by Joel Goldman
“What are you, an ex-cop, a lawyer, a shrink, or just a guy who sells fruit?”
“My father is a psychiatrist and my mother is a psychologist, which means every time I farted when I was growing up, I got analyzed. I broke their hearts when I applied to the police academy instead of Harvard. I spent six years on patrol, another ten as a detective, went to law school at night, passed the bar but never practiced. Couldn’t see selling slices of my life measured in tenths of an hour. Stayed a cop and ended up a hostage negotiator until I quit the force and opened up my own fruit stand.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“They gave me a choice. Quit or get fired.”
“Why?”
“When the fruit is rotten, someone has to take the fall. It was my turn, which was only fair because it was my fault. Two people died. One of them was a hostage, and one of them was a cop.”
“But they still use you as a freelancer?”
“The department ran out of negotiators, which made it easy for them to forgive even if they didn’t forget. Kate told me what she knows and thinks she knows about your case. I need you to tell me the rest.”
I started to talk, but my vocal cords froze, my chin bobbing, my torso following suit, the words finally coming in a stutter.
“It’s not a short story. Be better if we stopped somewhere for a few minutes.”
“No problem. Mendez won’t start without us.”
“Are we on a schedule?”
“Anytime after dark. I’ll send him a text message when we’re ready.”
“You must be good if you’ve got him sitting by the phone waiting for you to call.”
“I let him pick the place as long as I got to pick the time. Turf is a big issue for him. It’s one of the ways he defines himself. I’m not into real estate, but going in unprepared can get you killed. This way he’ll feel like he’s in control and we’ll be ready.”
A powerful spasm jerked me forward, bending me at the waist, twisting me clockwise. I grunted and braced myself, one hand flattened on the dash, the other on the passenger door, taking a deep breath when it passed, looking at Quinn, wondering if he was having second thoughts. He didn’t blink, smile, or frown, his eyes doing all the work, boring in, deciding how, not whether. I was another problem to be solved, more water off a duck’s back.
“You have some place in mind we can go?”
“Yeah. You look like you could use some religion.”
He parked behind a small, two-story church in Northeast, the first floor ringed in limestone, the second in dark red brick. There were no lights on and no other cars in the one-row parking lot. I followed him out of the car to the back door where there was a keypad lock. He punched in a code and opened the door, turning on lights as we walked down a narrow hall.
“Let me guess,” I said, “you’re a preacher in your spare time.”
“No chance. The only thing worse than the pay is the hours. This church has a small congregation. The building is only open on Sunday and Tuesday. I did some work for them a while back.”
“And they let you use the church for client meetings?”
“No, but I was with the pastor one time when he punched in the code for the back door.”
We came to the end of the hall, and he opened another door, turning on a single ceiling fixture, casting faint light and long shadows on the bare-bones sanctuary with its hard-backed wooden pews, scuffed and scarred. Stained-glass windows lined the walls, one of them broken out and covered over with plywood. There was a shallow stage with a portable lectern and two leather chairs immediately to our right.
“Take a seat,” he said, pointing to the chairs, “and preach to me.”
My chair was soft, the room quiet and peaceful. It wasn’t a cure for tics, but it was soothing, my body and brain easing as I gave Quinn the gospel, breaking it down into the books of Chase, Martin, Crenshaw, and Staley.
“I think you’re right about Jimmy Martin,” Quinn said. “He’s caught in the crossfire between two sides. Someone is using his kids to keep him quiet, and the other is trying to kill him. If he talks, his kids die. If he dies, his kids die. If that’s the world you’re living in, solitary confinement looks pretty damn good. Nobody goes to that much trouble for a truckload of copper.”
“But they would for three quarters of a million dollars in guns.”
He nodded, opened his phone, sent Cesar Mendez a text, and looked at me. “One hour.”
Chapter Sixty-eight
Quinn drove east on Independence Avenue, slowing down as we approached Roni Chase’s office. Night had fallen, and it was dark and deserted, the adjacent storefronts shut down for the day.
“Turn in here. That’s Roni’s office,” I said. “Circle the building. I’ll check the door.”
“Why?”
“I want to be certain she’s not lying on the floor with a bullet in the back of her head.”
The door was locked. I peered in the windows, but there was nothing to see, just chairs, her desk, papers stacked in neat piles from one side to the other, her computer monitor turned off, no dead bodies in sight, a light on in the back. Quinn pulled up, leaning out his window.
“The back door is a piece of cake. You want to have a look around?”
“We have time?”
He looked at his watch. “We’ve got fifty-five minutes. If we can’t toss her office in ten, we should hang it up.”
Quinn drove, I walked, and he had the door open by the time I caught up to him, his canvas bag open at his feet. He pulled out two halogen penlights, handed one to me, zippered the bag, and put it back in the SUV.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Missing pieces.”
“Oh, missing pieces. That’s helpful.”
I turned off the light in the back of Roni’s office, crossed to the front, lowered and closed the blinds on the storefront glass and turned on my penlight.
“If Roni is protecting Brett Staley, she probably knows where he is. We’re looking for anything that can tell us where he’s hiding.”
“You think she’s part of this?”
“No. I think Brett is and she’s helping him.”
“Then that makes her part of this.”
“Not in the way you mean it. Whoever killed Nick Staley stuck around in the grocery for a reason. The only reason that fits is that the killer was waiting for Brett. Which means Brett didn’t kill his father or Frank Crenshaw. I think Roni is protecting Brett in the truest sense. She’s trying to keep him alive.”
Quinn’s cell phone beeped. He read the screen. “Text message from Mendez. He moved up the meeting time. He says if we’re not there in ten minutes we can forget it.”
“How far away are we?”
“Ten minutes.”
“I’d say Mendez just put your orange peel in his pocket.” I took a quick glance at Roni’s desk, sweeping everything into a wastebasket and tucking it under my arm. “Let’s roll.”
Quinn barreled onto Independence Avenue, fish-tailing and slaloming through eastbound traffic.
“Independence Avenue becomes Winner Road about four miles east of here just before we hit what’s left of the old steel mill,” he said.
“I’ve driven past it. There’s a building a couple of blocks long that’s nothing but a bunch of broken-out windows and aluminum siding.”
“That’s the billet yard where they stored steel rods and bars. Access is off a side street called Ewing. Winner bridges the steel yard like an overpass. Ewing runs parallel and one-way east down a steep hill. The gate to the yard is at the bottom of the hill underneath Winner.”
“We’re meeting him at the billet yard?”
“No. There are two layers of ten-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire to keep people out. The yard is abandoned. No need for on-site security with that fence. We’re meeting Mendez at the bottom of the hill beneath the overpass.”
“Is that the only way in?”
“There’s a r
oad that runs north and south along the yard called Winchester. There’s nothing else down there, except a couple of old machine shops and a few broken-down abandoned houses.”
“Perfect for Mendez. The overhead traffic muffles any noise. He can put people at the top of the hill on Ewing and down along Winchester in case anyone gets close. This time of night, we should be the only people within a mile. No one will hear or see us. We should have gotten there earlier.”
“And done what? Set up an ambush? We’re there to talk to the man, not take him down.”
“He made sure of that, moving up the timetable.”
“This was never about gaining a tactical advantage. There’re only two of us, and I don’t know how many of them. This is about going in and getting what information we can without giving him a reason to kill us. You want to take a pass, now is the time to tell me.”
I shook my head. “This is my deal. Not yours. Drop me off. I’ll call you when it’s time to pick me up.”
He laughed. “I’ve met Kate Scranton one time, but that was enough to know I don’t want her coming after me the rest of my life.”
Two minutes later, we stopped at the top of the hill. A burly figure stood five feet back of the curb, camouflaged by darkness, one arm at his side, his hand tucked behind him, no doubt holding a gun. He motioned us down the hill with his other hand.
Quinn let the SUV coast down the hill, headlights picking up the sign above the gate, SHEFFIELD INDUSTRIAL STATION, GATE NO. 2. Another solitary figure stood in front of the gate, hands in his jacket pocket. Rectangular pillars supporting the overpass broke the hill into four segments. The man at the bottom of the hill waved at us, gesturing that we were to pull over into the center, the pillars funneling us toward him. When we were halfway down the hill, he raised his hand, telling us to stop.
High-beam headlights flashed behind us, filling the cab of the SUV. I looked over my shoulder, squinting at three cars that had been parked at the top of the hill beneath the overpass, invisible to us until now. The cars crept closer, the center car holding course, the other two flanking us. Only then did a Lexus sedan emerge from Winchester, passing the man at the gate, blocking us in, its high-beams adding to the blinding glare.
The driver got out of each car on our flanks, opening Quinn’s door and mine, motioning us to get out. No one had spoken a word, but there was no doubt who was in charge and what we were supposed to do. They closed our doors, turned us toward the SUV, and made us spread, patting us down and taking our guns and holding them up to the Lexus.
The lights on the Lexus went off, the other cars doing the same. I blinked in the sudden darkness, aware that the passenger door on the Lexus had opened and someone was getting out, my eyes too dilated to capture any other details. I felt a hand on my back shove me toward the Lexus.
There were seven of them, the guy at the top of the hill, the one at the gate, the drivers of the three cars, and the two in the Lexus. They were half my age, faster, and stronger, no doubt armed and anxious to prove themselves in a fight even if it wasn’t a fair one.
I looked to my left, expecting to see Quinn, but he wasn’t there. Doors on the car next to Quinn opened and closed, the engine racing as it sped away, Quinn staring at me from the rear passenger seat, a gun pressed against his cheek. The numbers had changed, five against one for me and two against one for Quinn. I didn’t like either of our odds.
Cesar Mendez stepped toward me as one of the other men handed him the keys to the SUV.
“You wanted to talk,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
Chapter Sixty-nine
“Where’d they take Quinn?”
“That’s Quinn’s problem, not yours. Luis will take care of him. He’s a very safe driver.”
Mendez leaned against the front of the Lexus, his hands clasped below his belt, a casual pose, like a sleepy-eyed snake, letting me know that he held my life in his hands and didn’t much care whether I lived or died. Guys like him that held back always blew hotter when they finally cut loose. It wasn’t much different than what happened to me when I tried to contain the shakes except when I blew, I didn’t ice-pick, rape, or strangle anyone. I just fell apart.
“It’s your problem if you want any information from me.”
“Amigo, you’re the one who asked for this meeting.”
“And you said yes because you need me.”
He spat. “I don’t need you, and if I did, I’d take what I need and believe me, you wouldn’t turn me down.”
We’d skipped hello and gone straight to the pissing match. Two things were likely to happen if I didn’t change the conversation. The first was that I’d run out of piss. I was unarmed, alone, and holding a hand that was more bluff than high hole cards. The second was that I would come undone, shake, spasm, and crumble, getting nothing more for my trouble than a kick in the head. The first-round tremors, the little ones, were flickering through me like internal static electricity not yet rippling along the surface. I put my hands in my pockets, pressing down to anchor myself, my right hand bumping into the orange.
“You hungry?” I asked Mendez.
“What? Are you crazy, man? Asking me am I hungry.”
I pulled the orange out of my pocket, tossing it to him. “Just asking. You see, that orange is the solution to the problem you and I’ve got.”
He grabbed the orange with one hand, slamming it onto the hood of Quinn’s SUV, drew a knife, stabbed the orange, and dragged it across the hood, the blade gouging the paint, leaving the orange to wobble and ooze.
“You are the one with the problem, dragging my butt out here to play games.”
The flat thud of the orange being crushed against the hood together with the steel-on-steel screech of the knife scraping against the paint dropped the flag for the gremlins waiting to race through my body. I yelped like I was the one who’d been stabbed, my knees giving way, my upper body banging against the front grill of the SUV as I slid down against it, squatting on the ground, grasping the bumper to keep from falling over.
Mendez stepped back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I laughed, gasping. “That was Quinn’s orange, and he’s going to be really pissed off that you killed it.”
Two of his men grabbed me under my arms, hoisting me to my feet, letting go before my legs were ready to stand on their own, grabbing me again when I started to melt. Mendez stepped into me, clamping his hand around my throat, lifting my chin, starring down at me.
“I got no time to play games with you.”
I wrapped my hands around his wrist. “It’s not a game. I shake. I can’t help it.”
He tipped his head at the two men holding me up, all three letting me go at once, backing away as I squatted, folding over, my forehead touching the ground, my hands out in front of me like I should have been facing east.
“We’re out of here,” Mendez said.
I pushed myself up, grabbed the SUV’s bumper, then the grill, then the hood, leaning against the car, trying to catch my breath. Mendez was watching me from behind the Lexus’s open door.
“Hang on. I know about the guns.”
“What guns?” Mendez asked.
“The stolen guns you’re supposed to be smuggling to Nuestra Familia in Mexico.”
He came back slowly, reluctant to get too close, as if he might catch whatever I had—the one time ignorance of my disorder had worked to my advantage. He drew a gun, his outstretched arm bringing the barrel a foot from my face.
“I give you one chance to tell me what you got to tell me, or I make sure you don’t shake no more.”
I took deep breaths, trying to smooth out the tremors, holding one hand up, buying time, stuttering.
“Nuestra Familia sent you here. They need guns. You send them what they need.”
Mendez came closer, screwing the barrel of his gun under my chin. “You made a big mistake getting into my business.”
“You made a bigger mistake trusting Brett Staley. Now you can’t
find him, but I can.”
He cocked his head to one side, easing back on the gun.
“Tell me where he is and you get to go home.”
I took another deep breath, my vocal cords relaxing, my legs holding steady, letting me stand straight. “First, we talk.”
“About what?”
“The guns.”
He waved his gun at me. “This is the only gun you need to know about.”
“Believe me, it’s got my full attention, but if anything happens to Quinn or me, you’re going to have the cops, the FBI, and the ATF climbing up your ass and coming out of your ears. Work with me and you may get some breathing room, make things right with the folks back home.”
His eyes opened wide, his brow popping up. “You’re full of shit.”
“I don’t think so. Five gun dealers have been robbed in the last three months. You were supposed to ship those guns to Mexico, but something went wrong and the guns are still in Kansas City, which can’t make Nuestra too happy. Whatever went wrong, Brett Staley is part of it. That’s why you’ve been trying to run him down, and that’s what got Eberto Garza killed. In the meantime, ATF is all over you.”
“What do you want?”
“Brett Staley.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to protect a friend of mine, a woman. I can’t do that as long as Staley is on the street.”
“How do I know you aren’t working with ATF?”
“One of their agents, Braylon Jennings, tried leaning on me, but I don’t belong to anyone. He knows more about you than I do, and once Brett is taken care of, I never heard of you.”
“You saying you’d forget about the guns as long as your friend is okay?”
“I’m saying the woman is my problem, the guns are your problem, and Brett Staley is the solution to both our problems.”
He thought for a moment. “You got questions, ask me. Then you tell me where to find Brett Staley.”
“You do know him?”
He nodded.
“From his father’s grocery?”
