HID FROM OUR EYES and Hot Red-Headed Men II: The Redheadegeddon

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's back to the scene in HID FROM OUR EYES with Officer Kevin Flynn undercover. I gave you a piece from it last February. Here, he's finally meeting up with the drug dealer he's been trying to get to. Plus, of course, hot ginger men, because it's always a good day for hot ginger men!

Easy lifted his chin toward Kevin. “What's your story, kid?”

“I was studying at t' university, but my money ran out.”

 

Easy's stone face cracked a little with surprise. “You're really Irish. I thought it was just because of the hair.”

“Yeah.” Kevin rubbed at his red beard. “Because I wasn't enrolled anymore, my student visa expired, so I can't work legally. I need to make money, a lot of it, and this is somet'ing I'm good at.”

“Why'nt you just go home?”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“T'ats my business.” He had a reason, if he had to give it, but it was better to keep something hidden. A fake secret to distract from the real one.

“You a cop?”

 

Kevin laughed. “No. Are you?”

 

Easy pulled a slim box about the size of Brock's cigarette carton out of his back pocket. He flicked a button on the device and began tracing Kevin's outline with it, like a particularly attentive TSA agent. Lights on the front of the box began cascading as Easy reached his hip pocket. “You got a phone in there?”

 

Kevin fished it out. It was a dupe phone, filled with numbers that all led to the same three people at the HIDTA office.

“Turn it off.” Kevin did so. Easy took it and handed it to Brock. “Take this and go stand by the kids over there.”

 

The Little Leaguers were playing maybe two hundred yards from them. Brock glanced at Kevin, then nodded. As he walked away, Easy continued his sweep of Kevin's body. When the box failed to light up again, he grunted his satisfaction and turned it off. “The cops don't wear actual wires no more, like in TV shows. It's all wifi, nowadays.”

“Right.”

“I'll give you a unit of one hundred, on trial. I expect eight hundred back; that gives you a twenty per cent cut. If you can sell them for more'n a dime a pill, you keep the extra. If you can't get that much, I still get my cut. You gotta flush 'em down the john because the immigration guys are coming through the door, I still get my cut. Somebody knocks you over on the street and takes 'em--”

“You still get your cut. I got it.” Kevin took a drag. “Do you have a time limit?”

 

Easy paused for a moment. “Why'nt you try to impress me, kid?”

“I will.”

 

Easy looked for a moment as if he might smile. “Couple other rules. No selling to the blacks or the Latinos, they got their own people. Don't sample too much of the stock – the minute you look like you got a problem I'll cut you loose. Try not to sell to high schoolers – they're stupid enough to keep your number on their phones and next thing you know, the parents are giving you to the cops.”

“I'm doing just fine in bars so far.”

“Well, I guess that's natural for a Mick.”

 

Kevin smiled thinly. “How'll I get in touch wit' you?”

“I'll get in touch with you. If I'm satisfied with your work, I'll give you a burner. You'll use that for business from then on.”

“Right, then. The stock?”

“You get Frat Boy and follow me. Oh, and Irish?” Kevin turned to him, and this time Easy did smile. “If you get any ideas about ripping me off and skipping back home to Leprechaun Land, know this. You will be dead before you get a chance to check your bags.”

Tell me what you think of the dialect. Too much? I want to give the flavor of an Irish accent without veering into absurdity.

HID FROM OUR EYES and Hot Red-Headed Men; or; The Lazy Woman's Blog

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Yesterday was a long, long travel day. Getting in and out of Boston was complicated by 1)snow-clogged streets and highways 2) Friday traffic 3)Start of February school vacation in Massachusetts. I arrived at home late, tired, hungry and with NO idea what to blog about today. So guess what! You're getting a book excerpt from HID FROM OUR EYES! (And yes, the week after next is What We're Writing Week and you'll get one then, as well.) To prove exactly how tired and imagination-deprived I am, I'm illustrating this entirely with pictures of hot red-headed men. Please feel free to complain in the comments...;-)

“We should have brought beer,” Brock Smith said, stretching his legs out on the grass.

Kevin Flynn tucked his hair behind his ears. The sun was well on its way to setting, its long rays streaming through the very tops of the trees in Onondaga Park, leaving the walking paths and green places in a hazy blue twilight. The lights ringing the Little League fields were already on, brilliant flares against the violet sky.

It was swampy hot, without even a breeze across the park's man-made lake to cut the heat. For a moment, Kevin's mind went home to the mountains, where the winds would shift at twilight and begin blowing from the east. The streetlights of the town would be on, and they'd walk down to the river and swim in the cold, clean current, so different from the still-polluted Onondaga Lake--

Brock nudged his shoulder. “Irish? You're not losing it now, are you?”

Kevin snapped back to the here-and now, where his home was in Ireland, not the Adirondacks, and where he was going to scramble up the next rung of the prescription drug dealer ladder if he didn't blow the whole thing by getting distracted. “Nah. I was just t'inking. You're right, a beer would be good right now.” He glanced around. Nothing but joggers and dog-walkers on the path and a cluster of teens shoving a soccer ball around in a way that suggested they'd rather be texting. “Wouldn't want to be picked up for open carry, though.”

“God, you're paranoid.” Brock flopped back on the grass with the utter carelessness of boy whose parents were rich enough to get him out of any trouble. 

 

“Soon as I open my mouth, even a park ranger would be asking for my ID.” Mouth came out as mout'. One thing he didn't have to worry about was the accent. Until he emigrated to America to join his brothers in Boston, Kevin's dad had lived his whole live within a mile of Limerick's Treaty Stone. Kevin's slang might be a little dated, but the cadence of the Irish Mid-West was embedded in his brain from birth.

“Oh, man. Easy is gonna love you. He's always going on about, like, double and triple checking everybody.” Brock eased a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held it out. Kevin pulled one and picked up his lighter, laying on the grass next to his phone.

“T'anks.” He took a deep drag. Kevin-from-Millers Kill had never smoked in his life, but Kevin-from-Limerick did. It was alarming how quickly it had gone from being camouflage to being a pleasure. He tossed the lighter to Brock. “When's he going to get here?”

“He'll be on time. He likes to run it like a business, you know?” Brock sucked on his cigarette. “Swear to God, I'm learning more about enterprise economics and organization here than I am in B-school. It's all about distributors, supply chains--”

“Shrinkage.”

“Hey, I don't use up much of the stock. That's just a bonus.”

“He doesn't like it, though.”

“I'm the best distributor he's got. That's why he's letting me introduce you.”

“Yeah. I appreciate it, mate.” The reason Brock had become the top producer over the past two months was because Kevin, selling for him, had unloaded one hundred percent of the inventory at top price. To the Syracuse Police Department, a detail he had failed to share with the grad student. Kevin had no doubt he was going to be Easy's best distributor as well. As long as this meeting went well.