Wasted Lives, a Detective Mike Bridger novel by Mark Bredenbeck Page A

wander to far from home. He knew the 'Pigs' would not have
caught him, he would have seen him back at the Police station if
that had happened.
    He had
been sitting on the bus on the way back to the hood wanting to
share his story but he had no one to turn to. The only people on
the bus had turned their heads away when he made eye contact. One
little kid in the rear had poked his tongue out before sticking his
finger up at him; the boy’s mother had smacked him across the head
before sticking her own head back into the magazine she was
reading. Such a little thing in the boys life, he did not realise
how lucky he was to have a mother that cared. It had actually made
him a little sad to think of his own mother, living under a cloud
of alcohol and drugs. She was such a useless whore; she did not
give a shit about him. She never had.
    He tried
thinking of someone he could tell, he wanted to show everyone who
he was. He could not approach or text J man without an invite. That
would be overstepping his boundaries. Martin was missing in action
and there was no one in the house when he had returned home. The
feeling he had this afternoon had started to fade, the initial high
wearing off.
    He had been
sitting on the mattress in his bedroom for the last 10 minutes
since getting home to the empty house. They had trashed the place;
they had even ripped the filthy sheet he was sitting back off the
mattress in the corner, revealing a large tear in the fabric
underneath, which was spilling stuffing.
    Fucking
police, he thought angrily, what did they think? That he would hide
the shotgun inside his mattress. They had been through the entire
house, nothing had been sacred, not even his mothers room. He had
not bothered to pick anything up; it would not really make much of
a difference anyway.
    He was staring
at his cell phone wondering what to do next when the text came
in.
    'Got a job, get the tools, meet at usual, at 9'.
    The
number was unfamiliar to Tama, but the message was clear, he was
one of the trusted now, he was doing another job. J man must have
got one of his boys to send him the text he was clever like that.
He wondered if Martin was going to be involved. He thought of
sending him a text but then thought better of it, if Star were
involved, he would see him there, if he was not involved, he did
not want him to know, not yet.
    Tama looked at
his watch, he had had it since he was a child, it was an old
scratched digital Casio but it still told the time. He had about an
hour and a half, more than enough time to go and get the shotgun
and then get down to the park.
    He was
starting to buzz again; he knew he was going to get his patch. He
would finally be somebody. He would do anything now, he had killed
that man and it had not even affected him. He was a stone cold
killer, someone that J man could turn to when he needed something
done.
    He
reached under his mattress and retrieved the small point bag with
his junk clearly visible through the clear plastic. One thing the
pigs did not find, he thought. Grabbing a ratty magazine from the
floor and a blackened butter knife, he poured a small amount of the
slightly brown powdery substance out onto the cover. He moved it
about a bit with the knife as he had seen on the movies, before
tipping it into a small piece of foil. He looked around the clutter
next to his mattress and found the glass pipe he was looking for.
Placing the foil in the small bowl at the bottom of the pipe, he
held his cigarette lighter underneath. The powder bubbled and
dissolved in the heat then filled the glass balloon with smoke,
which he hungrily inhaled. The effect was immediate, pupils
dilating, pulse racing. He felt the euphoria flow through him from
his brain outwards to the tips of his fingers and toes then race
back again and slam into his brain once more. The music, which had
been playing quietly in the background, was now clear in his ears
and thumping with the Insane Clown Posse, Hokus Pokus. The whole
room