The Hunt for Tyrell Banks

Chapter 6 - How to solve one problem and cause another

When Santos came by on Saturday, he brought good news.

Kind of.

He'd managed to source ten grams of what was called 'freebase' from a shady dealer in Compton, a guy he told us was "so damn loco I never wanna to encounter him again. I be lookin' elsewhere, amigos." But he'd gotten the lumpy crystalline powder anyhow, and paid the guy about $500 for it (which was apparently cheap).

"How do we know it's pure?" Riley asked him.

Santos shrugged, which was like watching a mountain do a jiggle. "I don', Riley. Maybe we run it by Linda?"

Riley shook his head vigorously. "She cannot know about this, Santos. We need to keep her and the Hypexis center as clean as possible right now. Remember, we'll be swapping out the supply for Jean and Ami's needs about once a month, so we'll have to fend off uncomfortable questions before too long." He sighed, then: "Dammit."

"Maybe we gotta be keepin' it all illegal?" Santos said, and then he looked at me, one eyebrow raised. "You sure you wanna be hearin' all this, senorita?"

I nodded, grimaced. "They're my parents, maestro. And thank you for doing this, too. I really don't want you in any danger – "

Santos guffawed. "Maybe that dealer be muy loco, but I don' think he wanna mess with me, no?"

"You bullet-proof?"

He grinned and patted his barrel of a chest. "Could be. Could be."

Riley held up the little plastic baggie with the crystal lumps in it. "I'll do a bit of research. If this stuff dissolves okay, maybe I can whittle it down to the four-percent solution your parents need, Ms. Warrick. Which means that this here – " He shook the bag, " – should last a while. Maybe even a couple months, if it's pure enough."

I turned to him. "But how can we know how pure it is, Riles?"

He lowered the bag. "That's where the research comes in, ma'am."

After this exchange, I decided to do my own 'research' too; but discretely, mind. And my research question was fairly simple: how, exactly, was a teenager supposed to get access to a 'hard' drug like cocaine?

I was to discover that the damnable stuff was a Schedule 2 substance, meaning I'd be up for a year in prison if I were caught with it. As for the person who I buy it from? Twenty years for them, thank you very much. And that's not mentioning the fact that a naïve teen like myself trying to find the stuff would more likely end up buying from an undercover narc officer than a genuine dealer.

But, if the 'freebase' Santos had obtained turned out to be a dud, then... six milliliters of medical-grade cocaine hydrochloride was all mom and dad had left.

So, in the meantime, Riley said he'd bring the dose of the genuine stuff down to one milliliter each, thus stretching the supply out for three days, by which time he'd have figured out how good the 'freebase' was, and Santos would have found a more reliable source. Maybe.

And in the event that the illegal cocaine was garbage, or worse, poison? Or Santos hadn't found a reliable source? Well... the last resort was to get Rusty Miller (the head doc running dad's Hypexis Healthcare chain out east) to smuggle some into Cali. Yeah.

But... well, maybe there was a way I could 'score' some dope.

Just maybe.

Monday came, and the third period was English. Our teacher was a handsome guy by the name of Mr. Roberts.

Kris was seated behind me with Lydia, a mousy girl with possibly the crudest sense of humor of anyone I'd ever met, while I was sitting by myself. And because Mr. Roberts was writing stuff on the whiteboard with his back turned, the class was getting up to general mischief.