The fifth clanked back down to the concrete table. Lines were sniffed. Al dabbed a finger into the puddle of meat juice and across the dust, then swiped it along his gums. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees like a football coach, Al made a spearhead of his hands. His voice lowered even though there was no way Michelle could hear them over the thrash and clatter of water and dishes, even though it’d seemed she already knew what Al was about to say.

So Michelle had filled Al in about the debt, this whole responsibility statute bullshit. She’d also told him about the insurance money, the nine bands. Now, see, there was an idea he’d been working on since forever and, if Henry was interested in chipping in on a down payment, they could turn it into something serious.

Henry’s teeth were sawing. He pinched his jaw still. “How much we talking?”

“Dude.” Al lit a Kool. “By my math, I’m thinking like a hundred.”

Henry snorted. “How?”

And now Al inflated, drum-rolling his thighs. It was all about the downers now, dude. Kids were dropping the same amount of cash on a single oxy that would get them a half gram of smack, but everyone was all fuck needles now, fuck the ’90s. Nowadays smack had the same rap as meth or crack, but literally everyone was down with pills, from trailer rats to suburban brats and all the way on down to their bored-ass moms. Motherfuckers couldn’t get enough of them, but the scrip game only got you so much and demand was high, sky high, fucking outer space status, and so what Al was trying to say, long story short, was that he’d finally gotten his hands on a pill press. Ordered it off the Silk Road. Been tinkering around, mixing up a recipe to color the inositol—just this white vitamin B powder base—so the pills were like that Lucky Charms marshmal-low green. Finally got it down to a fucking science, dude, last batch turned out exactly, and he meant like identical to, eighty-mil oxys. Windshield wiper fluid and yellow food dye, who’d a thought, right?