Authors: Duane Swierczynski
“There’s one thing—he lives in the townhouses.”
Wildey stares at Sarie. “Yeah?”
“They’re on campus, and you can only get in if someone signs you in.”
“So how am I supposed to arrest him after you make the buy?”
“I have no idea. You’re the detective!”
Wildey rubs his chin. “You’ve got to get him outside.”
“Any ideas?”
“Hey, you’re the honors student.”
So what I settle on is this: the usual damsel in distress/chivalry bullshit. I ask him if he’d walk me to my car, because, you know, it’s late and stuff, and I couldn’t find a parking spot in the student lot, so I’m up a few blocks on Olney. He looks dickhurt, he thought we were going to hang or something. I remind him I’ve got something like five papers to write in four days (truth), and I’d love to hang out with him sometime (not the truth), and he says maybe this weekend, and I say, sure, cringing inside, because I know he’s probably not going to be on campus this weekend.
Anyway, it works. Koolhaas walks me out. We cut across the student lot next to the library—where I told Dad I’d be this evening—out onto Olney Avenue.
I use the burner to text Wildey: ON MY WAY. Koolhaas peeks over at my phone, being a snoop.
—Boyfriend?
—Dad. He’s kind of a pain in the ass, keeping track of my every movement.
—Oh man I hear ya.
I’m going to feel like such a huge throbbing dick in just a few seconds.
Make that one single second. Because we’re not a few steps onto Olney—public property—when we see Wildey walking toward us. Badge hanging from his thick neck. You can’t miss him.
—Ryan Koolhaas?
He bellows in this deep voice that even startles me, even though I knew he’d be there, and I know exactly what he is about to do.
—Yeah?
Koolhaas is startled, too, probably for a half second thinking both of us are about to get mugged … that is, until he sees the shiny silver badge. Ryan Koolhaas may not be an honors student, but he puts it all together in record time. First-time buyer, cop shows up. His eyes go wide with fury.
—You fucking bitch!
That last word is already trailing off as Koolhaas bolts back toward the townhouses. But Officer Wildey is ready this time, and there’s no street-splattered cheesesteak standing in his way. He takes three long strides and body-checks Koolhaas into the nearest vehicle, which is somebody’s SUV. The impact is so hard the car rocks on its suspension. I’m surprised the glass doesn’t shatter. In a blur of motion Wildey suddenly has Koolhaas’s arms behind his back.
—Who’s the bitch now?
After a sharp cry of pain, Koolhaas ignores Wildey and tries to turn his head around to face me, yelling.
—YOU CUNT, YOU FUCKING CUNT, I’M GOING TO FUCK YOU UP!
—Shut the fuck up.
Wildey tells me to go back to my car and wait. I take one last look at Ryan Koolhaas, the guy I just offered up to the Philadelphia Police Department like a fatted calf. His eyes are closed now because he’s trying to squeeze off the tears. I suppose a back rub is out of the question now.
Wildey sticks Koolhaas in the birdcage for the interrogation. The buy is good, the Addys are real, but something bugs him about this whole thing.
For starters, word is that Chuckie Morphine is dealing Oxys, not Addys. He found Oxys in Honors Girl’s car. Also, this white boy in the birdcage looks nothing like the white boy he chased up and over the fence in South Philly. Could be him—it was late, and dark, and Wildey had been up for twenty-two hours straight. Still, Wildey’s gut is telling him no. So who is this guy?
“Tell me about Ninth Street,” Wildey says.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yes, you did, Ryan, and you know it. But I don’t really care about you. What I care about is Ninth Street.”
“So why don’t you go there!”
“Christ.”
Round and round they go until finally Koolhaas asks for a lawyer, and Wildey sighs and tells him that calling a lawyer is really the worst move here. He doesn’t deny him the lawyer; he merely continues talking, hoping that Koolhaas will change his mind. Koolhaas does not. Kaz says it’s fine. A lawyer might actually speed things up.
A lawyer does not.
Because the lawyer is this slick guy Kaz knows from years back—a real player around town. Guy smells like he’s just rolled here from a Rittenhouse Square cocktail lounge, in fact. Slick Guy and the Loot spar a little. Soon Wildey gets the idea that Slick Guy once asked Kaz out, and Kaz told him to fuck off, and Slick Guy never got over it. He’s all familiar with the Loot, asking about this one or that one. And then he finally brings out the nuke by asking about her ex, Rem Mahoney, which really gets to the Loot. You can tell by the way her eyes dim like someone’s flipped a dimmer switch on the back of her skull. So Slick Guy drags things out and it’s morning by the time they reach an agreement.
Which is this: total free pass for the college kid if he reveals his supplier and cooperates fully, including future buys to set up said supplier.
Kaz asks Wildey in private: “How do you feel about this?”
Wildey says: “If his supplier is Ninth Street, then it’s completely worth it.”
“I hear a
but
in there.”
“But I don’t know if my CI has done me a solid here. Something about this doesn’t feel right.”
Kaz considers this. “Even if it’s not Ninth Street, he might turn us onto another supplier.”
“True.”
“You call it.”
“Let’s do it,” Wildey says, his gut screaming DON’T.
Wildey should have listened to his gut. Because in the room Slick Guy is smiling like he’s negotiated the free pass of a lifetime. Even Kaz doesn’t like how much the guy is beaming. Which is saying something, because it’s almost seven in the morning, and nobody in this room has slept in a full day.
“We all okay?” Wildey asks. “Okay. Good. Here we are, for the record: Where do you buy your drugs, Ryan?”
Slick Guy nods. “Go ahead. It’s okay.”
“Via Maris,” Ryan mumbles.
“Via who?” Wildey asks.
“Via Maris, man. On the deep web.”
Wildey is perplexed. So is Kaz. Is this another dealer, after all? Someone going by the handle “Via Maris”? And what does “deep web” mean? Is that some kind of new cartel slang?
“Where’s this Via Maris?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Are you aware of the deal we just made?”
Slick Guy raises a neatly manicured hand. “Hold on, Officer. Let my client finish.”
“I can’t
tell
you,” Ryan continues. “I have to show you.”
“You don’t know the address?”
“I do, but it wouldn’t do
you
any good.”
Wildey and Kaz look at each other.
The fuck?
Either they’ve been up too many hours straight or this kid is willfully fucking with them.
“My client would like the use of a laptop,” Slick Guy says.
Soon as the kid starts typing, Wildey realizes he’s completely fucked. Via Maris isn’t the name of a dealer. It’s a website, named for a Bronze Age trade route that ran from Egypt to what is now Iran, Iraq, and Israel. (Slick Guy gives all of this background, beaming like a fuckhead, as if he’s delivering his doctoral dissertation or something.) It’s completely anonymous, if you know how to find its address on the “deep web,” which means you can only access it if you have anonymizing software, which more or less renders you invisible and untraceable. (“In theory, anyway,” Slick Guy says.) You pay with bitcoins, equally untraceable (“in theory!”) currency. You drop whatever you want into the shopping cart, and FedEx delivers it within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, depending on what you want.
“You can get anything on here—isn’t it incredible?” Slick Guy continues. “I couldn’t believe it, either. I mean,
anything.
MDMA from Holland, high-end weed, fish-scale coke, whatever. You can even order a stack of prescription pads.”
“Fuck,” Kaz says, getting it.
“I mean, it’s horrible,” Slick Guy says. “But at the same time—man, technology, right?”
“You’re buying this shit online?” Wildey asks, putting it together about a second after his boss.
“Fuck,” she repeats.
“And as per our agreement,” Slick Guy says, “my client would like to fully cooperate with your investigation by making a purchase. However, as you can see, this is no longer an option.”
Slick Guy turns the laptop around so Kaz and Wildey can see the screen, which has a bright red border and is full of law enforcement seals and badges from a host of agencies—FBI, Justice Department, DEA, Homeland Security, and the IRS.
THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED
In accordance with a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 983(j) by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
“Apparently the Feds shut down Via Maris last month, so …”
“Fuck,” Wildey says again.
“… so my client is free to go, am I right? I mean, it is a school day.”
I’m still shaking. I tell myself it’s going to be okay, that this is over. On the drive home to Fox Chase, my stomach doing somersaults, I text Dad to let him know that I’m done at the library and will be home in twenty minutes. I resist the urge to ask if he needs anything on the way home—like, say, milk, bread, Adderall, weed? Yeah, I’m a scream. I want to vomit. Instead I text D. CALL ME. Then I follow up with a text to Tammy: HEY, COFFEE? IT’S IMPORTANT. I slide my real phone into my jacket pocket and check my burner phone. Thankfully, nothing from Wildey. Maybe I’ll actually get the chance to work on my papers tonight. I half-wish I still had those Addys, but of course, I had to surrender them to Wildey in the parking lot, Ryan Koolhaas calling me a cunt until Wildey told him to shut the fuck up.
(Sorry for the language, Mom. But you know …)
Did Dad see me shaking just now? I tell him I was exhausted and just wanted to shower and get back to writing my papers. And I went upstairs and did shower, hottest shower I could stand, hoping it would calm me down. It didn’t.
I’m still shaking because I know I’m not a regular CI. With most CIs, the police give you money to buy drugs. You buy the drugs. You tell the police you bought the drugs. The police arrest the guy who sold you the drugs. All the while you’re protected by this cloak of anonymity.
Except in this case, Ryan Koolhaas knows exactly who I am. And whenever he’s back on campus, he’s probably going to want to follow up on his promise to fuck me up.
I tell Wildey this, hours before I’m going to make the buy, but he tells me not to worry. Ryan Koolhaas will be too busy with troubles of his own to bother with me.
But that’s only because Wildey thinks that Ryan Koolhaas was in my car last Wednesday night and is tight with some dealer named Chuckie. And maybe he is, but I doubt D. would screw over someone in his own organization (listen to me, Jesus). I just want this whole mess gone.
Ryan Koolhaas.
I can still feel his fingers digging into my shoulders.
Marty creeps down the stairs leading to the den. He’s not sure what he expects to see. Sarie didn’t say much at all when she came back from the campus library (allegedly), telling Dad she needed to shower to wake up and then get back to writing her papers, all of which were due this week. Marty waited until she’d been downstairs for a while, supposedly at work on those papers, before he ventured down.
To his surprise, though, Sarie was at the desk, writing furiously.
“Hey.”
Sarie jumps, spins round, her hand covering her work. “Jesus, Marty!”
“Sorry. I just wanted to see if you wanted—”
“You can’t do that to people! And thanks, you just crashed my train of thought. Goddamnit.”
“I just wanted to see if you wanted any hot chocolate. To help you study.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
“Dad didn’t say anything. So … marshmallows? Whipped cream? I think we have both.”
Marty expects his sister’s eyes to soften a little, because, you know, he’s trying to be helpful. Who doesn’t want hot chocolate, especially if they’re going to be pulling a late-nighter?
“You want to help? Why don’t you leave me the fuck alone!”
Sarie might as well have slapped Marty. Dad’s foul mouth is one thing—that’s part of his weird charm, and a game between the two. But Sarie doesn’t curse. Not at him.
Never.
Marty turns without a word and heads for the stairs. Dad catches a fleeting glimpse of his red T-shirt. “Hey I thought you were already in bed.”
“Good night,” he mumbles, hoping Dad takes this at face value and doesn’t summon him back. He doesn’t want to have to explain the stupid tears in his eyes.
Upstairs he flicks on his iPod, retreats to the MI6 building, Torture Room 6, and thumbs: