by Don Winslow
Harold asks, “What do you want to do with this one?”
“Bring him.”
They haul the guy out to the car and shove him into the backseat. Harold runs him on the system and comes up with outstanding warrants for parole violation and possession with intent to sell. “What did I tell you about lying to me?”
“Okay, I have warrants,” Mauricio says.
“Least of your worries,” Wilmer says. “We’re taking you to see Jimmy McNabb.”
The two cars are parked in an alley over in Algiers.
Jimmy has Mauricio pushed against the front fender.
Angelo sits on the hood, looking at Mauricio’s phone. “What’s your pass code?”
“I don’t have to tell you that,” Mauricio says. “I know my rights.”
“The man knows his rights, Jimmy,” Angelo says.
“Tell me more,” Jimmy says to Mauricio.
“Huh?”
“About your rights,” Jimmy says. “Tell me about them.”
“I have the right to remain silent. . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“I have the right to an attorney,” Mauricio says. “If I can’t afford one, one will be appointed for me.”
“Can you afford one?” Jimmy asks.
“No.”
“Then I appoint me,” Jimmy says. “And as your attorney, I advise you to give us your pass code before I have Harold there hold your hand in the car door while I kick it shut. Take my advice, Mauricio.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Which hand do you jerk off with, Mauricio?” Angelo asks. “Whichever it is, tell him the other one, because he really would do it.”
“One, two, three, four, five, six,” Mauricio says.
“Seriously?” Jimmy asks.
“Easy to remember.”
“This is what I hate about tweakers,” Jimmy says. “You’re all so fucking stupid.”
“It works,” Angelo says. He scans through the phone. “Apparently Mauricio’s clever code word for meth is ‘taquitos.’ ‘I have the dinero. I’m coming over for a quarter of taquitos.’”
“I’m kind of hungry, I could go for some taquitos,” Jimmy says. “Mauricio, you don’t mind if we text your dealer and set up a meeting, do you? That wouldn’t violate your rights?”
Mauricio pouts. “I guess I don’t have no choice.”
Angelo says, “The guy texted back ‘the usual place.’ Where’s that?”
Mauricio doesn’t answer.
“Open the car door,” Jimmy says.
Mauricio gives them an address on Slidell Street in Algiers.
“And a name,” Jimmy says.
Fidel.
On the drive over to Algiers, Jimmy’s phone rings.
“McNabb.”
“You don’t know me,” the man says. “I’m one of Charlie’s people. The guy you’re looking for is named Jose Quintero. He was there.”
“You have a location on him?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Tell Charlie I said thanks,” Jimmy says. “As a friend.”
Wilmer raps on Fidel’s door.
“¿Quién es?”
“Es Mauricio.”
The door opens, but the chain lock stays on.
Harold kicks it open.
Jimmy goes through as Fidel is trying to get up off his back. Jimmy doesn’t let him but kicks him square in the chin, putting him down again.
And out.
When Fidel comes to, he sees Jimmy and Wilmer on the sofa, drinking his beer. Angelo stands between him and the next room, Harold blocks the front door.
A pistol—a piece-of-shit old .25—is set on the coffee table.
“Time to wake up,” Jimmy says. “You got enough meth in here to guarantee you fifteen to thirty. But you’re also within two blocks of an elementary school, Fidel, so that gets you an LWOP. Life without parole.”
“You dropped that shit on me!”
“Yeah, I’d go with that,” Jimmy says. “See what the jury says. Or we can just walk away, pretend none of this unpleasantness ever happened.”
“What do you want?” Fidel asks.
“Jose Quintero.”
“I’ll do the time.”
“See, I thought of that,” Jimmy says. “You might be more afraid of what Oscar might do to you, or to your family, whatever. The pistol on the table already has your prints on it. I’ll put a bullet in your head and that gun in your cold, dead hand.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’m Danny McNabb’s brother.”
Fidel’s eyes get wide.
“Yeah, you recognize the name,” Jimmy says. “You still think I won’t do it?”
“I swear,” Fidel says. “I never touched your brother. All I did was hold the camera.”
“That’s all you did?” Jimmy asks. “You dumb fuck, I didn’t think you were there.”
“I swear!”
“Well, if that’s all you did,” Jimmy says, “just tell me where we can find Quintero.”
Fidel tells him.
Jimmy takes the .25 off the table and shoots Fidel in the head.
“Another drug deal gone bad,” Jimmy says.
They leave the house.
One down.
Jolene lives on Constance Street in the Channel, within walking distance of the hospital where she works. She comes to the door in a robe, drying her hair with a towel.
She’s a classic Cajun—long, lustrous black hair, eyes that Jimmy swears are violet.
As beautiful as Jimmy remembers.
“I just got out of the shower,” she says. “Come on in.”
Jimmy steps inside.
The front room is a small kitchen.
“Eva asked me to come over,” Jimmy says, “see how you’re doing.”
She laughs. “How do you think I’m doing? I’m a mess. I’m destroyed. You want a drink or something?”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“Yeah, I own a clock, Jimmy,” she says. She opens a cupboard over the sink and takes down a bottle of Jim Beam. “I just got off two hours ago. Busy night in the E-Room. Couple of stabbings, a shooting, a two-year-old shook into trauma by the boyfriend. You want a drink or not?”
“I’ll take a drink.”
Jolene pours two fingers into a squat glass and another for herself into an old jelly jar. Hands him his and sits down at the kitchen table.
Jimmy sits across from her.
“You think Danny ever knew about us?” she asks.
“We were over long before you and Danny.”
“High-school sweethearts.”
“Is that what we were?” Jimmy asks.
“Nah, more like fuckbuddies,” Jolene says. “And it didn’t end in high school, Jimmy.”
“I don’t think Danny knew,” Jimmy says. “He never would have . . .”
He lets it go.
“Got up in there where his big brother been?” she asks.
“Jesus, Jo.”
She drinks and then says, “He wanted to be just like you, you know. I’m glad he wasn’t . . . just like you. Would you have come to our wedding, Jimmy?”
“I’d have been the best man.”
“Stood there beside your brother and watched my daddy walk me down the aisle,” she asks. “Give me to your brother?”
“Yeah.” Wouldn’t have been the first time. He remembers when she and Danny met, Danny’s birthday party at Sweeny’s. One of those love-at-first-sight things. Jimmy saw it in his eyes, and in hers. He looked at her like, Olé, darlin’, pass on through. You and me were never serious anyway.
“We’re just Yats,” she says. “New Orleans white trash. Danny was better than that. He was better than us.”
“He was.”
She polishes off her drink. Gets up from the chair.
“Fuck me, Jimmy.”
“What?”
She straddles him and unties her robe. It slips open. “Just fuck me. I want you to anger-fuck m
e.”
“Stop it.”
She reaches down and unzips him. “What’s the matter? Can’t do it? Feel all guilty?”
“Fuck you.”
“There’s my Jimmy.”
He shoves into her.
Not gently.
Lifts her up, still inside her, pushes her into the wall and fucks her. The table rattles. The jelly jar falls off and breaks on the floor.
She grips his back, digs her nails into him, and cries when she comes.
He holds her against the wall as she sobs into his neck.
When he finally sets her down, he says, “Be careful. You’re barefoot. Don’t cut yourself on the broken glass.”
Jimmy goes to the house, and Landreau calls him into the office.
“Sit down,” Landreau says.
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“Suit yourself,” Landreau says. “Homicide caught a Honduran meth dealer killed over on Slidell. Looks like a suicide, but it might have been other-assisted.”
“Oh.”
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Landreau asks. “Guy named Fidel Mantilla?”
“Garbage taking out garbage,” Jimmy says. “Even better when the garbage takes itself out. In any case, NHI.”
No Humans Involved.
Landreau looks at his desktop for a few seconds and then asks, “How are you doing, Jimmy?”
“Fine.”
“I mean with your brother’s death.”
“You mean my brother’s murder?” Jimmy asks.
“Okay.”
“I’m fine.” He stares at Landreau, who stares back.
The boss knows that Jimmy killed Mantilla.
He also knows he can’t prove it.
“Well, if you hear anything,” Landreau says, “share it with Homicide.”
“I’ll do that,” Jimmy says.
That night Jimmy’s phone rings.
It’s Angelo.
They have Quintero.
Jimmy says he’ll be right there.
He meets them at a recycling center in Barrio Lempira off Willow and Erato that belongs to an associate of Charlie Corello’s.
Angelo opens the trunk of his car.
Quintero is inside, cuffed by the wrists and ankles, a gag stuffed in his mouth. He’s a skinny guy, young, with long black hair.
“Take him out,” Jimmy says.
Harold and Wilmer grab Quintero, lift him out of the trunk, and stand him in front of Jimmy.
“I’m Danny McNabb’s brother,” Jimmy says. “Just so you know I’m not fucking around with you.”
Quintero’s eyes show the fear they should.
They drag him over to the back of the yard. An industrial trash compactor—a big, ugly green machine—is set along the edge of the fence. Jimmy finds a box of cans, throws them into the compactor. “Watch this, Jose.”
Jimmy flips the switch.
The compactor grinds and squeezes the cans flat. A horrible crunching, metallic sound that lasts ten long seconds.
“Put him in,” Jimmy says.
Harold and Wilmer lift the struggling, wiggling, moaning Quintero into the compactor.
“I know you were there when they tortured Danny,” Jimmy says. “I know there was one other and Diaz. But I know you didn’t give the order, so I’ll give you one chance—I want a name and a location.”
He pulls the gag from Quintero’s mouth.
“I don’t know where Diaz is,” Quintero says. He starts to cry.
“Give me the other name,” Jimmy says. “Last chance.”
“Rico,” Jose says. “Rico Pineda.”
“Where do I find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good-bye,” Jimmy says.
“He has a black girlfriend!” Quintero says. “Keisha. She dances at the Golden Door. In the Ninth.”
“You know it?” Jimmy asks Angelo.
“Yeah.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “You know what I think? I think you’re lying. I don’t think you were there at all. I think you’re making this shit up to save your ass. Adios, Jose.”
“No!” Quintero says. “I was there! I swear!”
“Prove it.”
Quintero is breathing hard, hyperventilating. “Your brother, he wore a medal on a chain around his neck, right? A saint.”
“Which saint?” Jimmy asks.
“St. Jude!”
“I guess you’re telling the truth after all,” Jimmy says. “I guess you were there.”
He flips the switch.
Quintero screams.
Jimmy gets back in his car.
Two down, he thinks.
Angelo sits at the bar and watches Keisha writhe on the stage.
She’s pretty.
And young, just nineteen.
Younger than Rico.
They ran his name—he’s thirty-eight, with a sheet. Came in after Katrina to do drywalling, found it more lucrative to do stickups and extortion. Got out from a five-spot in Angola just a year ago and then apparently caught on as muscle with Diaz.
Jimmy had wanted to go right at him, but Angelo persuaded him otherwise.
“You’re white,” Angelo said.
“I am?”
“Yes,” Angelo said. “A white cop at a titty bar in the Ninth? They’ll make you right away. Let me do the approach.”
He smiles at Keisha, who wriggles over to him and bends down. He sticks a five in her G-string, and she dances away. But he keeps his eyes on her and none of the other girls, and when the song is done, she comes off the stage to his stool.
“You want to go to the VIP Room, darlin’?” she asks.
“How much that cost me?”
“Fifty and a tip if I’m real nice to you.”
“How nice can you be?” Angelo asks.
“Real nice, we go into a booth,” Keisha says.
“Let’s go.” He peels three twenties out of his pocket. “Down payment.”
She leads him upstairs to the VIP Room, sits him down, and starts grinding on him.
“You big,” she says.
“Gettin’ bigger, darlin’,” Angelo says. “You said somethin’ about a booth.”
“Another hundred.”
He gives the money. She gets up, walks to a curtained booth, and crooks her finger at him. Angelo follows her into the little room and sits down on the bench. She kneels in front of him.
He leans down, tilts her chin up, and shows her his badge.
“Shit,” she says. “Please, I can’t do another bust.”
“It ain’t that, Keisha.”
“How you know my name?”
“I know all about you,” Angelo says. “I know you have two priors, I know you live on Egania Street, I know you got a man lying low there with you. Rico Pineda.”
She starts to pull away, but Angelo grabs her wrist. Says, “We’re going to take him. Without you we take him hard and he dies. With you we take him soft and he lives.”
“I can’t do that. I love him.”
“More than you love your daughter?” Angelo asks. “You have a three-year-old living with a known felon. Drugs in the house. If I come over with CPS, they take DeAnne from you, she goes into the system.”
“You motherfucker.”
“Best you keep that in mind, too, girl,” Angelo says. “You help me, I have bus tickets for you and DeAnne up to Baton Rouge, go live with your mama for a while. But you gotta make up your mind right now, because one way or the other we taking Rico.”
He lets go of her wrist.
Jimmy turns around to look at Keisha in the backseat. Three in the morning, they’re parked down the block from the shotgun house she rents.
“Tell me again what you’re going to do,” he says.
“I’m going to go in,” Keisha says. “He probably in bed in the back room. If he isn’t, I take him in there.”
“And . . .”
“I leave the door unlocked behind me.”
&nb
sp; “Where does DeAnne sleep?” Angelo asks.
“In the front room on the couch.”
“We’ll try not to scare her,” Angelo says.
“We’ll give you five minutes,” Jimmy says. “Then we’re coming in.”
“Keisha,” Angelo says, “if you warn him and he runs, someone will be out back and shoot him. And you can kiss your daughter good-bye, because you’ll never see her again.”
“I know.”
“Where does he usually keep the gun?” Angelo asks.
“Under his pillow.”
“He reaches for it, he’s dead,” Jimmy says.
“I’ll stop him,” she says. “But . . .”
“What?” Jimmy asks.
“You won’t hurt him, will you?” Keisha asks.
“No,” Angelo says. “We just want to talk with him.”
She gets out of the car.
“Do you trust her?” Jimmy asks.
“Motherfucker, I don’t even trust you,” Angelo says.
“Remember,” Jimmy says, “I need him alive.”
They wait the five and go.
The door is unlocked.
Jimmy goes in, sees the little girl sound asleep on the couch, her arm wrapped around a pink stuffed elephant.
Gun drawn, Jimmy moves toward the back room.
Angelo moves along the opposite wall.
Wilmer blocks the front door, Harold is outside in the back.
The bedroom door is cracked open.
Jimmy gently opens it.
Rico is naked on the bed, a big, thick man with tattoos on his arm and chest. He sleeps like a convict, wakes up at the slightest noise, and goes for his gun.
Keisha has a death grip on it.
“Fucking bitch. Puta.”
“Roll over,” Jimmy says. “Put your hands behind your back.”
Rico does it, but he’s still focused on Keisha. As Jimmy cuffs him, he says, “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill that fucking brat, too.”
“Shut your mouth,” Angelo says.
He goes through Rico’s pants, grabs his phone, then takes the gun from Keisha.
He and Jimmy haul Rico up by the forearms.
“Can I at least get some clothes on?” Rico asks.
“You won’t need ’em,” Jimmy says.
They pull him into the front room.
DeAnne is sitting up, gripping the elephant, tears running down her cheeks. She’s terrified.
“It’s all right, sugar,” Angelo says. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
