Dukie ran a package for a mid-level dealer named “Fat Face” Rick. It was a simple job: take the re-up from the stash house on Monroe to the pit on Baker. But Dukie was light. Not by much—forty dollars—but in the system, forty dollars might as well be forty thousand.
Mackey smiled for the first time in months. It was a thin, mirthless thing. He had found the seam. The wire. the-wire
Dukie thought about his mother, who was smoking rock in a vacant three blocks away. "Yes." Dukie ran a package for a mid-level dealer
Mackey knew different. June Bug wasn't a drug slaying or a robbery gone wrong. June Bug was a CI—a confidential informant—who had been feeding Mackey low-level dirt on a West Baltimore crew run by a ghost named Marlo Stanfield. Two weeks ago, June Bug stopped calling. Three days later, they found him in a leaky rowhouse on Fulton Avenue, a bullet behind his ear, execution style. Not by much—forty dollars—but in the system, forty
Mackey slid a single photograph across the desk. It was a grainy still from a traffic camera. A black Yukon Denali, tinted windows, parked outside a public housing high-rise at 3:14 AM on the night June Bug died.
"You short," Chris said. Not an accusation. A fact, like the weather.