by G. K. Parks
“He scares all of us,” Lucca said from the doorway, “but you better not be losing your mojo over this.”
“Never.” I turned and graced him with a rare smile. “What’s going on upstairs?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” Lucca peered into the room, waiting for an invitation. Martin waved him in, and my former partner went to stand at the side of Jablonsky’s bed. “How’s he doing? From what I hear, he woke up earlier.”
“He did.” Martin glanced at me, unsure how much to disclose to Lucca. “The doctors are optimistic.”
“They’re just being realistic,” Lucca said. “Jablonsky’s the toughest guy I know.”
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“We should talk in private.”
“I was actually on my way to get some coffee and maybe something to eat. Can I get anyone anything?” Martin asked.
“No, thanks,” Lucca said, and I shook my head.
Martin brushed past me, running his hand across the small of my back on the way out of the room.
Once the door shut, Lucca deflated. “All right. You first. According to the cops upstairs, you’ve had a hell of a day. Steele left you a phone and made contact again. What does he want?”
I gave Lucca the Cliff’s notes version. “What’s Kendall doing? Did you learn anything from Vega?”
“That’s being disclosed to Moretti now. I’m sure you’ll get the official word soon enough, so let’s not waste time with that. Suffice it to say, Steele and Vega have been planning this since the moment they reunited in prison. I’m not sure why Vega went along with it. I’m guessing he needed Steele’s protection and whatever contraband Steele promised to hook him up with. Vega spent the last eight hours at the federal building, and he’s coming down hard. He’d give up his own mother at this point.”
“Do we know who’s on Steele’s hit list?”
“Not exactly. Vega named you and Jablonsky, but Steele didn’t go into specifics. He just wanted revenge on the bitch FBI agent and her posse.”
“I didn’t realize I had a posse.”
“Don’t blow it out of proportion. It doesn’t make you cool.”
“So what’s Kendall’s deal?”
Lucca rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “Honestly, Alex, I have no idea. He’s acting like you pissed in his Cheerios. Like this is your fault.”
“It isn’t.” But it sure felt like it.
“I know that.” He looked down at Mark. “The director’s been a bureaucrat for so long, his default setting is to pass the buck. He didn’t protect his people. So he needs someone else to blame.” Lucca looked up. “Just like what happened when he forced you to resign.”
“Careful, it sounds like you stopped drinking the Kool-aid.”
“I must have,” Lucca pressed something into my palm, “or I wouldn’t be giving you this.”
Twenty-one
The moment I arrived at Cross Security, I handed over the phone Steele left me. The police and FBI would want it soon enough, so I had to have it analyzed first. Steele had been adamant about not sharing it with the authorities. A part of me didn’t want to defy him because I knew the consequences, and the other part knew the best way to find the bastard was to have as many people hunting him as possible. Theoretically, the phone could lead us right to him. I just had to be sure I was doing the right thing.
“We’ll check it,” Amir promised. He picked up the drive containing a copy of the hospital security cam footage. “How many different camera feeds do they have?”
“A lot.”
He tilted his head back and forth. “I should be done with the phone in an hour, but I’m not sure how long it’ll take to parse the footage.”
“Thanks, just give me whatever you have, as soon as you have it. I’ll be in my office. If the phone rings…” I swallowed, fearing what Steele would do if I didn’t answer.
“Don’t worry. I can redirect it to your office phone. He won’t know.”
Nodding, I took the elevator down. The exhaustion had set in, and my legs were tired and achy. I detoured to the break room, brewed a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar and a handful of ice, took it into my office, and plugged the thumb drive Lucca gave me into my computer.
Lucca had copied everything onto the device – the interviews with Vega, the photos taken from inside the prison, and every report Jablonsky and I filed concerning Francisco Steele and the KXDs during our initial investigation. The PD had most of these records, and what they lacked, they’d eventually get. But Lucca expedited the process. Even though I’d written most of the reports or briefed Jablonsky, who then wrote the reports, I had forgotten a lot. Too much time had passed.
“What’s a guy got to do to get a cup of coffee around here?” Lucca asked, eyeing the tumbler in my hand.
I blinked, tearing my eyes from the screen. “You’re so quiet, I forgot you were here.” I pointed out the door in the direction of the break room. “Help yourself. Cross keeps the kitchen stocked. Sandwiches, snacks, coffee, tea, whatever you want.”
Lucca kept the retort to himself. Perhaps he was on his best behavior due to the circumstances, but I suspected it had more to do with the two of us being out of sync. He returned a few minutes later with a sandwich, coffee, and a cinnamon roll. Clearing off the edge of my desk, he put his plate down and sat in my client chair.
“Maybe I should join the private sector,” he teased around a mouthful.
“You might not have a choice if Kendall finds out what you did.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing. The police will eventually receive that intel. As far as I’m concerned, you got it from them.”
“And the reports Jablonsky and I filed?”
“You kept a copy for yourself.”
I looked up at him. “Who are you? And what did you do with Eddie Lucca? The Eddie Lucca I know is a rule-following, company man.”
His cheek twitched, and he stared down at his plate and took another bite. I didn’t know what triggered the change in Lucca or his sudden dislike for Director Kendall, but now wasn’t the time to push. He finished his sandwich and inhaled the cinnamon roll while I read over our case files, making a list of locations Steele liked to frequent.
“Where do you think Steele went after he escaped into the sewers?” Lucca asked.
“I’m not sure, but he said he had someone waiting.”
Lucca thought for a moment and pulled out his phone. “What time did you speak to him?”
“It was around five.”
“That complicates matters.” Lucca dialed, spoke to Agent Davis, and hung up the phone. “Davis is going to have someone e-mail me a list of agents who called in sick or took a personal day today.”
“You think Steele kidnapped his next victim?”
“It’s possible. After what he did to Cooper, he might have found some benefit to having a captive audience.”
“Jablonsky’s a captive audience.”
“I know.” He gulped down the coffee and grabbed his plate. “But he has a contingent of FBI agents guarding his room, not to mention the private bodyguards you assigned for his protection. Steele’s not suicidal. He won’t make that move unless he has no other moves to make.”
Leaving me to contemplate that, Lucca took his plate and mug back to the break room. By the time he returned, I had finished making my list of locations to scout. These weren’t necessarily KXD strongholds, though every one of them had some type of connection to Francisco Steele.
“I can’t get into his head,” I said. “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You can’t get into his head because you’re stuck in your own,” Lucca said.
“How do I fix that?”
He shrugged. “When you figure it out, let me know.” He stretched, circling my office.
“All right. Spill.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I know you, Eddie. This isn’t you.” But Lucca wouldn’t talk, and I didn’t have the energy to convince him otherwise. “I’m sorry I involved you. I didn’t know where else to turn. None of my other OIO friends worked this case. You did.”
“It doesn’t matter, Parker. Kendall would have wanted to touch base with me anyway. He’s convinced I’m on Steele’s hit list and my family could be in danger. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did or didn’t do. The end result is the same.” He picked up a legal pad and doodled on the page. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Cooper opened an investigation into the KXDs. Jablonsky recruited you to infiltrate the gang by going undercover at a strip joint.”
“The Black Cat.”
He wrote that on the first line. “In the meantime, your cover apartment was in the same building where Steele lived.”
“Yep. We were neighbors. He lived above me. I made the approach. Jablonsky chewed me out for being so reckless.” A grin tugged at my lips. “It wasn’t reckless.”
Lucca glanced in my direction. “I remember the briefing we had after that. It was reckless.”
“Hey, it got me on Steele’s radar.”
“Given what’s going on right now, that’s not a good thing.”
“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” I said. “Anyway, Steele flirted, he threatened, he fell for my bullshit.”
“And he terrified you,” Lucca said. “I remember. That was the first case we worked together. While you were poking the beast, I was working behind-the-scenes with Cooper on taking down Bard and coordinating with the DEA on tracking the shipments.” He laughed. “You were the biggest pain in the ass I had ever worked with. You did what you wanted. You barely listened to orders. You got yourself arrested in a police raid.”
“I called in the tip.”
“Yeah.” Lucca fell silent.
“Don’t stop there. You might as well continue the story. We performed a tactical strike, came under heavy fire, and barely managed to capture Bard. Steele escaped, and if he hadn’t resurfaced to get revenge on me and Heathcliff, we never would have found him.” My voice grew quiet. “Maybe that’s why we can’t find him now. We never really knew where he’d go or what he’d do. He kept a lot of things private.”
“I almost forgot about the tactical strike,” Lucca said. He came around the desk and grabbed the mouse. “You know what else I almost forgot?”
“How to follow rules?”
He grumbled. “The police had a number of undercovers investigating drug sales and gang activity. They had UCs positioned in several locations in that neighborhood.”
“And Detective Heathcliff assisted me undercover. What’s your point?”
“Steele wants revenge on the people who betrayed him. He went after Cooper because he was in charge of the investigation and testified in court. Jablonsky arrested him. You tricked him.”
“What’s your point?”
“I testified too because I had been placed in charge of evidence collection. A few of our techs and experts had to provide testimony, but they never interacted with Steele prior to the proceedings.”
“You don’t think he’ll go after them?” I rubbed the kink in my neck.
“They shouldn’t be top priorities. Neither should I,” Lucca insisted.
“I’m not sure Steele’s thinking rationally. He might focus on any one of you, just to be vindictive, but I agree. It doesn’t seem as likely. Detective Heathcliff is probably at the top of Steele’s hit list. I already warned him, but he won’t listen.”
“It’s not just Heathcliff,” Lucca said. “Steele would want to go after all the other undercovers too.”
“But most of them didn’t break cover or testify in open court.”
“What about the bartender at the Black Cat?” Lucca scrolled down the page, looking for the man’s name.
“Joe.” I remembered the man who’d given me such strange vibes when I first went to work in the club and who I watched get tortured and nearly beaten to death. I wanted to intercede, but I’d been dragged away before I sacrificed my own cover in a poorly executed attempt to save the narcotics officer.
“Joe Aronne.” Lucca pointed to the name on the screen. “Is the PD watching out for him too? And what about the barista at that coffee shop?” He pointed to one of the locations on my list. “And the guy at the Stop N’ Shop. The PD planted all four of them to monitor drug activity in the area. That included keeping tabs on Steele.”
“Shit. That’s right. The police had a UC working at the convenience store where Steele always stopped for beer.” I grabbed the phone and dialed the precinct. “Hey, Thompson,” I said, “is the Stop N’ Shop where we spotted Steele the same one he used to frequent before we arrested him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out. Ask Jacobs or the guys in narcotics. During the original investigation, narco had a guy stationed at the convenience store. We need to know if it’s the same location Steele recently visited.”
“All right. Let me check.” After a couple of minutes, he came back on the line. “Narcotics keeps a lot of those facts under lock and key in order to protect their UCs.” Thompson covered the mouthpiece and shouted something to someone. “Let me look into this. I’ll call you back.”
“Wait,” I said, but he had already hung up. I put the phone down and read the locations on my list. “Dollars to donuts, it’s the same Stop N’ Shop location. Steele’s retracing his steps. He’s revisiting his old haunts.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Steele pick you up from the hospital after you were attacked in the alley?”
“That could be a coincidence. After all, that hospital has the best trauma center in the city, and that’s where Jablonsky is.”
“Or Steele’s replaying his greatest hits, the remix edition,” Lucca suggested.
“Revisionist history?” I asked, but Lucca only shrugged. “All right, so we should assume Derek Heathcliff, Joe Aronne, and the UCs from the coffee place and the Stop N’ Shop are on Steele’s hit list. Since Steele has an unhealthy fascination with the convenience store’s plastic bags and creative ways to use them, his recent visits must serve a far more sinister purpose. He’s leaving breadcrumbs for us. I’m just not sure what to make of them.”
“Do you think he identified the UC who worked there yet?” Lucca asked.
“I don’t know. Shooting the shit with the current clerk or asking what happened to the guy who used to work there might have resulted in a name. Steele’s smart. He has connections, and the KXDs have plenty of influence in the prisons. I don’t think it’d be hard for him to get the name of the cop who’d been keeping tabs on him.”
“Where is that undercover cop now?” Lucca asked.
“The one from the Stop N’ Shop?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oddly enough, he’s on vacation in Hawaii. His wife’s a pharmaceutical rep and she had a conference to attend, so he took some time off and went with her. He’ll be back next week.”
“Talk about an odd couple. He takes drugs off the streets, and she hands them out like candy.”
“Legalized candy,” I said. “Who knows, she may only push boner pills and birth control.”
Lucca laughed, but a dark cloud settled over him.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
“Like you said, the KXDs control a lot. They have a lot of influence. They must have gained favor with a few corrupt prison guards. It’s the only thing that explains how Steele and Vega switched places so easily.”
“First rule-breaking, now cynicism. Stop stealing my main personality traits,” I teased, but he was right. “We need to run a check on the prison guards and find out if any of them are working for the KXDs or if they’ve inquired as to the identities of any undercover narcotics officers. They could be feeding the information directly to Steele and helping him plot his revenge.” This was why narco kept their intel guarded, even from other members of law enforcement.
; “That’s what I’ve been doing all day, but I haven’t found much of anything. They all look clean. Dare I say squeaky?”
“Then we keep looking.”
I reached for the phone, just as Lucca reached for his. We shared a chuckle and made our requests with the FBI and PD. Finally, we were getting somewhere. Or so I thought.
Twenty-two
“I give up.” I threw my hands in the air. “No money transfers. No weird phone calls. Nothing obvious. Steele never struck me as particularly high-tech. If he has a guard on the take, he kept the payoffs below the radar.”
“Nothing on the internet is private. Money transfers, bank deposits, all of that can be traced. Conducting business that way makes it too easy to get caught,” Lucca said. “Same with phone calls and text messages.”
“It’s also possible Steele extorted the guards to cooperate rather than reward them. Something along the lines of ‘do this or my boys will kill your family’. Y’know, gangbanger 101.”
“What should we do? The police are bringing in all prison personnel for questioning. Obviously, they’ll deny it. Unless you have a trick up your sleeve, this won’t get us anywhere.”
“I know. I hate this. Whatever happened with Bard? You said Davis questioned him. What does he know about Steele’s plans for revenge?”
“Nothing.” Lucca slouched down and leaned back so he could rest his head against the cushion. “I read the transcripts. Steele and Bard were sent to different facilities. They have not been in contact since Steele’s arrest. The OIO checked prison records, phone logs, the mail, everything. There’s no overlap.”
“What about visitors?”
“All different,” Lucca said.
“The defense attorneys?” I asked.
“Different attorneys. Different firm. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason to believe Bard knows anything about what’s going on.”
“Except he’s DeAngelo Bard. He knows everything that happens with the KXDs. He knows what his people do. He wouldn’t let them run amok without his blessing.”
