Diner on West Hollywood Boulevard

Los Angeles, California

 

Zeke left Finley sleeping soundly in his bed, hoping to return before she woke. The Narcotics Anonymous meeting was just letting out as he stepped up to the church, people whose faces and stories he knew, walking out single file. He leaned against the railing on the narrow steps and waited, fully aware that the person he was waiting for would be the last one out.

Curtis was a distinctive man. He was tall and slender, his black hair nearly fully white now. But it was the way he walked that made Curtis so distinctive. He carried himself like a man who knew where he’d been, where he was going, and everything in between. He was a man who knew himself so well that he didn’t have time for self-doubt or a lack of confidence.

He smiled when he spotted Zeke.

“You’re too late for the meeting.”

“I know. I was just hoping we could get a bite. I need to talk.”

“This about that call the other night?”

“Partially.”

Curtis clapped his hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They walked to a diner down around the corner, a place they’d frequented quite a bit when Zeke first began attending meetings. Hell, it wasn’t even the meetings that had first brought them to the diner. Curtis had been a sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department for twenty years. He was Zeke’s sergeant when he worked narcotics. It was Curtis he reported to, Curtis who was one of the few members of the police force Zeke had contact with when he was undercover. And it was Curtis who first recognized that Zeke had a problem.

Curtis had been undercover for many years before he was promoted to sergeant. He’d fallen under the same spell Zeke had. The only difference was, Curtis recognized his addiction and quietly sought help before it ruined his career.

And now he was Zeke’s sponsor.

It was frowned upon for sponsors to be someone the addict had a personal relationship with. However, Curtis was there when Zeke got addicted, and he was there when Zeke got sober. And Curtis was the only one in the program who understood Zeke’s unique set of obstacles toward sobriety.

Zeke was fully convinced that he never would have gotten sober without Curtis. And that made what he was about to do even more difficult.

“Hey, Katie!” Curtis called to one of the waitresses as they walked into the diner, picking out a booth near the windows where they most often sat. “How’s the coffee?”

“Terrible,” a young redheaded woman called back. “Two cups?”

“You got it!”

Curtis waited until the coffee was steaming in mugs in front of them before he studied Zeke. “You look tired,” he announced.

“It’s been a long week.”

“Yeah? That case?”

“It was complicated, but it’s over now.”

Curtis nodded. “How did you handle the temptation?”

Zeke shook his head, and Curtis laughed. “Good for you!”

Zeke waited a heartbeat. “You ever hear of a woman called Finley Calloway, Curtis?”

Curtis’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah. Zoey works—or worked, I guess—for her.”

“What’d she do?”

“She was like an assistant, I guess. Got her coffee and answered her emails for her.”

“She like the job?”

“Loved it. But I guess the lady was hospitalized a few months back, so now she works for her husband. Norman, something.”

“You ever meet Norman?”

“No. She keeps saying that the man’s too busy for something like that.” Curtis shook his head. “Besides, Zoey and I…things have been complicated between us.”

“Why?”

“She thinks I try to control her life. Says she made one mistake, and now I won’t leave her alone.” Curtis sighed. “If you hadn’t come to me before booking her, I don’t know where she’d be.”

“I’m glad I was able to help.”

“She’s a good girl. She just gets lost sometimes, you know?”

“What was her drug of choice? The peace pill, right?”

Curtis nodded. “PCP. Talk about going straight to the heavy stuff!”

It had all suddenly made sense to Zeke last night when they walked into that house and found Zoey there. It had bothered him, how someone like Norman would think to use PCP, let alone find a way to get ahold of some. But when he saw Zoey…she knew where to get it. He’d busted her two years ago with twenty pills in her pocket. Possession with intent to sell. Would have sent her to the federal pen for ten years if he’d booked her. But he knew her father and couldn’t do that to him.

How would things be different now if he had gone through with it?

“She’s not using anymore?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Zeke brushed a hand over his cheek. “Does she keep in touch with the people she was working with back then?”

Curtis suddenly looked sharply at Zeke. “What are you getting at? Have you heard something?”

“That woman? Finley Calloway? Someone slipped her some PCP.”

Curtis shook his head. “Not my Zoey. She’s a good girl now.”

“Yeah? But she was one of only three people who had access to Finley’s food and water. And she’s sleeping with Finley’s husband.”

“How would you know that?”

“The case? It was Finley Calloway.”

Curtis put his hands on the table like he was going to get up and run out of the diner. But he didn’t budge. He stared at Zeke, anger more intense than what had been in Norman’s egotistical expression the day before.

“I need to talk to her. You know how this goes.”

“She didn’t do it.”

“I won’t know that until I can ask her.”

Curtis turned his head, his jaw working without producing anything. It was a long time before he glanced at Zeke again, a quick, angry glance. He wrote something on a napkin and shoved it across the table.

“You know I can’t be your sponsor after this, right? And everything else…done. Right?”

“I know.”

“I hope it’s worth it.”

So do I.

 

***

 

Zeke followed the directions on his cell phone, pulling into a narrow drive on an even narrower canyon road. The house was a small, white box perched on the edge of a cliff, a beautiful view that made him feel a little acrophobic. He walked around the BMW parked behind the small Ford Escort, glancing inside out of habit more than anything else. He recognized Norman’s overnight bag on the front seat.

Great.

He knocked and was rewarded with a half-naked Zoey, her tall, slender body covered only by a thin undershirt and a pair of even thinner panties.

“Zeke,” she said almost dreamily, “what are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“Peace pills.”

He expected her to react to those words, but she didn’t. Not really. Her smile just got a little wider.

“You want to try one?”

It wasn’t exactly a confession, but it was close.

“Did you give one of those to Finley, Zoey?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Finley wouldn’t take drugs. She wouldn’t even eat a damn hamburger.”

That didn’t sound like the Finley Zeke knew.

“Did you ever see anyone put a peace pill in one of her drinks?”

“Oh, you’re talking about that!” She giggled. “We needed to get rid of her. She was cramping our style.” She leaned close to him and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh. No one’s supposed to know what we did.”

“You were part of it?”

“It was my idea.” She was clearly quite proud of that fact. “He said he knew some doctors who’d make her go away if we could just find a way to force her to have a mental breakdown. That’s when I thought of it. As big a health nut as she was, it would have gone straight to her head. Hell, I’m surprised it didn’t kill her because he put two in the glass instead of one like I told him. But when it didn’t kill her, he gave her the Ambien. That made her look even crazier.”

“Why, Zoey? Why would you do it?”

She shrugged. “It was better than killing her. I didn’t want her to die.”

He laid his hand heavily on her shoulder. “Thank you for that.”

Zoey just smiled and went back into the house. Zeke sat on the front step and made a phone call. The police arrived less than fifteen minutes later.

Finley would get what she’d wanted after all. Zoey’s confession—recorded on Zeke’s phone—would be enough to put both her and Norman behind bars for a couple of years, at least.

More if Norman’s lawyer got smart and quit.