EXHIBIT C

Debbie’s Diner

Ford, Minnesota

Still Thursday, 13 September^[22]

Slamming back into the kitchen, Debbie Schneke wonders if you are for fucking serious. First Dylan and Matt fuck up the run to Winnipeg—come back lit up, they’re on so much fucking meth—then JD forgets to flip the “OPEN” sign, and two goddamn cops come into the restaurant.

Just as she’s got three thousand tabs of pseudoephedrine ground up, washed, and mixed with brake cleaner in an Erlenmeyer flask on the counter.

The whole fucking kitchen’s a disaster. What’s the special today—Frankenstein? And she’s supposed to cook a fucking hamburger for a cop?

Debbie goes to the screen door that leads out back. Through the mesh she can see a bunch of the Boys sitting on crates and trash cans and shit, but she knows they can’t see her. If they could, they wouldn’t be lounging around like monkeys.

“FUCK YOU!” she screams, sending some of them scrambling.

Debbie doesn’t even know if it’s safe to turn on the gas for the grill. She doesn’t think the mash has reached the stage yet where it plus propane turns into that shit they gassed people with in World War I,^[23] but how the hell is she supposed to know for sure?

Her decision: the gas stays off. Fuck the cop. She’ll microwave his hamburger. If he even is a cop. Him and that lady look like FBI or DEA or something. They’re too sexy for regular cops. Debbie wonders how long they’ve been fucking each other, and whether their spouses know.

Oh, and—Oh, no way. No fucking WAY. Even if she microwaves the burger, how is she going to cook the fucking BUN? Or the French toast for the lady-cop? God DAMN it!

Debbie goes beyond herself with fury. Yanks open the door of the walk-in refrigerator: Matt Wogum and Dylan Arntz, both bound and gagged with duct tape, blue and sluggish looking from the cold. Not even shivering anymore. One more thing she has to worry about.

“God DAMN you!” she screams, and slams the door. This is all their fucking fault. She can’t believe she ever trusted them.

What would be enough for these goddamn kids? She already feeds them, fucks them, and buys them cable. What else do they need? Debbie to jam an Xbox up her cunt, so they can multitask?

And all she ever asks of them is to be one slightly fucking bit cool—and DON’T SNORT THE MOTHERFUCKING PRODUCT.

Matt Wogum she’d known was hopeless. Even though he’d done the Winnipeg run with Greg Bierner a dozen times, he’d claimed he never noticed Greg was using. For that alone Debbie would have had him killed along with Greg, only then there’d have been nobody alive who had made the trip. At the time it seemed smarter to keep Matt around.

Wrong, what else is new. Dylan, the best one she had, the most trustworthy—the one who sometimes still goes to high school, who Debbie gives handjobs to because he’s too shy to come in her mouth—goes on one fucking trip with Matt Wogum and comes home too fucked up to blink right. Him and Matt Wogum telling some bullshit story—which, now that Debbie thinks about it, is probably true—about how Wajid, the fucking Yemeni kid, hadn’t been able to get the pills from the warehouse of his cousins’ pharmacy on time because the cousins were getting suspicious, but wasn’t willing to let Matt and Dylan wait at his apartment because he was holding a goddamn religious meeting there.

That’s the problem with the goddamn Yemenis. They’re only in it to send money to Hezbollah or whatever. It’s not their money, so it’s not their problem. They don’t act like professionals.

And of course Matt and Dylan then had to go to some bar to hang out, where naturally a couple of Canada Skanks asked them if they had any cocaine. And Matt said yes because he had some fucking meth on him, then made Dylan snort some too so the skanks wouldn’t think it was some kind of date rape drug.

Which, to be fair, Matt probably had to do. Debbie sure as hell wouldn’t accept a suspicious white powder from someone who looked like Matt Wogum—and Debbie makes suspicious white powders.

But whatever happened up there in Canada, Debbie now has no one to send to buy more pills. The mashed-up three thousand are the last of it—unless she lets Dylan live, the idea of which makes her feel sick. But what’s the alternative? Deal with the fucking Sinaloans?

The thought makes her want to scream and then repeatedly slam her hand in the oven door.

Debbie hates the fucking Sinaloans. Always sending some gold-tooth midget wetback around, all “Joo is workin for us now, lady.” Wanting her to sell finished product up from Mexico at one quarter the profit she gets from cooking it on her own.

So far she’s gotten away with kicking them the fuck out. But if the Sinaloans ever get their shit together and stop killing each other, they could be a goddamn nightmare. They all work in the meat-processing plant in Saint James as cover, so they’re good with knives. Just out of nervousness, Debbie’s had to buy a bunch of new guns for the Boys.

And now she has to hope one of those dwarfy fuckers comes back? And brings product with him, so at least she’ll have something to sell?

Debbie rips a handful of tinfoil off the roll and caps the beaker of mash with it, puts the whole thing in the fridge. Fuck else is she supposed to do with it?

Starts the electric toast belt that runs through the top chamber of the oven. Turns on the propane. Thinks to the potential mustard gas, Oh, you just do me the favor.

At least with the mash out of the open air she can smoke. Debbie’s been smoking too much lately, thanks for reminding her, but right now it feels like the only usable air in the room is on the other side of a lit cigarette.

As she inhales her first puff she puts the bun and the French toast on the belt, and the hamburger in the microwave. Screw that pig, even if the propane’s on. Then punches the door to the back parking lot open.

The Boys, now arranged on the low back wall and a couple of cars, fall silent. They look sulky and afraid.

“Soon as the cops are gone, take Dylan Arntz out of here and beat holy hell out of him,” she says. “Matt Wogum I haven’t decided on yet.”

The older ones, the ones who matter—probably the rest of them too—will know what this means.

Regarding Dylan, it means he gets one more chance.

Regarding Matt, it means someone better goddamn start digging a hole.