“Better than I make here.”
226
Heather Webber
My jaw dropped. I knew how much Jean-Claude made working for me. It was a lot. “Really?”
He nodded.
Maybe I’d gone into the wrong business.
I tried to imagine my mother’s reaction to her oldest daughter being a stripper. It wasn’t pretty.
“Well, working both jobs isn’t working out,” I said.
“I know.”
“Why do you need the money, Jean-Claude?”
Clearly uncomfortable, he shifted in his seat. “It’s my brother.”
Jean-Claude had two brothers who lived with him, one older, one younger. As far as I knew, there were no parents.
“Michel?” Ana had dated him a few months ago. I didn’t think it had gone much farther than a one-night stand.
“No. Henri. My younger brother. He’s fourteen.” He looked me in the eye. “He’s in jail.”
I blinked. “In jail? At fourteen? Why?”
“Because he’s stupid. Thought selling Ecstasy and mushies would get him the girl he liked. Now he’s in juvie pending his trial. They want to try him as an adult, make an example out of him. He was just a stupid kid making a stupid mistake.
I need the money to get the best lawyer possible. He deserves to be punished, but not like that.”
Where? “What are mushies?” I asked.
“Street name for hallucinogenic mushrooms. Liberty caps, usually.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. Mushrooms!
“Nina, you okay?”
It all came together so fast. Boom-Boom Vhrooman had ordered her turkey burger the other night at Growl with extra mushrooms. “Mushies,” she had called them, probably oblivious to what she was ordering.
227
Oh my God. It all made sense now. Goosh. The closet of mushrooms. The blackmail. Bill was a dealer. Selling mushies through Growl.
I remembered how upset Mr. Cabrera had been at being charged fifty dollars for his and Boom-Boom’s meal. It hadn’t been a slip of the tongue by Goosh. He’d been charging Mr. Cabrera for the mushies.
Extra mushies, Boom-Boom had ordered.
“Can you O.D. on these mushrooms?”
“Well, yeah,” Jean-Claude said. “They’re like any other drug. You don’t look good.”
“Did you ever hear of a place called Growl?”
Eyes wide, he opened his mouth, then snapped it closed.
After a while he said, “I don’t really want to get involved in this.”
“Too late.”
“Listen, Nina—”
“Growl, Jean-Claude. What do you know?”
“Henri mentioned it.”
“As a place to get mushies?”
He nodded.
My God. No wonder Boom-Boom had seen polar bears.
Had crashed.
It all made sense. The nighttime delivery. The extra income on the days Bill worked—he probably only sold the mushrooms on the days he managed. More foot traffic, more sales.
“How do you know about Growl?” Jean-Claude asked.
“My son works there.”
“Oh.”
