Strange Trades Read Free Page B

puffed briefly, and made a face.
    “Five goddamn years, and I still can’t stand these. My only consolation is that I helped to nail the bastards.”
    Before becoming head of the islands’ security, Deatherage had worked for the L.A. police force. He had been part of the team responsible for capturing the domestic eco-terrorists who had released the tailored tobacco mosaic virus that had ended all cultivation of that crop. The Sierra Club never recovered from the revelation that the conspirators had solicited and received funding from them.
    “What can I do for you, Leon?” I asked. “Do you need a drink this early in the morning? I won’t tell anyone.” I pushed back from the table, as if to rise.
    Deatherage made a magician’s move, and suddenly in the palm of his hand lay a small empty white plastic shell the size of a quarter. It was color-coded like an antique transistor with three dots of red.
    My stomach churned. I wanted to puke my breakfast. Somehow I kept it down.
    My face must have blanched. Deatherage smiled. Suddenly, I regretted taunting him.
    “Recognize it, do you, Holloway? I thought it might touch a chord in your past. Do you want to name it, or shall I?”
    I wet my lips. Merely to summon up the name took an immense act of will.
    “Estheticine,” I said.
    “Exactly. In a nice convenient dermal patch. Would you like to guess where I found it?”
    I said nothing.
    “On the beach, with the used condoms and the empty bottles, during my morning jog.”
    I swallowed gratefully. For an instant, I had been sure he was going to claim it had come from the club.
    “I’m clean,” I said.
    Deatherage looked at me solemnly. “I know that. Do you think I’d come to you if I thought you were the user? I know what you went through to kick the stuff. I want your help. I’ve just been on the phone to friends on the mainland. They say that, due to a series of busts, sources for E have dried up. It’s almost impossible to score now. Whoever’s using this might get your name somehow and come to you. At which point, you come to me, correct?”
    I nodded.
    “Very good.” Deatherage rose as if to leave, then sat again, seeming to remember something. I knew it to be a charade. The man forgot nothing.
    “By the way. This singer of yours. Is he a Mex?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “A lot of this stuff comes through Mexico. It could be that he’s our connection.”
    “He’s a citizen,” I said. “You can check his card. And he told me he’s a HUB.” I don’t know why I lied, except that Deatherage had upset me so much.
    “Hip Urban Black, huh? Well, well see.” Deatherage stood without pretense now. “Remember what I said, Holloway.” He left.
    A lot of unpleasant memories swarmed in to fill his seat.
     
    Once the world had seemed bright and beautiful. That was when I was young, and my lover was alive.
    His name—we won’t get into his name. What essentials do names capture? He was a charming young mestizo boy of no fixed abode or occupation, whom I had met on a business trip to Guatemala, just before the war. (Once I had another job, another life, when I lived much as everyone else.)
    Picturing his face now, for the first time in years, I realized how much Charlie resembled him.
    I managed to get the boy a visa after I returned stateside, although even then, in the days before mandatory citizen IDs, the authorities were tightening up on immigration of the unskilled. I had to grease many bureaucratic palms.
    I thought I was doing him an immense favor, lifting him up out of his poverty and squalor. I little knew then that I was arranging his death.
    Life in the First World did not agree with him. Everything was too confusing; there were too many choices, too many options. He got into a fast crowd, took risks, became promiscuous—picked up AIDS.
    He died six months before they announced the drug that cured me of the infection he had passed on to me.
    Infection of the body, but not the heart.
    When