to discuss my music preferences.”
“It’s 8:44.”
“The crack of damn dawn.”
He turned away from the music to look at me, then came back to the chair at the table and sat down again.
“I could use your help with something.”
“Sure, just make an appointment with my secretary. I may have an opening next Tuesday.”
“I was thinking more like right now. There’s a bit of urgency to my request.”
“I’m listening.”
“Good because this will take a little time.” As if to reinforce what he’d just said, he pulled off the jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.
I drank coffee. Waited.
“A guy came by my office yesterday morning, a guy named Larry Blevins.”
I looked up from the coffee. “Don’t know the name.”
“You will. Blevins has a seventeen-year-old son, Jay. High school dropout, got into alcohol in more than a recreational way in tenth grade, moved on to drugs a year or so later, was out of school a few months after that.”
“Cocaine?”
A small nod. “Kid has eclectic tastes. Crack’s his main thing though. The family’s tried every way they could think of to get the kid off the juice and off the street — treatment, counselling, spent a lot of money, threw him out, took him back home, tough love, real love, all of it. Last week the kid ended up in hospital; they almost lost him. Overdose. The family figured maybe this would be the thing that might get Jay motivated to get off the stuff.”
“I think I know where this is going,” I said.
Cobb nodded again. “When they got him home they talked about it, cried, begged, bargained, all the stuff they tell you you’re not supposed to do. Four nights ago Jay got some money and the car keys out of his mom’s purse and took off.
“Night before last Blevins is out driving around some of the seamier areas, looking for the kid. Said he’s done that before, never found anything. This time he spots his wife’s car in a parking lot a few blocks from the Saddledome, figures he’s maybe close. Keeps cruising, gets lucky this time, sees a friend of Jay’s, also a user, coming out of a house carrying something. There’s another guy on the porch of this place, badass-looking guy … Blevins figures he’s found a crack house.”
“Good guess,” I said.
Cobb nodded. “This other kid, his name is Max, leaves and badass goes back inside. Blevins decides he’s going in there.”
“Shit,” I said.
“It gets worse,” Cobb looked at me. “Blevins hunts and he’s a gun collector, has a handgun with him. Decides to take it along thinking he might wave it around a little, scare the crap out of these creeps and warn them off selling product to his kid. Figures he’ll tell them that if they do, he’ll come back. Like Sylvester Stallone. His words, not mine.”
“The gun loaded?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve got a hall-of-fame hangover and I can see a hundred holes in his line of thinking.”
Cobb shrugged, noncommittal. “Maybe. But you don’t have kids. Never had to go through what Larry Blevins has. Desperate people do desperate things. Stupid things, because they’re not thinking clearly. Blevins knows that now.”
Cobb paused and we both drank some of our coffee. He set his down, resumed the story.
“The door’s open so he walks in. One guy’s on a cell phone, the other one, the same guy who’d been on the front steps with Max, is sitting behind a table. There’s a bunch of stuff Blevins has seen in pictures on the Internet spread out all over the table.”
“I’ve seen those pictures,” I said.
“He tells them why he’s there.”
I whistled. “This guy’s got balls.”
“Big time. The first guy, the one behind the table, says he’s never heard of anyone named Jay. He sticks with that for a while, laughing like it’s all a big joke. Blevins wasn’t sure what he said that changed the guy’s attitude, but suddenly the guy goes from all smiles to mean as a snake — tells Blevins to get his ass out of there, or he’ll put him out.”
“And all this time Blevins is holding a gun.”
Cobb nodded.
“The dealer also has balls.”
“Now he tells Blevins that Jay’s one of their most valued customers, says they could work up a family package if he really wants to bond with his son. Blevins actually points the gun at him, but that just gets the guy laughing again, like it’s the funniest thing he’s seen in a long time. Just then the front door opens and a girl, younger than Jay, walks into the place. Blevins said she looked maybe fifteen, sixteen.
“Laughing Boy says something about how now the fun would really begin, because Carly doesn’t have any money and she needs a load. Blevins tries to take the girl by the arm and push her back out of there but she twists away, tells him to fuck off. The guy behind the table stands up, starts coming around the table. Blevins tells him to back off but the guy keeps coming. Blevins said he was tall, real tall, maybe six-six, but he isn’t laughing anymore and he’s got something in his hand. Maybe a knife, Blevins wasn’t sure.
“Blevins shoots him. Twice.”
“Jesus.”
“Then everything gets loud. The young girl, Carly, she’s screaming, the other guy is yelling and knocking over chairs and stuff wanting to get out of there. Blevins told me he thought the guy was trying to get to the back door. Anyway, wherever he’s going he isn’t fast enough and Blevins shoots him too.”
Cobb stopped talking. Neither of us spoke for quite a while. I’ve covered crime in Calgary for a dozen years and I’ve heard lots of stories, some bad, some real bad. This was one of the real bad ones.
Desperation.
“What about the girl … Carly?” I was almost afraid to ask. If Blevins had completely lost it, who knew what else he’d done?
“Blevins didn’t know. He thought she ran out the door … the front door. When he went back outside he didn’t see her. He got in his car and drove away.”
I took a breath.
“What did Blevins think you could do for him?”
“Nothing. That wasn’t why he’d come to see me.”
“What then?”
“He’s worried about Jay. That he might be in danger.”
“Why? Was the kid there?”
“No,
