Fedderman straightened up. 'So the new Madeline is a user. She must have left her stash when she moved out, then came back for it.'
'Maybe because she had help moving,' Quinn said.
'And vacated the place in a hurry. When she got feeling needy, she had to come back for her stash. Got careless, somehow punctured a Baggie or dropped some of the product while she was snorting.'
'In a hurry and shaky,' Quinn said, picturing it.
'Or maybe we've got it wrong,' Fedderman said. 'Maybe she came back to hide something behind the panel.'
Quinn didn't think that was likely, but it was possible. Most of these old access panels stayed just as they were for years.
While he was kneeling, he took a closer look at the wooden access panel. It was fastened to the wall by large screws at each corner. There was no paint in the slots, and the screws looked loose. A few flakes of paint lay on the floor beneath them. Obviously somebody had been at the panel recently.
'Go see if you can borrow a screwdriver from the painters, Feds.'
'On my way.'
When Fedderman had left the bedroom, Quinn gathered his strength and stood up on his noisy, wobbly knees. The leg that had taken a bullet didn't feel any more unsteady than the other leg. Time had healed. He felt light-headed for a moment. Feeling my age. Nothing good about that.
'Regular or Phillips?' Fedderman called from the living room.
'Bring both,' Quinn called back.
He didn't feel like kneeling again to reexamine the screws.
The new Madeline hadn't hidden anything behind the access panel in the back closet wall. When Quinn removed the plywood panel he found only the bathtub plumbing, and some more white powder on the floor. The spaces between the floorboards were wider there, and quite a bit of the powder had fallen down into them.
It was easy to see what had happened. There was a bent nail sticking out of the right side of the access opening. It was sharply pointed and had traces of white powder on it. Quinn pointed it out to Fedderman.
'She must have snagged the plastic pouch her coke was in and spilled some of it.'
'You can see where she tried to scoop it up and put it back in the bag. A lot of it went down into the floor.'
'Better than up her nose,' Quinn said.
Quinn held the panel flat against the wall and began replacing the screws.
When he straightened up and backed awkwardly out of the closet, he said, 'We know she's a user. And since she lost a lot of her stash here, she'll probably need more soon.'
'Narcotics is liable to pick her up.'
'We don't want that,' Quinn said.
'So we gotta make sure she doesn't get nailed on a drug charge.' Fedderman shook his head. 'Some police work. The new Madeline is a pain in the ass.'
'If we think she is,' Quinn said, 'imagine what a pain in the ass she must be to E-Bliss. It can't have been part of their plan to supply one of their new identities to a cocaine addict.'
'Maybe they don't know she's a user.'
'Maybe not yet,' Quinn said.
'But we know it,' Fedderman said. 'Now we gotta figure out some way to use what we know.'
'Or avoid getting hurt by it,' Quinn said, closing the closet door.
They returned the painters' screwdrivers, pointed out where they'd missed a spot, and left the apartment.
52
Her skin was itching on the inside. Maria Sanchez, the new Madeline, was having difficulty sitting still. If Jorge could see her now he'd be disgusted. He had been so disdainful of people in the business who got hooked on the product. She wondered what his reaction would have been if he'd known she'd become a user, then a cokehead. And she knew that was what she'd become-a cokehead. Knew it now, this minute, more than ever.
She felt trapped in the apartment E-Bliss.org had moved her into after they'd hustled her out of the one the old Madeline had occupied. Once they'd decided she should move, they'd watched over her every step, so there'd be no mistakes, nothing traceable left behind. She hadn't even been alone long enough to sneak her stash out from behind the bathroom plumbing access panel on the back wall of her bedroom closet. Which meant she'd have to return.
And she did return to get what was hers, before anyone else had a chance to move in.
In a rush, already shaking because she'd waited too long, she snagged the plastic Baggie on a nail and ripped it open as she withdrew it from behind the plywood panel.
Shit!
At least half the high-quality cocaine spilled from the bag. Some of it she managed to scoop up, but the rest was a loss. It had sifted down in the cracks between the floorboards.
Like my crappy life.
Gonna be lots of wired cockroaches.
A giggle burst from her at the thought. Then the image intruded and she decided it wasn't funny. Wasn't funny at all.
She replaced the panel and got out of there fast, certain that no one had noticed her, and returned to her new apartment.
The cocaine had carried Maria for a while, and then it was gone and the waiting had begun. She'd seen it enough times with other cokeheads and knew how it was going to feel.
It started sooner than she'd expected, and it worsened fast.
She sat with her legs drawn up in a corner of the threadbare sofa. She'd been trembling, and now she was hot. Perspiring. The temperature was always off one way or another in this goddamned rat hole. This wasn't the kind of environment she was used to. Palmer Stone had promised to move her yet again, into an apartment where the water didn't run brown. It couldn't happen too soon for Maria.
She stood up and began to pace, had to move, had to keep moving. Something she'd read somewhere returned to her:
'All the trouble in the world is caused by people who can't sit still when they find themselves alone in a room.'
Wasn't that the truth? And most of the trouble they caused was for themselves.
The part of her stash Maria had saved had gone so fast it had surprised her. And disturbed her. She hadn't realized how much stuff she was using, and with increasing frequency, increasing need. She hadn't suspected how deep into the trick bag she'd fallen.
Stone had warned her to be cautious, especially for the first six months. Six months! He had no idea what he was asking. She was going absolutely, undeniably insane.
She began to scratch her arms, her neck, leaving tracks from her gnawed fingernails. Maria knew she'd soon become a quaking mess if she didn't make a connection and get a fix. She'd seen people like that, users colliding with reality. How pathetic she'd thought they were. How weak and contemptible. Maria wasn't sure she'd changed her opinion of them now that she was one of them. She felt weak and contemptible.
She had to take the chance soon, or it would be too late. Once the nausea began-and it soon would-she'd be such a wreck nobody would trust her enough to sell to her. It would be impossible to score any kind of drug, and if she did happen to connect with a dealer, her desperation would be so obvious she'd be robbed of everything she had. The pathetic thing was that she knew she'd turn it over willingly, even eagerly, for the smallest sample of whatever would help her. She couldn't let it reach that point, where she'd do anything for salvation for an hour.
Maria decided the smart thing, the cautious thing, would be to act before it became too late. If she explained
