LIGHTS, CAMERA, action.
This could mean everything to Latham. It could be his ticket out.
But it could ruin him, too. It could land him in prison.
Or worse. It’s the “worse” that jars him awake in the middle of the night, heart pounding, bedsheets soaked in sweat.
If Shiv ever found out. Shiv wasn’t the forgiving sort. Shiv didn’t have a sense of humor.
Just ask Joker Jay, who one day last summer made the mistake of joking around a little too much with Shiv’s woman. The found Jay in a pool of blood by the field house in Clark Park. Shiv had decided to take Jay’s nickname literally and slice open both sides of his mouth.
Jay doesn’t joke around much anymore.
And that’s just for messing with Shiv’s girl. Messing with Shiv’s business?
If anyone figures out what Latham’s doing, he’s a dead man.
Shiv will make an example of him, beat him, torture him, leave his bloody corpse for all to see. This is what happens when you mess with Shiv. This is what happens when you mess with the business of the K-Street Hustlers.
Lights: easy enough, the sunlight of late afternoon pouring through Latham’s bedroom window, up on the fourth floor of the apartment building.
Camera: a small one, hidden inside the AC unit perched halfway out his window, overlooking the street to the south.
Action: a silver BMW sedan slows at the intersection down the street, then turns left, driving north on Kilbourn toward Latham’s position.
A Beemer, Latham thinks. Promising.
Using the toggle, Latham zooms in on the license plate, then widens the view and captures the intersection’s street signs, Kilbourn and Van Buren. Then he returns the focus to the street, where the BMW crawls along Kilbourn before pulling over to the curb on its left, exactly where Latham knew it would stop, just past the alley, by a brick two-flat, only four doors down and across the street from Latham’s apartment and his hidden camera.
A young African American in an oversize Bears jersey and tattered jeans — that’s Frisk — strolls by, does a once-over of the idled sedan, then looks up at some people sitting on the porch of the brick walk-up. Latham doesn’t bother moving the camera. He knows what’s going on. Frisk is looking for the green light from Shiv, sitting on the front porch.
Shiv must have given it, because Frisk ambles over to the sedan and leans against the driver’s door. The window rolls down Latham toggles the camera down and focuses in. The driver is a white man, probably midthirties, dressed in a suit and tie. He talks to Frisk for a minute, then hands him some cash, folded over once. Frisk palms the money like an expert, still leaning in close, then gestures down the street, to the spot where the driver will score the drugs he wants.
Heroin, presumably; it’s cheaper in the city than it is in the suburbs.
The car moves on. Latham stops the camera, downloads the
short video onto his laptop. Picks up his cell and calls his cousin Renfro, in his third year at the DMV since graduating from Farragut. Reads him the license plate.
“Registered to a Richard Dempsey,” says Fro. “From River Forest.
That’s cash, my brother. And a BMW?”
Latham agrees: it could be a real payday. Guy like that, dressed like a professional, in a fancy ride from a fancy suburb, probably a doctor or lawyer or financial guy. A guy who’d have a hard time explaining that video to his bosses or his wife.
He’ll check out this Richard Dempsey. Will go online, look at his house, find out his occupation, search him up on social media.
You can’t get too greedy. Gotta be something they can afford.
But yeah, Latham’s seeing dollar signs. Ten thousand? A guy like that, to protect his dirty little secret? He might pay that.
Shit, ten thousand dollars — that’s more than halfway to the tuition for film school. More than Latham could make in six months at Best Buy.
“Peace.” Latham punches out the phone. Thinks about the money.
Thinks about film school.
I’d like to thank the Academy, he’ll say one day, clutching his Best Director Oscar, and I’d especially like to thank the men and women who made this all possible by traveling the Heroin Highway.
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by James Patterson
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