Fostering Death by KM Rockwood Page A

get what you deserve.”
    I gave him a hard look and headed for my apartment.
    He grabbed me by the shoulder.
    “Jesse. Wait a minute.”
    I swung around, my fists clenched. Aaron backed off, stumbling over his untied bootlaces. “Hey, man. No offense. But I got something to tell you. Something you’d want to hear. But you got to give me something back for telling you.”
    I looked around. Still no cops that I could see. And the brown truck was driving away. I grabbed Aaron by the neck of his jacket and hauled him toward the alley. We needed to be out of sight, but I wasn’t about to let him into my apartment.
    The bag with the bottle crashed to the sidewalk.
    Aaron lost his footing, and the jacket started to slip in my hand. I shoved my other hand into his chest, lifting him up, and repositioned my grip on his shirt collar, pushing him ahead of me into the alley.
    I slammed him up against the dirty brick wall. His head bounced against it, but he didn’t seem to notice. My forearm pressed into his neck. He tried to balance on the tips of his toes, but it was my arm that kept him from collapsing into a heap on the dirty pavement.
    Aaron’s bloodshot eyes opened wide. His rancid breath came ragged in my face.
    “What the hell do you want?” I hissed. Using my other hand, I frisked him for a wire and patted his clothes for a recorder of some sort. I found nothing but a few empty plastic baggies and his wallet. Not even keys. I didn’t stick my hand onto the pocket with the pizza.
    But I had no idea what kind of tiny new transmitting or recording devices they might have hidden on him.
    Aaron’s mouth gaped open and closed a few times. Spittle dripped from his lips. He made a choking sound.
    I eased up a little on his throat.
    “Why are you here?” I asked.
    He blinked rapidly. “I was waiting for Zee,” he gasped.
    I pressed a little harder.
    “And I wanted to talk to you…”
    “Talk away,” I said. “Then get your sorry ass away from here and stay away.”
    “I ain’t done nothing.”
    “Showing up at my place is doing something,” I said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did the cops put you up to this?”
    “What do you mean?” he asked again.
    “The other day. You showed up here. There were two cops sitting in a patrol car in the alley, watching. You want me to believe you weren’t trying to set me up?”
    His eyes widened. “Cops?” he asked.
    I just stared at him.
    “Yeah.” He coughed. “I remember. But they didn’t have anything to do with me.”
    “Then why didn’t you just take off?” I asked.
    “I wanted to go into your place,” he said, trying to raise his hand to his dripping nose. He couldn’t get it past my arm. “Then they couldn’t see what we were doing.”
    “We weren’t doing nothing.”
    “Yeah, I guess.”
    “So why are you here now?” I increased the pressure on his throat. He made that choking noise again.
    “Just trying to score.”
    “I don’t buy that,” I said, ignoring his strangled noises. “I done told you, I got nothing to give you.”
    “Not give,” he said, his eyes watering. “Sell.”
    “Yeah? If I did have something, which I don’t, I wouldn’t sell it to you. I don’t need money that bad.” I might like money as much as the next person, but I liked my freedom much better.
    “Not for money,” he said.
    “Then what?”
    “Information.”
    “What could you possibly tell me that I’d want to know?”
    “About the old lady.”
    That gave me pause. “What old lady?”
    “The one whose funeral you went to.”
    How the hell did he know about that? I hadn’t gone to the actual funeral, but that didn’t make a difference. “What do you know about her?” I asked.
    “You gonna let me score if I tell you?”
    “No. But I might not kill you.”
    Aaron tensed up even more, if that was possible. I pressed harder.
    “You wouldn’t do that. They’d send you back to prison.” His voice was raspy.
    “No place I ain’t been before,” I