“Er, and we have two projects that aren’t necessarily doing as well as expected. One is the web series, The Great Kaching, and Hero Girls.” Both Kyle and I level our gazes at Tej. Kyle’s been working on Kaching, a web series about a magician who discovers that his tricks can be used to fight crime. It’s quasi comic strip and seems never to have found its niche audience, I guess.
“Now, I know we just did a special edition of Hero Girls, but I think we’ll need to start thinking about wrapping up the current story line. Same with Kaching. Sorry, guys.”
I swallow.
“Any questions?” Tej’s gaze is frank but kind. He knows what this project means for me. It’s my little corner of the world.
“No,” I mutter, and Kyle shakes his head. I don’t think he cares one way or the other, but I do. We’ve all had little projects fail. But this was the first heart project. Not a spin-off. My own characters, drawn and conceptualized by me. And now, well, my first personal failure of a project. It means I need to analyze why it failed and come up with a new personal project. It’ll be more time and more effort on top of my already full load. I guess maybe it’s okay if this one falls off. I’m struggling to keep up as it is.
As I clean up my papers and head to the elevator to our second-floor work area, I nurse a growing sense that maybe I can’t pull all this off. Having my cake and eating it too. The costumes, The Hooded Falcon, my side projects—all the ideas I have for little comics . . . and I realize Matteo’s on that list too. I may be forced to pick where my energy goes, and I don’t love that thought. The trick is, which ones are my cake, and which ones shouldn’t I eat?
CHAPTER 7
The police station smells like burned bean burritos when I arrive later that day. Maybe Matteo’s not the only one basically living at his desk recently. Glimpsing a travel pillow thrown casually on top of one workstation confirms my suspicion.
Not having my credentials as a consultant for the LAPD anymore—they’d been understandably revoked while I was under investigation for the SDCC mess—means that Matteo has to meet me at the door, sign me in, and escort me back to his desk. At least until my paperwork is filed and accepted, I don’t have a badge. His desk piles teeter with manila folders, loose papers, receipts, and several Lego helicopters and toy police cars. I grab my favorite one—a stress-ball police car where when you squeeze the car, the siren lights bulge entertainingly—and smoosh it in my hands.
“I think I just want you to watch from the booth,” Matteo explains. “Detective Rideout and I have developed our list of questions already. You can listen, and take note of anything that sets off comic book alarm bells in your mind.”
“Okay.” I shift my weight from foot to foot, trying to determine if I’m allowed to hug him hello or not. I decide that since he’s clearly at work, and currently channeling Detective Kildaire, that I won’t. Matteo catches me studying him and gives a quick smile before leaning in for a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re here; thanks for helping out on this.”
“Oh, get a room, you two.”
I turn to find Detective Rideout approaching the desk, but he’s not wearing his usual scowl. In fact, for how much I know he disapproves of my relationship with Matteo, he seems downright . . . tolerant of my presence today. “Ready to go interview some suspects?” He all but rubs his hands together.
Matteo nods and gathers up a few papers, his notebook, and the earpiece he’ll wear during the interview. In a practiced choreography, both men don their small mic packs, Rideout reaching to secure Matteo’s wire under his old-school leather suspender straps. They both shrug into their jackets, check their cuffs, and nod at each other. It’s obvious these two have done this too many times to count, and it’s not the first time that I get the feeling that Rideout knows more about Matteo than I do.
“You just let me know if we need to jump script,” Matteo says as Rideout nods. “I’m not expecting a link, but you never know.”
“My instinct says these are just nobodies, but I’ll let you have your fun before we process them,” Rideout responds.
“Okay. We’ll play it like normal, then,” Matteo says with a nod, and they both roll their shoulders before turning toward the hallway.
At first, I think of them as an old married couple, one indulging the other’s hunch. But it strikes me that I’m witnessing a team preparing for battle. Two warriors who love what they do or, at the very least, are very, very capable together. They are a team—their job is to support and protect each other, intellectually as well as physically. It’s a new look at Rideout I haven’t considered before. Matteo’s other, other half. Most of the time I just lump him into “pain in my ass” territory. I don’t usually get to see them working together as the well-oiled partners they are.
“Okay, and MG, you let Detective Rideout know if you hear something critical, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree, falling into line after Rideout. While Rideout is tolerating me, when he looks at me, there’s no spark of warmth in his eyes the way there is when he was talking to Matteo. I helped with the last case, so he’s grudgingly allowing my presence in the office. And he’ll tolerate my dating Matteo because he has to. But by the set of his shoulders as we file past the open desks, I’m here to watch and listen. Not to interfere. This is their turf, and while I may have had the edge with the Golden Arrow stuff before, this isn’t my territory anymore. He’s basically peeing on Matteo, and I’m reluctantly allowing it.
We walk through a series of cubicles, down a short hallway, past the kitchen that is the culprit of the burned smell, and through a set of doors to rooms I recognize from the last time I watched an interview. This hallway has a series of dark metal doors with tiny little windows in them, interspersed with friendlier wooden doors that lead to the booths between interview cubicles. Some are plain rooms, containing only a desk and three chairs. Some are a little roomier, with a bench under a large window, and some—like the one we approach now—have actual two-way glass into a booth so someone can monitor the interview. Casey Junior’s interview had been given in a comfortable one; these guys . . . not so much. Without a word, I follow Rideout into a booth—a scrunched room with a desk facing the glass, while Matteo proceeds to the door directly beyond.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the observation room, but I finally make out Matteo’s back as he joins two youths at the table. The one on the left looks twelve instead of eighteen and is short and fat with brown curls framing his pudgy face. He looks so much like Augustus Gloop from the old-school Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory it takes everything in my being not to make a crack about chocolate being his drug of choice. He’s about as far from standard-issue stereotypical drug dealer as you can get. On the other hand, the boy on the right looks tall, gaunt, and like he’s no stranger to sampling the drugs he’s been selling. His teeth are dark, his eyes wary, and his pale head shaved. I kind of can’t believe the two were working together; they’re complete opposites.
The initial questions are met with sullenness and one-word answers from the shorter boy—silence from the taller. It’s clear that though neither has a lawyer present, they’ve watched enough TV to know that they shouldn’t blab a lot before their hearing. And yet . . . Matteo works his magic. He’s firm, businesslike, and polite, and dang can he work a room. Latifah would be impressed. Even just with his body language and simple-to-answer questions, Matteo slowly changes the temperature of the interview. Soon, they’re answering with two- and three-word sentences, and finally, even I can see they’re relaxing a bit.
“What we’re really interested in is what happened when you were caught.” Matteo says, maybe ten minutes into such mundane routine questions that I’m starting to nod off in the dark. “We’re interested in the information enough to offer you significant . . . help . . . reducing your sentence at your hearing if you’re willing to talk about it.”
That got the attention of the two boys. Well, one of them in particular. The short
fat one sits up like someone’d rammed his back with a red-hot poker. “Seriously? Could I get out of this? It was my first day, dude. There’s no way I signed up for this; I didn’t mean anything by it. My parents just wanted me to get a job, and I should have applied at In-N-Out. I’ll tell you whatever you want if it means I don’t have my chances at going to college killed by one stupid decision.”
Singing. Like a bird.
He seems to belatedly realize he’s spilled the beans—maybe from the side-eye the taller boy gives him, or maybe from the cough Matteo covers up.
“Allegedly,” he adds, as if that could somehow undo his bean spillage.
“Okay,” Matteo drawls, with no real change in his demeanor. “Let’s start from the beginning. What’s the first thing you remember?”
Beside me, Rideout is leaning up near the glass, his face in a tense scowl. If I were him, this would be Christmas, not a moment for scowling. Unless you’re Scrooge, and that fits Rideout to a T in my head.
“Shouldn’t you be happy? He’s not holding anything back,” I whisper because I can’t help myself.
Rideout’s eyes don’t even flick to me; they’re trained on the table in the room. “He’s not the one I want information from. First day on the job.” He puffs air through his mouth in something closely resembling an old-timer’s “feh.” “Not reliable. Knows nothing of the business he got into. Completely useless for knowing where the bindles came from.” He falls silent as the shorter boy opens his mouth to answer.
“Well, it was dark,” the boy hedges, his glance flicking to the taller boy, who in turn stares at the tabletop as if it holds the secrets of the universe. What little ground Matteo has gained with the second kid is gone. “So, I couldn’t see much. I was standing there, watching a car drive by. You know, hoping they’d stop.” He thinks a moment. “All of this is allegedly, okay?”
Matteo nods, keeping his eyes on his own notes.
“I heard a noise from behind me, and a big thing of rope slid around my middle. I tried really hard to turn around to see who had grabbed me, but the rope was pulled tight and I was yanked backward into . . .” He motions to the boy next to him. “We sorta clunked heads and sat down really quickly. So, I didn’t see much. But the guy had to come around front while he was tying us to the light pole.”
“So, you saw him? You’re sure it’s a man? Can you give a description?” I hear the note of hope in Matteo’s voice.
“Sure. Maybe about six feet tall. Maybe shorter, I don’t know. I was sitting down—hard to judge. But he was strong. He coiled that rope around us real fast even though we were struggling pretty hard.”
“Okay . . . so somewhere near six feet. Hair color? Eye color? What was he wearing?”
“He was wearing all black,” the boy answers, doubt creeping into his voice at this point. “Black mask over his eyes. Black jumpsuit.”
“Jumpsuit.”
“Yeah, sorta like a military parachute outfit.”
“Anything else? Did he say anything?”
“Nope, completely silent. He finished putting the rope around the light pole, pulled something out of a bag across his back—I guess it was that arrow thing—and stuck it in-between us. Then he just . . . walked off.”
“That’s the entirety of your recollection?”
“That’s it.” The boy sounds more than nervous now. Even I can tell he’s spent his information. Shown his whole hand.
“Get the spare out, see if the other one will talk,” Rideout growls into his mic.
Matteo gives the briefest of nods. “Okay, thank you so much for your cooperation. It’s been . . . useful, and we appreciate your willingness to help our investigation. It will be noted in your file.”
“So, do I get a plea deal? Or get out of my charges? Or what? Can’t you just let me go? I helped you.”
“We’ll discuss with your lawyer,” Matteo promises, his voice warming slightly, and I know from his tone he means it. He presses a button on the wall, and almost instantly a policewoman opens the door to the room.
“We’re finished here, thanks,” Matteo says, shuffling his papers. He helps the larger boy to his feet and ushers him to the door.
I frown in confusion. “Wait, I thought he needed to talk to the other—”
Rideout holds up a hand.
I turn my attention back to the room, where the taller boy studies Matteo’s movements over the table the way one studies a hand of poker. The second officer pauses at the door, her hand on the larger boy’s cuffs. Matteo motions her on with a wave. “I’ll take the second one myself,” he says as she nods and exits, closing the door behind her.
Matteo waits in silence.
“So, what happens to me?” the taller boy finally asks.
“The same as before the interview. You’ll be processed and heard according to the drugs we found on your person.” Matteo flicks open his file and glances through. “Looks like your second offense.”
No judgment in the tone, but the kid’s eyes drop to the table before coming back up with more certainty to Matteo’s face. “This wasn’t my crew.”
At first, I think he’s denying that he’s done anything wrong, but Rideout sits forward so fast you’d think this kid just confessed to dousing the Human Torch.
Matteo stays silent.
Shuffling his feet nervously, the kid rubs the top of his head and then sits forward, decision made. “This wasn’t my crew. I was just . . . in the market for a job, since my old crew”—he pauses, searching for words—“a lot of them recently went on . . . vacation. It wasn’t my first day on the job, but I didn’t know them all that well. I’m not willing to do jail time for them.”
You can practically hear Rideout clacking his mandibles in excitement. This is obviously a Good Day on the job for him.
Matteo nods. “So, do you have information to trade?”
The kid presses his lips together. “Maybe. But I need more assurances than that loser got.” He motions to the door, indicating the fat boy. “I’ve got something useful. I have friends who went to ground, but know . . . stuff about stuff. I have something you’ll be interested in, but I need a promise first.”
“If your information is significant enough to develop a lead from, I think the judge would let you off with community service,” Matteo says after a pause and a glance through the file again. “If you’ll share, I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t serve more than a night in jail.”
The kid nods, and Matteo scratches a note in the file before motioning him to continue. “First, the only thing I noticed—the only thing that there was to notice about the guy—were his kicks. This was a rich dude, maybe around thirty?”
“What makes you say that?” Matteo asks, leaning forward.
“They were nice running shoes, not all scuffed up or anything. Not ones that kids are buying, but still hip so not old man either. This wasn’t your Walmart Asics. New Balance 2040v3, if I had to guess—they are like $350 a pair.”
I’ve never even heard of those shoes, and apparently, neither has Matteo.
The kid shrugs. “Just because I do what I do . . . allegedly, doesn’t mean I don’t take care of my body. I happen to like running, so I’m into shoes. I’m not one of those users that waste their life. I’m in a tough spot maybe, but I’m saving for a better future. I work out, plus it comes in handy to be in shape sometimes, y’know? Anyway, these shoes aren’t that mainstream, you should be able to figure out who has bought a pair in the past few months that fits your profile.”
Rideout snorts derisively. “As if he’s interested in health while he’s dealing drugs.”
“Okay, that’s an interesting detail, and definitely worth pursuing,” Matteo says, and I can see he means it. “Anything else? Not sure that’s enough to get you a reduction in sentence or keep you out of jail, although I can try.”
The kid looks at Matteo as if he’s about to play his trump card. He’s only been warming up. “My friends—the ones who told me about
this new crew—said while this is new turf, the distributor isn’t a new one.”
Rideout sucks in a breath, and I swear if he could have pushed himself closer to the glass, he would have.
“A known entity? Operating under another name?”
Maybe Matteo had been right, and they’d missed some of the Muñez crew.
“Not exactly . . . they’re new to the region. Expanding into empty territory. The bust has been all over the news—the field was left wide open.”
Matteo nods, making a note. “Okay, do you have a name?”
The kid snorts. “Names. Never mean as much as cops think they do, but yeah. Or at least rumor.”
We all waited with bated breath.
“My friends call her the Queen . . .” He visibly hesitates.
“The Queen,” Matteo prompts, sensing the same.
The kid laughs before standing up, a mirthless thing. “Yeah, either it’s the Queen, or it’s—it’s a stupid-ass name in my opinion, but you wanted to know all the info, so some people call her . . . the Queen . . . of Hearts.”
“So, what do you think?”
We’re seated in a different interview room just a few minutes later, the kind of interview room I’d sat in before I’d been a part of the case. Matteo and Rideout sit on one side of the table while I’m relegated to the small couch.
“I’m not sure,” I stall. “What do you think?” I’m not quite ready yet to let my thoughts out.
Rideout sits back and crosses his arms across his chest, a smug smile playing around his lips. “See? Even your girlfriend agrees this has nothing to do with the Golden Arrow.”
I grit my teeth. Rideout refuses to acknowledge I’m here as an expert and not as a girlfriend. He’s nothing if not consistent in his misogyny. “I never said that,” I fire back, my inner Janet van Dyne rising within me. “I just asked what Matteo thought. I trust his instincts.”
“Like I don’t?”
“Apparently not, or you’d have asked him yourself.”
The Queen Con (The Golden Arrow Mysteries Book 2) Page 7
