place. He’d come to me not long ago when he was in a jam and I’d gone to him not long ago when I was in a jam, but this new relationship where he was the middleman to a client just opened up my antipathy for him. The sooner I was done with him and could help his friend, the less likely it was that Sugar got bullet number seven.
When you’re a spy, you often enter into business propositions with people not good enough to spit on. Dictators. Presidents. Warlords. And the occasional peroxide blond drug dealer.
The elevator doors opened onto the eighth floor and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It wasn’t death or decay or the coppery smell of blood. Instead it was a just-as-nauseating mixture of patchouli, the oversweet- smelling body lotion favored by strippers and sorority girls alike, the indiscriminate odor of young men (usually a combination of unwashed socks and unwashed hair with a couple dashes of sadness and desperation sprinkled in for flavor) and macaroni and cheese.
Students milled about the hallway in between open apartment doors from which loud rap music and the static hum of televisions bleated out. None of the students appeared to be over twenty and none of them appeared to be in a hurry to get anywhere-they all walked with a nonchalance that bordered on liquidity; it was as if they didn’t have spines like normal humans, particularly with the way their heads lolled back and forth without any seeming purpose.
A few looked at me with passing disregard, but I thought I saw at least two or three of the kids nod at Sugar.
“When was the last time you were up here?” I said.
“Couple days ago.”
“Just to see Brent?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sugar said.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“Man, I don’t know. Maybe cuz you’re all covert and shit?”
Maybe. But probably not.
On the walls, posters and flyers for various campus events were stapled haphazardly onto corkboards. Apparently Tuesday was Taco Tuesday at a local bar. Apparently Wednesday was Wicked Wednesday, also at a local bar. Thursdays, according to all of the flyers, were Thirsty Thursdays. There were also notices about opportunities to study abroad, to teach English in Korea and, oddly, to join the Marines. Looking around, I didn’t see a whole lot of candidates who’d be getting Semper Fi tattoos in the near future.
There were security cameras over the elevators, above the two vending machines and at either end of the hallway. Each moved a slow 180 degrees, essentially capturing every inch of space in the common areas. I didn’t know where this information was fed, but I suspected it went to the campus police. It wouldn’t be the sort of thing that was monitored unless a crime was committed, which meant I wanted to avoid committing any crimes… or allowing Sugar to commit any.
“Brent’s room is down that way,” Sugar said, pointing. “Third one on the right.” There were six rooms visible and five of them had wide-open doors, so it was obvious which room was Brent’s.
“The door normally closed?” I said.
“Naw, he’s a pretty open dude, usually,” Sugar said.
“How many times have you been here?”
“Half dozen? Usually real quick. Just pop in, trade product and I’m out.”
“So none of these people know you?”
“I keep to mine,” he said.
“Sugar, this is important.”
He looked both ways down the hall and then shrugged. “Not personally, you know? But a few times, I maybe hooked some people up on this floor. A head nod here or there, you know. But I’m not going to the big dance or anything. Not my scene, bro.”
“Wait here,” I said.
“You gonna go down there and kick his door in? He don’t know you.”
“Sugar,” I said, “if there’s something bad to see-like a body-you don’t want to be anywhere near it, okay? You also don’t need to be seen on camera.”
Sugar thought about this. “I’ll hang back,” he said.
I walked down the hall and peered into the other rooms as I went. In the first room, two young men sat motionless on beanbag chairs playing a video game, their jaws opened just enough to allow airflow. In the second, a young woman wearing only a bathing suit top and cut-off shorts walked in circles talking on her cell phone about someone named Lyle being an asshole, and in the final room before I got to 804, a young man and a young woman sat quietly-amid thumping rap music-reading. None of them bothered to even look my way as I walked by. No one is naturally as uninquisitive as someone who is twenty years old and likely drunk eighty-five percent of the time. All of the dorm rooms looked to have the same layout-a small living room and kitchenette with a bedroom and bathroom off to either the left or the right. It was, in fact, more Soviet on the inside than on the outside.
I got to Brent’s door and knocked loudly. There was no response. I knocked again, this time harder, and said, “Brent? Brent? It’s me. I’m here with Sugar.” Still nothing. I couldn’t hear any movement behind the door, but that was most likely due to the fact that it was a fairly high-grade fireproof door: stainless-steel hinge; frame made of zinc-coated steel sheeting; the door itself silicate aluminum, likely over a honeycomb board, which also made it nearly impossible to kick in.
He probably didn’t know it, but Brent Grayson was living in the perfect place to avoid getting murdered by
