'So you want to give it a shot?'
I looked down at my notebook. I said, 'Well, I have two problems.
The first one I think I mentioned to
Pete on the phone. I'm supposed to go to Ireland the end of the week.'
'On business?'
'Pleasure. I just made the arrangements this morning.'
'You could cancel.'
'I could.'
'You lose any money canceling, your fee from me'd make that up to you. What's the other problem?'
'The other problem's what use you'll make of whatever I might turn up.'
'Well, you know the answer to that.'
I nodded. 'That's the problem.'
'Because you can't make a case against them, prosecute them for kidnapping and homicide. There's no evidence of any crime committed, there's just a woman who disappeared.'
'That's right.'
'So you must know what I want, what the point of all this is. You want me to say it?'
'You might as well.'
'I want those fuckers dead. I want to be there, I want to do it, I want to see them die.' He said this calmly, levelly, in a voice with no emotion in it. 'That's what I want,' he said. 'Right now I want it so bad I don't want anything else. I can't imagine ever wanting anything else.
That about what you figured?'
'Just about.'
'People who'd do something like this, take an innocent woman and turn her into cutlets, does it bother you what happens to them?'
I thought about it, but not for very long. 'No,' I said.
'We'll do what has to be done, me and my brother. You won't have a part of that.'
'In other words I'd just be sentencing them to death.'
He shook his head. 'They sentenced themselves,' he said. 'By what they did. You're just helping play out the hand. What do you say?'
I hesitated.
He said, 'You've got another problem, don't you? My profession.'
'It's a factor,' I said.
'That line about selling crack to schoolchildren. I don't, uh, set up shop in the schoolyard.'
'I didn't figure you did.'
'Properly speaking, I'm not a dealer. I'm what they call a trafficker.
You understand the distinction?'
'Sure,' I said. 'You're the big fish that manages to stay out of the nets.'
He laughed. 'I don't know that I'm big particularly. In certain respects the middle-level distributors are the biggest, do the most volume. I deal in weight, meaning I either bring product in in quantity or I buy it from the person who brings it in and turn it over to someone who sells smaller amounts. My customer probably does more business than I do because he's buying and selling all the time, where I may only do two or three deals a year.'
'But you make out all right.'
'I make out. It's hazardous, you've got the law to worry about and you've got people looking to rip you off. Where the risks are high the rewards are generally high also. And the business is there. People want the product.'
'By product you mean cocaine.'
'Actually I don't do much with coke. Most of my business is heroin. Some hash, but mostly heroin the past couple of years. Look, I'll tell you right out, I'm not gonna apologize for it. People take it, they get hooked, they rob their mother's purse, they break into houses, they OD
and die with needles in their arms, they share needles and get AIDS. I know the whole story. There's people who make guns, people who distill liquor, people who grow tobacco. How many people a year die of liquor and tobacco compared to the number die from drugs?'
'Alcohol and tobacco are legal.'
'What difference does that make?'
'It makes some kind of difference. I'm not sure how much.'
'Maybe. I don't see it myself. Either case, the product is dirty. It kills people, or it's the substance they use to
