Carter looked at me. “Weren’t you in I Phelta Thigh?”
Dana chuckled.
I ignored Carter and focused on Donnie. “You’re selling ecstasy. So why the gun?”
He shrugged the perfect shrug of the disaffected youth. “I dunno. We thought it would be cool to have. Just in case or something. Sometimes we have guys who don’t wanna pay or try to screw around with us. We figured flashing the gun might take care of that.”
I suppressed the urge to smack this stupid kid in the head. He was going to get shot one of these days if he kept waving a gun around that he didn’t know how to use. “Fine. How’d you know to go to Linc?”
Donnie looked uncomfortable. “Look, I don’t wanna say.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t.”
“These two are gonna kick your ass if you don’t tell them,” Dana chimed in.
“Yeah, well, fine,” he said, trying to look like he meant it. “I’ll take that over getting killed.”
“Killed?” I said. Now we were getting somewhere.
Donnie screwed his mouth into a tight pucker, looked to his left, then his right, then at me. “My roommate knows a guy. From high school. He runs a gang, alright? In Southeast. And he said if we told anybody how we got the gun, he’d kill us. He sent us to another guy, who gave us Linc’s address and said to bring five hundred in cash.” He paused, shaking his head. “I went to the apartment, guy opens the door, I hand him the envelope, and he hands me the gun. And that was it. Never met him before and haven’t seen him since.”
So the gang connection appeared to be real, not just imagined by a paranoid landlord or nosy neighbors.
“I need both guys’ names,” I said. “I’m not gonna tell them where I got them and I’m not gonna mention the gun you bought from Linc. But I need those names.”
“No way, dude,” he said. “They’ll fucking kill me.”
“No, they won’t, because they won’t know how I found them,” I said.
“No.”
I stood up. “Cool. Then I’m getting the cops to your place in about ten minutes and I’m gonna let them know they’ll find a gun, a bunch of ecstasy, and who knows what else.”
Donnie stomped his foot. “Fuck! Dude! Don’t you understand that they will kill me?”
“I’ve already forgotten your name,” I said calmly, even though I wanted to shake him. Frat Boy was getting on my nerves. “I don’t even need an address. Just names.”
He stared at me, a scared college kid trying to be tough, caught in a mistake that now frightened the hell out of him. He probably wouldn’t sleep for a week. “Deacon Moreno.”
Big surprise. “Which one was he?”
“He’s the guy who sent us to Linc.”
“And the other guy?” I asked. “The one that runs the gang?”
He readjusted the knapsack. “Wizard Matellion.”
“Wizard Matellion,” I repeated.
“Yeah.” He yanked on the strap of the knapsack. “I’m out.” He turned and walked away.
I looked at Dana. “That name ring a bell for you?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Nope.”
I turned to Carter. “You?”
“Never heard of him.” He stood up from the bench. “But I know someone who might know him and Moreno.”
“Who?”
Carter grinned at Dana, then at me. “Someone who’s not nearly as white-hot as I am.”
That, evidently, was everyone.
Sixteen
The three of us piled back into my Jeep and Carter pointed me in the direction of Hillcrest, one of the older, more diverse neighborhoods in San Diego. Not exactly where I’d expect to find answers to my questions, but I’d learned not to question Carter until it became absolutely necessary.
We worked our way south from SDSU on the side streets.
Dana leaned forward from the backseat. “Does Carter work for you?” she asked me.
“Sort of,” I said. “But not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ask him.”
She turned to Carter.
He adjusted the blue mirrored Revos on his face. “It means he’s not the boss of me.”
“Who is the boss of you?” she asked, a note of mischief in her voice.
“I am my own boss,” he said, turning around to talk to her. “And I’m an actor.”
“No way,” she said. “Get out.”
We moved through the old homes in Kensington. “Yeah, dude. Get out. I’ll even slow down,” I said.
Both of them ignored me.
“What have you been in?” she asked, nearly swooning from the excitement of it all.
“Nothing yet,” he said, undeterred. “I’m just getting into the business. I’m gonna play a thug.”
“Hard to believe,” I said, turning us onto University Avenue.
“Can I come watch?” she asked, leaning forward just a little farther so she could place her hand on his arm. “Visit you on the set?”
His giant smile looked clownlike beneath the sunglasses. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Dana returned the smile and leaned back.
I nearly gagged. “Where am I going, superstar?”
“Turn right on Fifth. Corvette Diner’s on the west side.”
I moved the Jeep over into the turn lane. “That’s where we’re going? The Corvette Diner?”
“Yep.”
I shook my head as we passed under the arch that signaled the entrance to the Hillcrest community. A collection of bookstores, coffeehouses, and eccentric storefronts, Hillcrest was San Diego’s answer to Greenwich Village. As home prices exploded in the suburbs during the nineties, young urban professionals had sought out Hillcrest’s affordable one-story bungalows, infusing the neighborhood with new life and new money. Trendy bars and restaurants popped up and disappeared with regular irregularity.
The one mainstay was the Corvette Diner, a 1950s diner with an actual Corvette suspended from the ceiling. Waitresses wore poodle skirts, neon lights gleamed from the walls, and a working soda fountain ran the length of the restaurant. You could expect at least an hour wait any night of the week near dinnertime.
I parked the Jeep in front of the old hardware store just up the street and the three of us walked the block to the diner.
“I hope we’re not going here just because you’re hungry,” I said.
“And I hope you’re not whining just because you’re a little girl,” he said, opening the door to the restaurant for Dana and me.
Carter guided us over to the long bar at the soda fountain and the three of us slid onto the barstools. Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” was coming from the speakers. Midday, the restaurant was almost full.
The guy working the counter looked over at us. He was about five-nine and reed-thin, with caramel-colored skin and dark brown eyes. A small, compact Afro was tucked under a white paper diamond-shaped hat. He wore white pants and a white shirt with a black bow tie.
When he recognized Carter, his eyes narrowed.
Carter removed his sunglasses and smiled. “Willie J. What’s going on?”
Willie’s frown intensified. “What the fuck you want?”
“Three cherry Cokes,” Carter asked.
