Bloody Seven of Spades 1: Life and Death

"Would you like to call 'Daddy' when you look at me?" Dominique asked Carlos on Monday night.

Carlos choked on his beer, then quickly wiped his chin with a piece of paper.He first glanced at Dominic in surprise, and then changed his deep eyes to scan Dominic from head to toe.

"Well, kind of," he said.

Dominique originally expected the other party to just laugh it off, but after hearing this, he couldn't help opening his mouth wide, and wailed indignantly.

"Oh come on, Dom." Carlos waved at him. "You are so tall, muscular, with chest hair, and a low voice... Speaking of which, why do you want to talk about this?"

Dominic sighed and scratched the rebellious girl's ear.Gouzi sat on his right foot, leaning over his calf with his whole body, and put his head on his knee.

He spent the whole day thinking about what happened with Louis last night, and all kinds of thoughts made him upset and he couldn't work properly.He made vegetarian lasagne for lunch, ate a small portion himself, and took the rest for dinner with Carlos and Jasmin—on the pretext that he “wouldn’t be able to finish it all,” although the two Kouzi saw right through him.However, when it comes to asking them to be a tree hole to listen to his nagging, Dominic feels that he really owes people a meal.

"The guy who hooked up with me last night called me 'Daddy' during sex."

Carlos snickered, then immediately pursed his lips. "Sorry. But it's certainly not the first time you've encountered something like this."

"It's the first time!"

"Really? Didn't any of those college freshmen who had sex with you ever yell?"

Dominic rolled his eyes.

"You have sex with someone ten years younger than you, how can you expect people to call you?" Carlos asked. "Do you think college students see you like their peers? That's impossible."

Dominic twisted uneasily, and the anti-bone girl gave a small "woof" before poking her head on his leg.He moved his hands from behind her ears all the way to the prickly hair on her neck.

Carlos looked at him frowningly and said, "Is this so depressing to you? I can understand your bad words, but it's not hurtful. If you have to say it, it's okay." I'm praising you."

"I..." The fact is that Dominic is very clear why he reacted so violently to what happened last night - he hadn't digested the conversation with his mother, and then encountered such an incident.He likes his current life quite a lot, but what will the future look like waiting for him?

Jasmine left the kitchen and went to the living room, where she had just warmed up lasagna in the oven. "What are you guys talking about?" she said, setting the pan next to a pile of unmatched dishes.

"Dom's girlfriend called him 'daddy' last night."

"Who made your old cow eat young grass?" She asked without thinking.She sat next to Carlos on the sofa; when Carlos got up and moved forward to eat himself, she grabbed his arm and gave him a hard look, and Carlos sat back and lay down on the cushions.He still had the bandages off his chest and had drains inserted, but he'd just told Dominique they could be removed tomorrow.

"How could an old cow eat young grass when he was ten years younger?" Dominique said.

"Maybe not, but what can you and Tender Grass develop?" Jia Simin cut off a piece of lasagna. "We've known each other for so long, and I haven't seen you talking about a boyfriend seriously."

"I had a boyfriend."

"I said 'serious'."

"Hey, you can't blame me for that," he said, taking the plate and fork from him, "Didn't I do the 'don't ask, don't tell[1]' thing all the time when I was in the army? —I’ve spent most of my adult life in the army. I don’t have much choice.”

Jia Simin opened a bottle of beer for herself and said, "You have been out of the military for four years."

Heartbroken.Regardless of his appearance, Dominic is in favor of finding a partner to settle down and is always ready.He just hasn't met the man he wants to really settle down with.

Carlos and Jasmine—they're lucky to find each other, they're each other's best friends, they're lovers, they're partners, they're all in one.Even in a dull moment like now, when Jasmine lazily wraps her bare feet around Carlos' ankles and sits side by side eating lasagna, the strong love between the two is self-evident Metaphor.Dominique is happy just being around them.

"When do we leave tomorrow to see your outpatient appointment?" he said to Carlos, changing the subject completely.Talking about himself all the time tonight, it's time for him to shut up.

After dinner, he took the rebellious girl back to his room, exchanged the car keys with Carlos, parked his pickup in the parking lot downstairs, and got into Carlos' black Toyota Camry.It was a much more low-key car, easy to slip into traffic and just what he needed for his move tonight.

Instead of bounty hunters for the day, he devotes all his energy to sorting out the flow of ketamine in Las Vegas and making a map.Taking the name of the person he got last night, Dominic used it as a starting point. By searching electronic records and mobilizing his existing network of contacts in the city, he followed the clues to draw a rough diagram of the supply relationship.

Most of the clues end up in a dead end.There are many legitimate uses for ketamine; addicts generally don't synthesize the drug themselves, but steal it or get it from licensed, legal manufacturers, transporters, or distributors.Nearly all the drugs he tracks have one-on-one ups and downs—he's willing to bet that those who deal with ketamine at work would be happy to slip up when they're getting a lot of money.

Without the support of formal law enforcement agencies, it would be difficult for him to thoroughly investigate the relationship between the upper and lower families by himself, but it doesn't make much sense to investigate this.The doses of that kind of deal were small—enough to sell to a few acquaintances at rave parties and nightclubs, but not nearly enough to splurge on a serial killer.Moreover, this kind of seller has to rely on personal relationships to get online, and any murderer with a brain will avoid it as much as possible.

The murderer can receive the goods one by one from the hands of small drug leaders, but if the dose required by this person is so large, isn't it too risky to do so?It is safer to find a supply source that can provide large doses without talking about relationships.And in this thread, there is one person who seems to fit the description.

The name "Juan Morales" popped up one after another as Dominique tracked down local drug heads.The man regularly supplied at least four of his next households with, in addition to ketamine, ecstasy, Adderall and copious amounts of prescription painkillers.All these drugs must be coming out of somewhere.

It only took Dominic a few seconds to find Morales's full-time job-a salesperson in a store in the city square.Dominique called the manager of the store pretending to be a debt collector, and got Morales' schedule in a few words—plus a few rude dismissals.So he had plenty of time to concentrate on waiting for Morales to get off work on the long street.

DMV records showed that Morales had neither a car nor a driver's license, so Dominique charged him with using public transportation.Splitting a car into and out of a city within a city in the early evening traffic is not always feasible; so Dominique wandered the Strip, switching between the two bus stops closest to where Morales worked, taking Mo Lales' Nevada-registered passport photo is placed in the middle of the dashboard for easy identification.

Sure enough, during the second walk, he saw Morales waiting for the bus at the station at the east end of Long Street.Morales is a pretty good-looking Latin guy, about 25 years old, with black hair combed into a back style, coupled with his slender and capable figure, in other circumstances, Dominique would definitely find it seductive.As Dominique drove by, he also saw Morales jump up from his seat at the station to make way for an elderly woman with limited mobility.

Because the driving direction was reversed, Dominique turned south until he could turn around before turning north.By the time he got to the station, Morales was gone—though the bus was easy to keep up with because it was slow in the city.While catching up, Dominic checked the bus timetable on his mobile phone and confirmed the itinerary.

Morales got off at the downtown station and made a beeline for the nearest bar.Dominique snatched up a limited-time on-street parking spot nearby, where he stopped and waited for the long night.

In the next few hours, Morales fled from one bar to another, visiting all the shops in the vicinity-as for whether he was playing or doing business in it, Dominique didn't know. .This person seems to be quite popular, and he is also very friendly to people. When he meets acquaintances on the walk, he always greets them with a smile, and even bumps fists with them.

Waiting like this, Dominic can't find out anything.It would be better to follow Morales in and watch his every move, but one disadvantage of Dominique's figure is that it is impossible for him to go anywhere without being noticed.Had Morales seen him in more than one place, it would have aroused suspicion.

After a few days, he would try to enter these bars as if nothing had happened, and talk to Morales directly as if he did not know him, to see how much information he could get out of him.Dominique used this trick in the past with remarkable results.

Of course, when he used this trick in the past, it was to track down the escapee and get the bounty.What he was busy with all day today was not to track down the objects with price tags on their heads, he didn't earn a penny, and no one even asked him to do it.Why was he wasting his time on this?

It's because... the scene of Goodwin's rotting corpse being posed just doesn't come out of his mind anyway.He had seen and remembered all kinds of horrors in his time as a Ranger, but nothing quite as shocking as the crime scene he had seen on Saturday.The murderer disposes of Goodwin's body indifferently, showing arrogance and contempt for all living beings everywhere on the scene-it seems that the murderer does not treat Goodwin as a human being at all.Realizing that there was a man walking the city plotting the next murder, Dominique had no intention of focusing on anything else.

Shortly after eleven, Morales emerged from the last bar and got into a car with another man.Dominique waited for them to drive half a block before pulling out of the parking space to follow, writing the make, model, and license plate of the car on the notepad in the center of the dashboard as he drove.

They headed east, into a residential area, and a few minutes later, a sense of uneasiness made the hairs on the back of Dominic's neck stand on end.The community they walked through was a poor community known for its high crime rate and municipal inaction everywhere—dilapidated buildings, potholed sidewalks, and broken street lights that were not replaced.Morales doesn't live here, so what the hell is he doing here?

The car stopped in front of a small house, and on the steps in front of the gate, there were several young men and women smoking and shaking.Morales got out of the car, patted the roof of the car to say goodbye to the driver, then trotted towards the house, greeted everyone happily along the way, and then went into the house.The friend who brought him here drove away.

As Dominique approached cautiously, moving a little in the driveway across the street, a woman in the group leaned over and twirled a finished cigarette butt into an ashtray.Her arms are bare, and her upper arm is so muscular that Dominic can see the pattern on it—an abstract black tattoo of a wasp waiting to strike.A man next to her has the same tattoo, on the side of her neck.The same wasp motif also appears on the corner of the house's garage door, spray-painted on it.

This is fucking gang territory.

Dominique stopped the car, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.None of his sources had ever mentioned to him that Morales was a gangster.But the house—the crowd—was part of the Wasp gang.

The words "going is the best policy" in capital letters flashed in Dominique's mind.While Super doesn't want to back down, he's also unprepared for a drug deal that will likely involve the gang.It is better to inform the police of the current investigation and let them take over.

Moreover, he'd better drive away while his life is still alive.

He drove to the neighborhood where he lived.When he came to a neighborhood with better security in the city, he stopped in front of a gas station, filled up Carlos' car, and went to a convenience store to buy a burrito, a bag of potato chips and a Bananas - He feels guilty for eating so much junk food.

He walked out of the convenience store, munching on a burrito, and holding other things he just bought in the other hand.Something on the Camry's windshield is pinned down by the wipers, and Dominique wails: he's not in the right mood to deal with casino flyers right now.

He continued to walk forward, and when he saw what was on the windshield, he stopped suddenly, unable to swallow the burrito with his mouth full.

That's not a leaflet.It's a poker card.Even from this distance, he could see that it was a seven of spades.

He forcibly swallowed the food in his mouth and put the rest of the burrito back in the bag.As if walking in a dream, he came to the car and took the cards off the windshield.There is nothing unusual about the brand itself, it is a popular brand that can be bought all over the United States.It was also the one that appeared at the scene of Goodwin's murder.

He turned the cards over and let out a loud breath.

The back of the card is a red abstract pattern with a smiley face drawn in black marker.

[1] Don'taskdon'ttell, the U.S. military's negative countermeasures against the sexual orientation of soldiers from 1994 to 2011 in the last century required not to inquire about the sexual orientation of soldiers, and gay soldiers were not allowed to disclose their sexual orientation.

[2] The original text here is "Los Avispones" in Spanish.