Ed came up behind me. “Dude, you all right?”
I looked over at him. He was trying to search for some kind of response to what just happened. I knew I had a look of regret on my face. “Yeah, I am good. Just worried about the girl.” I was hoping that would cover it.
“Yeah, looks like she’ll be okay. She was hitting on some premium grade pot. Looks like this guy had all kinds of premium shit. Meth, pot, ex… you name it, it’s in there. But it’s good.” He stepped in front of me, looking back into the room. “Hey, Ty, the girl said she heard the growling too, but that it was coming from you.”
I looked back into the room for a moment. They were getting her a wool blanket. Her eyes averted mine when I looked at her. “We still have to see if she was really just smoking pot, Ed. You know how it goes.” She hadn’t. I could smell it. But it would buy me some time.
“Yeah, I know,” Ed replied. After a few moments, “You know Anderson is gonna be on your case about this tomorrow. You keep feeding him ammunition for him to shoot at you.”
“Fuck Anderson,” I fired back. “I’d give him ammo for a Desert Eagle and he’d find a way to make it into pellets. I’ll deal with him when the time comes.” Anderson was the sergeant’s assistant at the cop shop. I had no idea why he was there, except to piss people off. I turned back to Ed. “Who’s chatting with the neighbors?”
“I’ll get some guys on it.” He left back down to the stairwell. Everything sunk in around me again. The rain outside, the cops talking, the people down the hall guessing what it could be. The rats in the wall. It was time to leave. I started heading towards the stairwell. I took a few steps down it.
“…he probably won’t be dealing around here anymore.”