Barry’s place was a double-wide on the edge of the Cut, and the drive there was a thing the body did on autopilot while the mind argued with itself about whether this was a good idea.
It was not a good idea.
Walking into a dealer’s house on day five of withdrawal, with the body’s chemistry still screaming for the product that lived inside that house, was approximately the worst idea he’d had since arriving in this body.
But the Spiral — the intelligence channel Barry represented — was the only line into Ward’s street-side operations, and Ward’s street-side operations were the part of the trap he couldn’t see from the country club or the attorney’s office or the Tannyhill kitchen.
He needed to know what moved through the Cut.
He needed to know what Ward was buying, selling, or arranging on the side of the island where Cameron money didn’t translate to Cameron deference.
The Spiral, in his taxonomy, was the body’s pre-existing relationship with Barry, repurposed.
The body had been a customer.
A good customer.
A reliable customer.
The body had spent money in this trailer and the body knew the codes: the knock, the nod, the way to stand so you didn’t look like a cop.
The mind was not a customer.
The mind was an intelligence asset, and the intelligence was more valuable than the product.
At least, that was the theory.
The practice was harder.
The trailer’s door opened before he knocked.
Barry was a man in his forties with a face that had seen things and a body that had done them, and he looked at Rafe Cameron on his doorstep the way a fisherman looks at a line, checking for tension.
“Rafe. Been a minute.”
“Been busy.”
“Busy.” Barry stepped aside.
The trailer’s interior was dim and smelled like cigarette smoke and the sharp chemical note of things that weren’t cigarettes.
“You look different. You lose weight or something?”
“Clean living.”
Barry laughed.
It was not a warm laugh.
“Clean living. Right. What do you want.”
The question was a transaction opener.
Barry expected to be asked for product, product was what Rafe Cameron came here for, product was what Rafe Cameron always came here for.
The body tensed at the expectation.
The body was already responding to the environment: the smell, the dimness, the presence of a substance it had been denied for five days.
The craving spiked.
Not a wave yet, but a spike, a sharp upward jab that made his hands want to shake.
He kept them still.
“Just came to talk.”
“Talk.” Barry sat down on a couch that had seen better decades.
The coffee table between them held, among other things: a small digital scale and a bag that looked exactly like the one he had flushed on day one.
He did not look at the bag.
“You don’t come here to talk, Rafe. You come here to buy. So either you’re buying, or something’s changed, and I don’t like it when things change.”
“Things change sometimes.”
“They do. And when they do, I get curious. And when I get curious, I start wondering if maybe you found another supplier. Because you show up here after a week, looking like you haven’t slept, talking about clean living, and you don’t want to buy anything — and the only reason a customer stops buying is because he’s buying somewhere else.”
The competitor read.
Barry’s default assumption was that anyone who changed their pattern was a threat, not to him personally, but to his business model.
A customer who stopped buying was a customer who had found a better price or a better product, and a customer who had found a better price was a customer who needed to be reminded why Barry’s price was the right one.
Working with the read beat fighting it.
“I’m not buying anywhere else. I’m not buying anywhere. I’m just — taking a break.”
“A break.” Barry chewed on this.
“From what.”
“From everything. New year, new me. You know.”
Barry studied him.
The study was uncomfortable because Barry was good at it.
Barry had been reading customers for twenty years, and twenty years of reading customers made you good at spotting lies.
But this wasn’t a lie.
He wasn’t buying anywhere else.
He wasn’t buying at all.
The truth was his best defense, and he deployed it without elaboration.
“Huh,” Barry said.
“Okay. So you’re on a break. What do you want to talk about.”
“Nothing specific. Just — what’s moving. Who’s doing what. You hear things.”
“I hear a lot of things. I don’t give them away for free.”
“What’s the price.”
“The price is: you tell me what you’re actually doing. Because you’re not here to gossip, Rafe. You’re here for something. And I want to know what it is before I say anything that might matter.”
The direct question.
He could lie, or he could give something small and true.
Lies cost credibility and Barry had a nose for them.
Small truths bought a little credit and didn’t expose anything critical.
“My dad,” he said.
“He’s been — I don’t know. Weird. Asking about my gun. Asking about my schedule. I’m trying to figure out what he’s up to. I thought maybe you’d know if he’s been moving anything unusual.”
Barry’s expression did something.
Not a tell, exactly, but a flicker: the flicker of a man who knows something and is deciding whether to share it.
Barry was loyal only to money, and information was a kind of money, and the information MC was asking for was worth something.
“He’s been moving something,” Barry said.
“Don’t know what. Not my business. But he had one of his people down here last week asking about — someone. A name. I didn’t recognize it. Not island.” Barry shrugged.
“You want to know what your dad is up to, you should ask him. That’s above my pay grade.”
A fragment.
A name.
Someone not from the island.
The fragment was bloodless: it didn’t solve anything or confirm anything, but it was real.
Ward was moving something through the Cut, or toward the Cut, or in the general direction of the Cut, and the something involved people who weren’t local.
The Spiral had produced its first scrap.
He didn’t push for more.
Pushing would confirm Barry’s suspicion that he was being pumped for intelligence.
He stood instead, and the standing was careful because the body was still reacting to the room: the craving was a live wire under his skin, humming, waiting.
“Thanks,” he said.
“That’s it? You came all the way down here for that?”
“I came down here to say hi. The information was a bonus.”
Barry looked at him for a long moment.
The look was suspicious and curious and slightly amused, the way a person looks at a puzzle they haven’t figured out yet.
“You’re different, Rafe.”
“People keep saying that.”
“Maybe because it’s true.” Barry stood.
He walked him to the door.
“You want to come back when you’re off your break, you know where I am. And if you hear about anyone trying to move on my turf — ”
“I’ll let you know.”
“See that you do.”
The door closed behind him.
The night air was cool and clean and he stood in the gravel driveway for a full minute, breathing it in, letting the body calm down.
The craving was still there: the room had triggered it, the smell had triggered it, the proximity of the product had triggered it, but it was receding.
The wave passed.
He had survived the dealer’s room without using.
That was a thing.
That was a real thing.
In the car, he wrote the fragment on his mental ledger: a name, not local, Ward’s people asking around, a thread to pull later.
The fragment didn’t fit anything yet.
The fragment was a loose thread, and loose threads were how you unraveled a conspiracy.
He drove home.
The island was dark and quiet and the bridge lights reflected on the black water.
The body was learning.
The Spiral had been tested and the Spiral had produced.
The Spiral was also a hazard, every visit to Barry’s was a visit to the room where the product lived, and every visit cost him something in recovery currency.
But the hazard was worth the intelligence.
For now.
While the clock was still ticking.
═══ THE INHERITANCE ═══
THE OPEN DRAWER, open.
He stood in the room where the product was and bought nothing.
THE BODY, day five.
The wave came in Barry’s kitchen and went out again.
WHAT IT BOUGHT: one name that doesn’t belong to this island.
COST: a dealer who now reads a clean week as somebody else’s turf.