Faz pulled himself up, swallowing the pain. “You know what, Jimmy? I actually liked your old man.”
Little Jimmy turned his gaze to Faz, perhaps waiting for the punch line. He kept the barrel of the gun pointed at the back of Francisco’s head.
“I didn’t agree with what he did, but he had his priorities in the right place. He took care of his family and he took care of his community. Under different circumstances he might have been a politician, and a good one.” He smiled. Jimmy looked perplexed, confused, hopefully not more pissed off.
The man at the back of the room interrupted, his voice and his actions more animated. “¡Tenemos que irnos ahora, Jimmy! ¡Todavía tenemos tiempo!”
“You know why? You want to know why they killed him?” Faz said, drawing Jimmy’s attention back to him. “They killed him because they knew he was his own man, that he did things his own way, that he cared about his people. Nobody told Big Jimmy what to do. Not even the cartel. That’s why they killed him. You know what else? He never let his emotions color his decisions. That’s why he was such a good businessman. But what about you? What would your father think of you? What would Big Jimmy think of you right now?”
Little Jimmy didn’t answer. But Faz had his attention. It was one thing to say that the cartel did not respect him. It was another to say his father would not respect him.
“Maybe I won’t be the one putting the cuffs on your wrists, but kill me and I’m still going to be the reason they nail your ass. They’re going to come after you, Jimmy. You know they will. You’re letting your emotions make decisions for you. You think my partner is going to let this rest, ever? He’s Sicilian. Kill me and he’s going to make it his life’s mission to bring you down. You’re not going to be able to take a shit without him being there to watch you wipe your ass. You think you’re going to go back to Mexico and live like a king? Think again. How do you think your pals in Mexico are going to like you when they find out you have a detective on your ass twenty-four seven because you killed a cop? You’re going to become a liability. And you know what they do to liabilities . . .” Faz smiled. “So if Del doesn’t kill you”—he looked at the others—“all of you, they will. You’re going to feed me to the pigs? Those pigs won’t even sniff me after they’ve eaten all of you.”
Jimmy redirected the gun at Faz, but Faz could see that he was having misgivings. The others, too, had misgivings about killing him, about the ramifications if Jimmy did so.
“Jimmy, no!” Hector said.
“Shut up.”
“We have to go. Now,” Hector said.
Another man stepped into the office speaking clipped Spanish. Though Faz could not understand what he’d said, he could tell it was urgent, that something was happening. The others also urged Little Jimmy to move. Hector grabbed his arm.
Jimmy looked at Faz. Hector continued to pull on him. The man at the door yelled Jimmy’s name. Whatever was happening, it was reaching a critical stage.
Jimmy grunted, swore, then turned and hurried out the door.
Faz exhaled a slow breath, but this was not the time to get cocky. He considered Francisco. “Hey, are you conscious? Hey, can you hear me?”
Francisco slowly turned his head.
“Did you understand what the man at the door just said?”
Francisco spoke in a whisper. “The trucks are here. The drugs are being loaded for shipment. They need to leave.” His head again slumped.
“Who did you text?” Faz asked. “Hey, who did you text?”
Faz heard sounds outside, men yelling in both English and Spanish just before their voices were drowned out by the thumping of helicopter blades slicing the stagnant air. A powerful beam of light pierced the window of the outer office, and slatted shadows undulated on the adjacent wall.
CHAPTER 56
Himani raised her head, but her eyes remained focused on the grave. “Nikhil had nothing to do with this,” she said.
“Then tell me what you did,” Tracy said, not believing her, but wanting to lock down whatever story Himani chose to tell.
“I don’t remember what I did, Detective. I just recall Vita falling to the ground, not moving.” Himani reached up and touched her head. “She had blood on the side of her head where I hit her. I remember blood on the rock, and on my hands. I dropped it, somewhere in the bushes.” She held out her arm in a dismissive gesture.
“What did you do next?”
“I wanted to run from the park into the street to get help, but . . .”
She was lying. She didn’t act alone. Nikhil had been there. “How did you carry the body?” Tracy asked.
Another shrug. “I don’t know how. I just did.”
Tracy did not doubt Himani knew of the hole, possibly from one of her nightly walks. But she did doubt that Himani had carried Kavita’s body by herself. It was far more likely she sent Nikhil to bring his sister home, that she had told Nikhil what his sister had become, and he had followed Kavita from the hotel and killed her in the park. In his panic he’d run to his mother, and she had worked to protect her son. It didn’t explain why Kavita had come to the park; that was a question to which they might never know the answer. Kaylee Wright would determine whether any of the imprints around the hole in the ground matched Nikhil’s shoes or maybe his mother’s.
“I didn’t expect you to find her,” Himani continued. “When you came to our home and said you had traced her phone, I knew it was just a matter of time.”
“Did you or Nikhil take her burner phone?” Tracy asked.
Himani turned and looked at Tracy. “I’ve lost a daughter, Detective. I won’t lose a son.”
Maybe not, Tracy thought, though that would be determined in time. “You can’t protect him.”
She shrugged. “We shall see what I can do.”
So be it. “Turn around,” Tracy said, removing the handcuffs from her belt. “I’m going to handcuff you. Then I’m going to read you your rights.”
“You see, Detective, I was right,” Himani said.
“Really? About what?”
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand because you’re not a mother.”
“Not yet,” she said. “And never like you.”
CHAPTER 57
Kins was about to rush for the knife when Sam spoke again. “Put down the knife, Nikhil. Please!”
Tears streamed down Nikhil’s face. Kins watched the knife, watched to see whether the blade drew more blood. Nikhil’s arm collapsed, as if he had been holding a heavy weight and could no longer bear the burden. The knife clattered onto the table and fell to the floor.
Sam moved to his brother. Kins stepped forward and kicked away the knife. He didn’t know if Nikhil was crying for what he had done or because he had been caught. The two were not the same. Regardless, he believed Kelly Rosa was correct, that the killing had been one born of anger. He waited, letting the brothers have a moment together, suspecting that it would be one they would not likely have again, not for a very long time, if ever.
CHAPTER 58
Faz watched heavily armed men in Kevlar vests burst into the building and clear the rooms.
“Here,” Faz called out.
They entered the room in precision movements. Once satisfied the room was clear, they moved to where Francisco lay on the floor and Faz sat with his arms cuffed to the pole. “He’s in bad shape,” Faz said to the first man to enter. “Take care of him first.”
“Are you Detective Fazzio?”
Faz nodded. “Yeah.”
Del stepped into the outer room, and when he saw Faz he seemed to give a sigh of relief, though he had the same look of horror he’d had the night he stepped off the elevator at Eduardo Lopez’s apartment building. He crossed the room quickly.
“We got help coming,” Del said.
For once Faz could not think of anything to say. He nodded. After a moment, he said, “Don’t tell Vera I’m hurt. She’ll worry.”
“I don’t think she’s going to buy
it, Faz.”
“Pretty bad, huh?”
“Pretty bad.”
“I don’t want her to see me, not like this, Del.”
“You know Vera. Wild horses wouldn’t keep her away.”
“Then get me cleaned up. At least get me cleaned up.”
“We will, Faz. We got an ambulance coming.”
“How did you find me?” Faz asked.
“Too much to explain at the moment,” Del said. He put an arm around his partner’s shoulders and pulled him close. “Hey, you know how you’ve always said you have a face only a mother could love? Not so sure anymore.”
Faz smiled. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”
Paramedics took Faz from the building on a stretcher. The area outside looked like a military zone. Little Jimmy and the rest of his minions lay facedown on the pavement, hands cuffed behind their backs. Around them men and women in body armor and fatigues stood guard. Overhead, a helicopter continued to hover, the thumping of its blades deafening, a bright light shining down on the ministorage facility. More men and women stood near the chain-link fence and the storage units. They seemed to be waiting for someone to give them the word to enter and begin their search, which meant they were waiting for a signed search warrant.
As the stretcher passed Little Jimmy, he looked up from the ground and made eye contact with Faz. Faz smiled. Then he raised his hand, made a gun with his thumb and index finger, and squeezed the trigger, miming the recoil.
Little Jimmy looked away.
The medics slid Faz into the back of the ambulance. Del stood outside talking to Vera on his cell phone. He mouthed the word “Vera” to Faz, who nodded. Del held the phone up to Faz’s ear while the paramedic slipped a cuff over Faz’s bicep and inflated it to check his blood pressure.
“Hey, Vera,” Faz said, struggling to speak in a full voice.
“Vic, are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m all right. I got a few cuts and bruises, but they’re taking good care of me. Don’t worry about me.”
Vera was crying.
“Seriously, I’m fine, honey.”
Vera was having none of it. “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” she said. “Have Del call me when you’re on your way.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’ll have him do that. And, Vera . . .”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to know that I love you. I know you know, but I want you to hear me say it. And I know you told me not to start apologizing, but I’m sorry I haven’t told you that more often. You deserve to hear it, Vera. You deserve to hear it every day. And I’m going to start telling you that every morning.”
“I love you too,” she said through her tears.
Faz nodded and Del took back his phone.
“She’s going to meet us at the hospital. I think maybe you better call her back and prepare her,” Faz said.
“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing,” Del said.
Del looked to his right, to where Andrea Gonzalez stood talking with a group of the men and women dressed in windbreakers. “I’m going to let her explain what’s going on to both of us. I got the Reader’s Digest version myself.”
“How did you end up here?”
“We traced your phone, got the last known longitude and latitude. I thought maybe you’d gone back to Eduardo Lopez’s apartment. By the time I got down here, SWAT was assembling in a parking lot just down the road. Apparently, they got a text that you were here.”
“Detectives,” Gonzalez said. She looked to Faz inside the ambulance. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like somebody stuffed me into one of those industrial-size washing machines with a bag of rocks.”
“You up to answering a couple of questions?”
“If you are,” Faz said. “You got some explaining to do.”
Gonzalez smiled. “Fair enough. How did you get here?”
Faz explained how he’d followed her, and then followed Francisco to the storage facility.
“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
“I talked a good game. I let them think I knew more than I did. I figured they were running drugs and suggested that whoever they were running them for wouldn’t be happy with the attention killing a cop would generate. I also told them Del would rain hell down on them.”
“Smart. I can tell you the cartel is really not going to like losing this much product.”
“So who are you?” Faz asked.
“I’m with the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces. I’ve led a team pursuing this pipeline for more than three years. It’s the largest distributor of heroin and meth on the West Coast. We have similar operations going down in every major city, including Vancouver, British Columbia.”
“And the guy I followed . . . the guy you met at the carnival, he’s an informant?”
“Francisco Mercado.” She shook her head.
“Mercado is a Sureño turned informant. Eighteen months ago he had his second child, a boy. We busted him for dealing heroin just before his son’s birth. Given the quantities he was dealing, and given that this was his third strike, he was looking at a potential life sentence.”
“He agreed to cooperate,” Del said.
She smiled. “Agreed is a little strong. He didn’t have much choice. Mercado was the guy we needed to get inside and get details on the deliveries and shipments.”
“Is that why they moved you up here?”
Gonzalez nodded. “We finally had a viable informant.”
“You were his handler,” Faz said.
“And our investigation into the death of Monique Rodgers created a potential problem for you,” Del said.
“We needed a little more time to get everything set up and in place,” Gonzalez said. “Once Rodgers got killed we had to move up our operation.”
“What about Eduardo Lopez? Why was Mercado at the apartment that night?”
“Mercado let us know that Little Jimmy put out a hit on you for fifty thousand after you two went to his home and screwed up his party.”
“Gee, and I thought we were well behaved,” Del said to Faz.
“Some people just don’t appreciate us.”
Gonzalez said, “When I found out you had a positive print on Lopez and were driving out to talk to him, I sent Mercado to the address to determine if Lopez was home, in case Lopez decided he was going to try to recover the fifty thousand dollars himself.”
“So why was Lopez next door?” Faz asked.
“I don’t know,” Gonzalez said. “I suspect Lopez maybe thought Mercado was on his way to kill him. Word got out that you two had a positive print on the Rodgers shooter and were moving to pick him up. Mercado said he’d heard it on the street. Lopez lived in the apartment so he could keep an eye on this storage facility for Little Jimmy’s crew. From what I’ve been able to piece together, Lopez must have seen Mercado pull into the parking lot and figured he was coming to kill him.”
“He went to the neighbors’ apartment to hide,” Faz said.
Gonzalez nodded. “When Lopez didn’t answer his door, Mercado figured he wasn’t home and it was okay to knock on the door. That was the text he sent me that afternoon, the one I got in the car just as we arrived. Mercado didn’t know Lopez was next door. Neither did I.”
“So when Lopez came out, you thought he was coming to kill me?” Faz said.
“I saw something silver in his hand and thought it was a gun. I wasn’t happy about killing him, for a lot of reasons. I wasn’t happy when I learned it was a cell phone. I would have liked to have taken him alive.”
“So why did you tell the FIT investigators I was the one to yell Gun!?”
“I needed to get you off the street until we could take down Little Jimmy. I didn’t realize you were such a stubborn son of a bitch.”
Faz scratched at the back of his head and felt dried blood. It was rare that he and Del didn’t figure things out, but they’d both been dead wrong about Gonzalez. “I g
uess I owe you an apology, and a thank-you.”
“Thank Mercado. He’s the one who sent the text that you were here.”
“What’ll happen to him?”
“We’ll arrest him and make him go through the process, like he’s going to do time with the rest of them.”
“Little Jimmy saw the photos I took of you talking with Mercado. He might already be burned.”
Gonzalez gave this some thought. “Then we’ll assign him to witness protection, and he and his family will have an opportunity to disappear. If he keeps his nose clean, he’ll be out. He’s got kids now. Maybe that will be enough. Can I ask you a question? Are you always this dogged?”
“He’s stubborn,” Del said. “It’s the Italian in him.”
Gonzalez shook her head. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Don’t start apologizing,” Faz said, thinking of Vera. “Like I’m not going to be okay.”
“Who knew you were a part of the task force?” Del asked Gonzalez.
“Your assistant chief of criminal investigations, Stephen Martinez, arranged to have me transferred into your unit. And your captain.”
“Why Violent Crimes? Why not narcotics?”
“Narcotics was too obvious. We needed to keep this quiet until we had everything in place, but then you two pulled the Rodgers shooting and I suspected it could be a problem. I was originally slated for C Team. They had a detective who was retiring and it was a built-in excuse for me to just slide in. When Rodgers got shot I asked Martinez to ensure I got put on your team so I could keep an eye on the investigation and make sure it didn’t screw up my bust.”
A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6) Page 31
