Fire Lake by Jonathan Valin

joke," Karen said. "A
song Lonnie liked. He thought it summed up his life. Going off to
Fire Lake meant taking a gamble, having the guts to tell society to
go fuck itself, and daring to live your dream. It was also his
buzzword for shooting up. Going off to Fire Lake."
    "Maybe this time he got there," I said
grimly.
    I told Karen that I was going back to the Delores to
get some fresh clothes and that I'd pick her up at her room around
two-thirty. Then we'd go look up some of Lonnie's old friends.
    "I don't want to sound like an alarmist," I
said, "but do me a favor and stay in your room until I come
back. Okay?"
    She laughed nervously. "Okay."
    I hung up the phone and walked out of the lobby into
the cold, brilliant December afternoon. It was Saturday, which meant
the streets were crowded. Since it had been raining for better than
three days, they were especially crowded. And that made it next to
impossible for me to pick up anyone who was on my tail.
    I walked down Fifth, past a couple of black street
vendors who had set up stands on the curbside. One of them was
selling T-shirts and sunglasses from a folding table. The other was
hawking paste jewelry, decals, and knives from a wheeled cart.
    "For your lady," the one with the jewelry
said, holding out a pair of blue glass earrings.
    I shook my head and he shrugged good-naturedly,
dropping the earrings back into his cart. He was a middle-aged black
with processed hair, a pencil mustache, and a thin, pockmarked
face, glazed like marzipan.
    I glanced back at the vendors when I reached Plum
Street. The one hawking the jewelry was wheeling his cart east on
Fifth, toward the square. For a second, I felt like following him. It
was paranoia, and I knew it. But just to be sure, I watched him until
he'd walked past the Clarion lobby and was well on his way toward
Walnut.
    When the vendor had drifted out of sight, I walked
straight down Plum to the garage where I'd left the car. The
pedestrian traffic thinned out as I neared Fourth Street, and by the
time I reached the garage, there were only a couple of other people
on the sidewalk--a smart-looking woman in a fur coat and a teenage
kid in a parka and a Cougars cap. I figured I was safe.
    It was twenty degrees colder in the shade of the
garage than it had been in the brilliant sunlight. I pulled my
topcoat tightly around me and started down an oil-stained ramp to the
basement floor. "There was a chilled-looking attendant, bundled
in sweaters and coats, sitting in a booth beside the ramp. He had a
tiny TV set up on the counter in front of him and a glowing space
heater hung on the wall behind; but he still didn't look at home. I
waved at him, as I started down the ramp. He nodded in an unfriendly
way, as if he didn't like being disturbed; but I'd just wanted him to
notice me.
    The Pinto was still covered with ice on the hood and
back windows. I should have cleaned them off, but all I wanted to do
was get inside the car and get out of the garage. Claude Jenkins's
murder had unnerved me a lot more than I'd let on to Karen. Drug
dealers scared me. It wasn't 1970 anymore, when every doper had known
every other doper on the block. like Karen had said. Drugs were a
multi-billion-dollar business--the biggest business in the country.
And although every business had its rules, this one was less
predictable than most. "There were always strange little eddies,
little pockets of weirdness, in the mainstream. Even in my sedate
town, people ended up nastily dead because of smack or coke or both.
It happened every day. I just didn't run into it every day, like I
had with Claude.
    After a couple of misfires, I managed to start up the
Pinto and nurse it, coughing and sputtering, up the exit ramp, past
the surly attendant, and out onto Third Street. Once inside the car
and on the move, I felt safe again.
    I felt fine all the way out Gilbert to Reading. But
when I got to the shadows of the McMillan overpass--about a block
from the Delores--I started to get