Bad Idea (Stonewall Investigations Miami Book 1)

by Max Walker

  “Hey there, boys, come in.”

  We exchanged pleasantries, and Dylan led us into the living room, which was spacious with clean white walls and soft white furniture, highlights of blue and gold giving a sense of the beach that currently surrounded us. There was a wall-to-wall glass door that opened up to a huge balcony, with a stunning view of the ocean on any other day. Today, you could barely see past the railing with how hard it was raining outside. The wind was faster up here, too, whistling against the glass. Inside, there was a stunning fish tank with all sorts of colorful, tropical fish swimming lazily through the clear blue water. There was a gold and light blue splatter painting on the wall behind the couch, which was currently being occupied by Pierre and Lucien.

  They stood up, smiling and hugging as they greeted us. They were sporting dark tans, and since they were wearing white shorts, the tan jumped out even more. Lucien was shirtless, probably about to head to the beach before the rain came in, judging by the sandals and towel he had abandoned on the couch.

  “Can I get you two anything to drink?”

  Fox and I declined, moving to the dining table where Pierre was sitting with a laptop in front of him. Dylan and Lucien joined, pulling out chairs and all of us taking our seats. For some reason, even with the hugs and the niceties, I couldn’t help but feel a tension in the air. Maybe it was simple paranoia, but maybe it was something else. Paranoia wasn’t always something to brush off.

  “Sorry about the club,” Fox started. I echoed his statement, seeing all three faces drop in unison.

  “It’s okay,” Dylan said first, steeling himself. “We’re working with the DEA and should be landing on a mutual agreement soon. I’d rather shut down than see any more lives taken at this point. Fuck the money.”

  Lucien bristled slightly, and it didn’t go unnoticed by me. It was an interesting sentiment considering I had talked to an overdose patient who seemed to think otherwise. “Have any of you reached out to the victims?” I asked.

  Dylan straightened in his chair. “No, I want to, though. I do. Lawyer says we need to keep distant. At least for now. The only way we’re getting involved is through Stonewall Investigations and whatever PIs our lawyers have.”

  Good, so the lawyer hasn’t told them to keep quiet around us.

  “Have you two made any contact?” Pierre asked, concern in his tone.

  “We have,” Fox said, being truthful. “It’s a fucked-up drug. When kids don’t OD they become addicted off the first pill, then it’s only a matter of time before they end up in a hospital bed or dead on the floor.” I could see the anger rising inside of Fox like a foreboding wave, warning of a coming tsunami. “We need to get whoever is behind this off the street.”

  Lucien sucked air between his teeth. “Well, maybe these kids shouldn’t be taking random pills, huh? Now we stand to lose everything because of some shitty kids.” He was angry, but it wasn’t the kind of anger I had felt coming from Fox. Lucien’s anger was raw; something about the way his dark eyes almost seemed to expand, getting rid of the whites around his pupils, made his anger more visceral.

  Something about him was setting off all my warning bells. I had trouble seeing him as a drug kingpin figure, but then again, Dragon was still in its early stages. Maybe with time…

  “That’s a little bit of a close-minded take on things, Lucien,” Pierre jumped in, keeping his tone light even though everyone was clearly on edge.

  “No, fuck that. Our club is closed, Pierre. It’s how we live, how we keep this all up. And how long can we survive without it, huh?”

  “If you paid more attention to the numbers,” Pierre snapped, crossing his arms, “you’d see we’re fine. And we’ll be fine. But you don’t pay attention to anything except what drink you’re having next, so I understand you not knowing.”

  Lucien pushed his chair back. For a moment, I thought he was going to get up and get into a fistfight with Pierre, who also made a move to stand. But Dylan rose before both of them, his chair sounding loud as it slid back against the floor. “Stop! The two of you. Stress is high, I get it, but we’re a family. Going at each other’s throats isn’t going to help anything.”

  That seemed to have dumped a bucket of ice water on these two hissing cats.

  “Sorry, you two are here to help and we’re putting on a show.” Dylan sat back down, shooting looks at the two men.

  “We want to help,” I said, still feeling on edge. “I was hoping I could ask some questions before we watch the security footage?” I needed to make sure I kept us on track. I didn’t like Lucien’s flare-up, nor did I like the sharp-looking knife that had been left on the table by his side, sitting on a block of wood that still held some crusty cheese squares. I didn’t expect him to use it, but the sight still had me nervous.

  After being shot in the head, I was always a little extra cautious about my surroundings.

  “If anyone can help, it’s you two,” Dylan said. Lucien rubbed at his temples, wincing. “So what do you need to know?”

  At least things were still on the rails, as shaky as the rails felt right now. Fox and I had discussed a ton of different ways this meeting could go, and the current way was the moderately pleasant one.

  Of course, there was still plenty of time for things to go south.

  I took the reins for a little bit, asking questions about the club’s infrastructure and the business plan. Fox and I had discussed this beforehand. Since I was relatively new to the team, it wouldn’t throw up as many red flags if I asked a couple of invasive questions about their business, under the guise of newbie mistake if they felt things got too personal. Armed with the understanding that there was an OD victim who’d partied with them in the VIP room, I made sure to dig deeper on that.

  “So anyone’s allowed back into the VIP room so long as they have a golden wristband?”

  “Correct,” Dylan replied. As time was ticking by, I noticed the answers being supplied getting shorter and shorter.

  I recalled seeing Matt’s golden VIP wristband back in the hospital, which added even more credence to his story.

  “Have you ever seen anyone take Dragon in the VIP room?”

  “No, we haven’t.” Dylan’s eyes were set, conviction in his answer. Either he was a spot-on liar, or he truly hadn’t seen anyone take the drug.

  I was leaning toward the former.

  “If someone does something behind our backs, that’s a different story,” Pierre offered. “It isn’t like we are babysitting them, you know?”

  Dylan nodded before checking his phone. It had been buzzing throughout our interview, but it wasn’t until now that he checked it. We must be losing him.

  “Sorry.” It was Lucien. “I’m going to have to take a break. My head feels like it’s splitting.”

  “Of course,” Dylan said first, not giving anyone else a chance to speak. He rose with Lucien and walked with him to the nearby bedroom.

  “Here, would you two like to see the security footage we have?” Pierre opened the laptop in front of him and clicked around a few times before turning the screen toward us. “Unfortunately, the tech guys corrupted something and could only recover a couple hours from a random Friday.”

  As disappointed as I felt, I couldn’t show it. Fox seemed to have a harder time controlling his emotions.

  “What the hell, Pierre, who’d you hire? A pair of preschoolers? I get kids are using tech younger and younger these days, but come on.”

  Pierre didn’t seem to like that joke as much as I did. “I’m working on hiring new ones,” Pierre answered curtly before pressing Play on his laptop, his finger slamming hard on the Enter key.

  We watched some of what was available, seeing nothing that gave us any red flags. The footage was clear and the club wasn’t dark enough to hide faces, but some of the angles did have large and obvious blind spots. Plus, with only three or so hours of footage, this was basically useless.

  “Do you have this on a flash drive?” I asked, feeling disapp
ointment give way to frustration.

  “Yes, I do. I can give you a copy.”

  “That’d be great,” I said. Fox was still crouched over the laptop, scrubbing through the little amount of footage we had. I scanned the room, seeing plenty of proof that three men were calling this hotel suite their temporary home. There were discarded piles of clothes, open pizza boxes, half-empty champagne bottles, and unwashed cups and plates piling on a tray meant to go back down to the kitchens.

  Something sitting against the far wall caught my attention. It was a large watercolor painting of… the beach? A porta-potty? It was difficult to tell—whoever painted it did a shit job. It wasn’t the painting that grabbed me though, it was the three bold letters sticking out in the corner.

  L.M.F.

  Fox coughed, looking up at me. He followed my gaze.

  “That’s a beautiful painting,” I said. “Who painted it?”

  “Oh that?” Pierre looked over his shoulder. “It’s Lucien’s. We took some art classes, and he’s been practicing ever since.” He looked back to us, hands on the laptop. “Practicing.”

  “His signature’s interesting.” I squinted my eyes, pretending as though I couldn’t clearly make it out.

  “Oh yeah, L.M.F.? Let Me Fuck?” Pierre caught us by complete surprise, his French accent only added to the words.

  “Joking, joking,” he said, laughing. “Le Mans, France. He wanted to get artsy, thought signing his name was too typical, so he chose his hometown instead.”

  Huge red flags are now on the field.

  There it was. The link we were looking for. Lucien used the same exact letters we saw in the drug dealer’s text message.

  This was big. I felt a surge of excitement rise inside me.

  I had to tamp it down. Pierre couldn’t see that Fox and I had just landed on one of our biggest leads yet. I had to remember these three were still a unit, and if one was up to something, there was a strong possibility the other two were also involved.

  Except, if Dylan were involved, why would he hire us?

  That logic may have cleared some of the suspicion off Dylan, but I still wasn’t sure where Pierre landed in all this.

  I decided to cast my net a little further. Maybe I could dig into Pierre and find out what happened that night with Matt.

  “So, what’s your criteria for choosing who gets into VIP? I’ve always wondered. Never been able to get in myself.”

  “Really? I would have thought you’d have VIP bands raining down on you.”

  I pursed my lips and shook my head.

  “Well, anyway, it really depends. Whoever we find the cutest, if I’m being honest. We like to have fun at Club Trinity.”

  “Is it usually a ton of people back there? Or are things more, like, intimate?”

  “Yeah, I would say sometimes it gets intimate. It’s very rare we have less than five partiers back there, though.”

  Perfect, Pierre was walking right into the trap I was laying out. “So you’d remember a night when it was only one person, you think?”

  “Yeah, that’s only—” Pierre must have realized where I was heading. He clammed up. I noticed Fox was no longer paying attention to the laptop, his attention focused on Pierre instead, his head tilted, his hazel eyes scanning him.

  “Pierre.” I leaned over the table. I wasn’t sure how much more time we had alone with him, and I had to take advantage. “I talked to one of the OD victims—you might not know him by name, but he knows you. All three of you. He was in the hospital from an overdose, and he said he didn’t take it himself. I need you to be honest, Pierre. Is there something going on that Fox and I need to know about? Are you taking Dragon? If you’re addicted, we can get you help.”

  “I’m not addicted to Dragon.” His eyes turned to sharp daggers. “Do you think an addict could keep this entire thing up and running?” He motioned all around him, to a room that looked like it was in a state of upheaval. “If it weren’t for me, the club would have been shut down long ago, and not because of drugs. This family would have crumbled without me. So no, no I’m not addicted to Dragon.” He stood, slamming the laptop shut. “I think you two should leave now.”

  He was defensive. We had options: listen to him and leave, or press and risk shutting all three of them out.

  “What’s going on?” Fox asked, standing. He must have decided to press.

  Good. I wanted that choice, too. I dropped my voice. “Pierre, be honest with us.” A quick glance at the bedroom door verified it was shut. “We can help.”

  Fox, in all his six-foot-something-tall glory, towered above Pierre’s smaller frame even though an entire table’s width separated them. “If you don’t want to get dragged down in this, then be up-front with us. Is anyone at Club Trinity involved with the spread of Dragon?”

  “I…” Pierre looked to the bedroom door. I felt like something was going to break, something was going to give.

  Instead, there was a loud shout followed by a terrible sounding crack. We all turned, shocked, to the bedroom door.

  It was thrown wide open, the doorknob having pierced through the drywall behind it. Dylan had been pushed to the floor, landing on his shoulder. Standing in the doorway was a very pissed-off Lucien, his face flushed red. But it wasn’t his blood pressure I was worried about.

  No. It was the onyx black pistol he was holding in his hands, raised and aimed directly at Fox.

  Something came over me. I wasn’t letting this happen, not again. I moved to the side, stepping in front of Fox, my hands raised. Fox protested behind me, but I cut him off. “Lucien, we’re out of your hair. Just put the gun down. We’ll leave.”

  “Get out.”

  The pistol, trained at my chest, momentarily motioned toward the exit before recentering on my chest. I could taste the fear, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. Not now. Had to stay confident. We were getting out of this, and we were going to do it without any guns going off.

  Fox and I slowly inched away from the table, toward the door. Dylan was standing now, moving with a shaking hand toward Lucien, love and pain in his eyes. Pierre had his back against a pillar, his eyes pinned to the pistol.

  The walk was slow, every inch feeling like a mile. Every step of the way, the pistol followed us, like it was guiding us. I couldn’t stand in front of Fox anymore, so the terrorizing black hole of the barrel jumped between the both of us, Lucien’s eyes filled with anger.

  “You two have the balls to come in here and start accusing us of this shit? As if we haven’t been through enough!”

  “Lucien, please. Put the pistol down,” said Dylan, his hand on Lucien’s wrist now.

  The pistol was… wait a second.

  For Christ’s sake, that wasn’t a pistol. Lucien was threatening us with a damn BB gun.

  I dropped my hands to my side. The door was a hand’s length away. I reached out and turned the knob, the sound seeming to throw Lucien out of his crazy daze. He dropped the BB gun down to his side but kept his eyes glued on us until we had gone and shut the door.

  In the hallway, both of us took deep breaths. Fox reached over and massaged one of my shoulders, the touch welcome. Especially after that roller coaster we were on. When I saw the gun, my first instinct was to protect Fox. I didn’t think twice about it. And with the way he was struggling to get in front of me, I knew he was feeling the same instinct.

  That meant something. I thought about it on the elevator ride back down, which had us stopping on five different floors, picking up a few different families who got in with their bathing suits and suntan-lotion-smeared cheeks without a clue in the world about what Fox and I had just experienced.

  In the elevator lobby, I had to laugh as we filed out behind a group of kids chatting excitedly about the Disney trip they had just come from.

  “What a fucking whirlwind,” Fox said. We were on the street, looking up at the hotel where all our answers seemed to be. “This is going to be difficult.”

  28 Gabriel “Fox” Morr
ison

  The courtyard at our Stonewall Investigations office was completely transformed, thanks to Andrew and Holly, who had spent weeks putting it all together. There were twinkling amber fairy lights strung up and through a beautiful ivy-covered trellis that Andrew had personally ordered and oversaw the construction of. A big banner hung in the center of the courtyard read “The Stonewall Family is Growing.” A bold and bright rainbow streaked through the center of the banner. There was an open bar area with a bartender wearing a very fitted white button-up shirt so that his biceps bulged at the seams of his sleeves. He was charismatic and, most importantly, knew how to create some excellent drinks.

  Next to the bar was a photo booth inspired by an old-timey detective aesthetic. The oversized brown and black hats Andrew had talked about were there, along with Sherlock pipes and comically large magnifying glasses. Currently, Penny Navarro, one of the detectives who had come in shortly after me, was trying to convince Beckham to don the hat and trench coat for a photo. She was doing this as she spoke from the side of her mouth, the Sherlock pipe hanging out the other end.

  She was a funny one, and also a tough-as-nails detective. She may have had a genuine smile and approachable eyes, but she turned into an iron fort the second she needed to. I had seen it when one of her clients turned on her, upset with the results she had delivered.

  Some people react adversely to the truth. In this case, her client got physical and started to swing. I’d heard the commotion and hurried to her office, only to find Penny holding the man against her desk with his arms twisted behind his back, his head pressed against the table, Penny smiling at me without a brunette strand of hair out of place.

  I was looking forward to tonight. After the fucking disaster of an interview we had yesterday, a party was needed.

  And a party with an open bar? Shit, that was exactly what we needed.