Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 1: Adventures of Matt Parkman
I'm not a coward. I won't be afraid. I can do this, I can change things. I can save people. I can help. It doesn't always go bad, doesn't always have to go bad. Matt stood before a blank easel, trying to work himself up to painting the future. He waited for inspiration to take him, for the muse to show him the way. Nothing happened.
He'd been trying this off and on for months, ever since Noah had drug him out of the house and convinced him to use his powers on that cellist. He didn't like being blind-sided by stuff like that, but his precognition wasn't working. He was getting really desperate.
He paced restlessly. Eventually he doodled. He mixed paint, thinking he'd just paint something normal and non-future, even if his artistry without his ability was rather limited. He could use the practice. He sniffed the fumes from the supplies. It smelled… interesting. He breathed them in more deeply and laughed at himself for even being tempted.
The idea refused to leave him, though, as he rendered the street outside his window onto his canvas. When he was done, he sat and read the labels on the paint cans, trying to remember how a person concentrated this stuff enough to get high off of it. At first it was just idle speculation - I wonder how? Then he looked at the stack of blank canvases and his own uninspired painting. He'd been at this for so long and it had yielded nothing - not a single premonition of the future.
Isaac had done a lot of his future paintings while high. Maybe I just need to get high, Parkman thought. He considered the spirit journey he'd gone on in Africa. He'd been in an altered state then too. He didn't think it had made him a bad person… addiction was just a danger, a danger that might be worth the risk if he were able to use his foresight to save people.
I don't want to be out buying street drugs… wait… I don't have to buy them. I could… just take them… with my other ability, just like making that cellist trust us. He swallowed, thinking it through. It's not bad if I'm doing it to drug dealers and addicts, is it?
Matt Parkman had gone to an addiction therapy group for nearly two months, seeking to recover from overusing his powers. He'd been surprised to find it was one of the places drug addicts connected and found each other. It's a socially condoned meeting of like-minded individuals, all under the cover of getting help for their problem. Some were sincere in seeking reform, but some weren't.
Many of the discussions could be read like "how to be a successful drug addict" manuals. There were discussions of how each person got started, where they went wrong, how they knew when they had a problem and how their problem impacted the people in their life. For the other addicts in the room, it was an opportunity to compare notes and work out how to continue with their addiction without getting caught and without their obsession destroying the rest of their life.
Matt was well versed in where to find drugs and how to conceal them. His experiences in the therapy groups had been more illuminating than his work as a policeman had been. The police guessed. They were always four steps behind the perpetrators and they never caught people who had their problems under control. The addicts - they knew. That was where the real information was, shared behind closed doors with a nod, a wink, and a promise of confidentiality.
Parkman drove around town. To an observer, it might have looked aimless, but he was looking for something specific. He stopped at a convenience store where a couple girls were hanging out. He approached the store, then seemed to change his mind and walked over to them. The older of them looked at him. "Hey." He jerked his head upward by way of greeting. "What's going on?"
The girl, all of sixteen or seventeen, gave him a hostile look. Her thirteen year old companion looked at him more blankly, confused by his interest in them. The older girl had been approached many times by boys and men by this stage of her life. Matt's appearance did not put him in the category of males she would respond favorably to. She answered him, "We're waiting for our mom. She should be here to pick us up any minute." She gave him her best teenaged glower, refined by years of practice.
Matt scanned through their thoughts briefly, reading her superiority beginning to edge with fear when he didn't go away immediately. They didn't have what he wanted. He turned and walked away, getting back in his car and continuing his search.
This was one of the key issues with crime. A criminal could make any number of mistakes and hunt down false leads in the course of finding a good one. A con could approach person after person, making innocuous, harmless inquiries until he found the right mark.
Matt found several other young people who turned him down in different ways. One young man flipped him the bird and even went so far as to throw a rock at him. Matt vowed that his son would never turn out like these street ruffians. He hated these kinds of people, having had the frustrating experience of trying to keep them in line as a policeman.
The last person he approached was a girl lounging with a boy her age. Both looked fourteen or fifteen. He asked her what was up and she asked him if he could buy her some cigarettes. There was no preamble. It wasn't code for anything more significant. She wanted smokes and at her age couldn't get them. If she asked every person who came by, then eventually someone would get her some. She worked the same way most criminals did.
Matt went inside the store, bought a couple cokes, a bag of Doritos and a pack of cigarettes. He walked out and gave her the bag, pulling out one of the cokes for himself. He leaned on the brick façade, far enough away from them that he didn't look like he was with them. The girl looked in the sack and fished around until she found the cigarettes. She called out to him, "Thanks!" Her friend pulled out the chips and opened them. She started fighting with him over whose chips they were.
Parkman waited, listening to their thoughts. So far, everything was on the surface. Her name was Joey, like a baby kangaroo. His was Terrance. Eventually they settled on sharing the chips, but the coke was the boy's and she got the cigarettes. She pocketed them quickly and with surprising discretion for a woman of her age. They began to leave, her intending to find a place to enjoy her ill-gotten gains, the boy wanting to get away from the creepy guy who'd bought the stuff for them and obviously wanted something else.
Matt suggested to the girl, You want to do something to thank me. He called out, "Hey!"
She turned, looking back at him thoughtfully, and walked over. The boy huffed and shuffled his feet indecisively. "Joey! Come on." She ignored him.
She addressed her benefactor, "Hey… um, thanks. You know. Do you want something?" She looked over at his car. Her mind was turning over possibilities, trying to imagine what she had that he might want, what she could do quickly that wouldn't get her in too much trouble. A blow job came to mind.
Matt winced. That was not what he'd intended. Quickly, he spoke to get her mind off that idea and onto what he wanted. "Do you know where I can get something harder than cigarettes? Who sells around here? I got burned with my last guy and I'm looking for someone new."
"Oh!" She brightened. This had much less of a chance of getting her into trouble. If the shop owner found out she was blowing guys in the parking lot, she'd have to go down the street to the Quik Mart. He already gave her enough crap about begging. "Yeah, you can ask Ryan. He's like… two streets down, rides a bicycle. Couple years older than me, you know? He's white, brown hair, kind of shoulder length, about as tall as you are."
"Ryan. Where can I find him? Just on the street?"
"Yeah, all the time. He's always around. Riding around."
Matt nodded. "Thanks. That's what I wanted."
She smiled, happy to be of service, and went on her way. Her friend shot him a nasty look. It wasn't a good part of town.
Matt drove down two blocks and along the road, looking at the tightly packed, older houses. Most had nice yards. Many had For Sale or For Rent signs in the front. He didn't see Ryan. He circled the block and a few others nearby. He came back to the street he'd started on and saw an elderly man standing in the best-tended yard, clipping at an already nice-looking cedar tree. Matt stopped and got out. The man looked at him and menaced him with his clippers, yelling something abusive in Spanish. He fled around the side of the house.
Really bad neighborhood, Matt thought. He stood there with his hands on his hips, thinking, when an elderly woman came out from around the house, where the old man had gone. The man was behind her, speaking in agitated tones to her and still shaking the clippers. "Can I help you?" she asked in polite, almost unaccented English.
He blinked. "Oh, yeah. I was… um…" He felt bad to be asking decent people where the local drug dealer was. "I'm a parole officer. I'm looking for Ryan. Young guy, rides a bike?" She was nodding already, scowling.
"Yes. He's around here all the time. He's terrible! He egged our neighbor's house just last week. The police were out and…" She shook her head.
"Yeah," Matt nodded quickly. "That's kind of what I'm here about. Where can I find him?"
"He's…" she looked up and down the street. "He's nearly always around. He sits over there on that retaining wall when he's not riding his bike. That's his corner, him and his friends. People are always stopping there to talk to him. It's very annoying. That used to be such a quiet corner, but since the owner moved out, now there's nearly always someone parked there." She pointed. "See there! Those people." A car pulled up with a couple mid 20s men in it. They looked around the intersection, then drove off. Matt smiled. He had a hit. "If he's not there they'll just circle around and come back later. I wish they'd all go away."
Matt nodded. "Tell you what, I'll make sure Ryan doesn't bother you anymore. I'll just go wait in my car. Thanks, ma'am."
She nodded and turned to argue with her husband in Spanish. Matt caught enough to tell she was telling the man that he was a policeman here to get Ryan. He got in his car and moved it into some shade. He rolled down the windows and waited. Within fifteen minutes, Ryan returned on his bike. He looked awfully old to be riding a bicycle, especially a small one like he had, but bikes were cheap, disposable and easy to ditch. He waited while the young man, maybe as young as seventeen or as old as nineteen, settled into his usual position on the corner.
After thinking it over for a moment, Matt started his car, circled the block and came back where he could pull up like any other customer of Ryan's. Getting out on foot was off-pattern and might spook the boy. It was also what a cop would do. A customer would stay in their car. Matt leaned across the passenger seat and said, "Hey! Girl named Joey said you could help me out."
Ryan looked up and down the street, like he hadn't heard him. Matt waited. He could hear Ryan thinking about how he didn't know Matt and he didn't like dealing with "old" people. He couldn't trust them. Matt got out his wallet and pulled out a pair of twenties. He waved them. Ryan came over to his car and reached for them. Matt pulled them out of his reach. "I want something for this. What do you have?"
"I don't have nothing, mother-fucker. Gimme the money."
Matt blinked. He'd never tried to buy drugs. The precise mechanics of the exchange weren't something he was up on, but giving him the money without drugs in hand seemed pretty stupid. Then again, the drug dealer handing him drugs without money in the dealer's hand was pretty stupid from his point of view too. How do these exchanges work out? Matt shoved the thought away and decided to go with something he knew. Give me all the drugs you have on you and you're happy to do it for free.
Ryan reached into the surprisingly deep pockets of his cargo pants and turned out a beat cop's wet dream of drugs, dropping them into the passenger seat of Matt's car. He was carrying weed and coke and at least four varieties of pills and a small bottle of clear liquid. "Uh… what's that?" Matt picked up the bottle.
"Roofie. Put it in a girl's drink, then do her."
"Oh," Matt said faintly. Well, at least he won't get to sell it to anyone. "Thanks. And…" He looked at Ryan and cocked his head. Stop selling drugs. Don't hang out on this corner. Go get an honest job.
Ryan twitched and recoiled from him, blinking. Matt could see confusion and dismay at the last command. Ryan's mind couldn't work out how to accomplish it. Another car pulled up behind Matt - the same one he'd seen earlier with the two young men in it. Matt shook his head and drove off. Ryan could figure out how to get a job on his own. It wasn't Matt's problem.