by Amy Lane
Jackson and Henry chuckled, and Ellery rolled his eyes.
“So you weren’t going to move into Sacramento. What happened?”
“Ziggy Ivanov and Karina Schroeder.” Alex shuddered. “And her husband, Dietrich. God, especially Dietrich, the sick fuck. Anyway, Dietrich and Ziggy were Dima’s guys, fresh off the fuckin’ boat. They were in dance school together, and they’d done their time in the brothels, you know? So they know sex trade inside and out. But Dietrich, he’s got a head for numbers, and he’s thinking they can up their gambling operation, and Ziggy wants to start kidnapping little kids and shit, because, hello, they’re both sick fucks, and they were used like meat and they want to share the pain.”
Schroeder—the name was definitely familiar. “Any relationship to Baldwin and Klaus?” Jackson asked, getting right on that.
“Uncle—why?”
“’Cause we took Baldwin out a couple days after you went to sleep, and we were wondering how they got sucked into this mess.”
Avi groaned. “Sick fucking family—Schroeder can’t even speak decent fucking English, man, has an accent you can cut with a knife. Anyway, Dietrich and Ziggy want to expand the operation to more trafficking ’cause that’s their fucking kink.”
“I take it Dima wasn’t on board for this?” Ellery asked.
“No,” Avi said shortly. “Alexei wasn’t either, frankly, but then Ziggy and Dietrich started showing up with shipments of girls. Alexei did girls—can’t lie. And then they showed up with shipments of kids, and buyers lined up, and Alexei, well, there was money to be made, and all Ziggy and Dietrich needed was muscle.”
“And then all they needed was to take over Dima’s operation,” Ellery supplied coldly.
Avi sighed sadly. “It was more complicated than that. Ziggy and Dietrich supplied us with traffic, and Alexei, he gave them drugs to sell, and at first, it didn’t seem like we were so much as taking over Dima’s shit as we were just doing the jobs he didn’t want.”
“Human. Trafficking,” Jackson said, his voice also cold, and Avi shrugged.
“We are not good people,” he said candidly. “You think saints take a snort full of bathtub meth and haul ass into a PD office with a semiauto?”
“No,” Jackson replied, voice still arctic. “But I didn’t think reasonable guys with a modicum of self-awareness did either.”
Avi’s gray eyes met Jackson’s without flinching. “When your brother puts a gun in your hand when you’re twelve years old and tells you to kill the guy who tried to knife him in a drug deal, you lose your high-fucking-morality really quick. Doesn’t mean I like it. That’s just how the world works.”
But it wasn’t. Not for Jackson.
“My mother sold me to her boyfriend for a hit of crank when I was eleven,” Jackson said. “I became a cop so it didn’t happen to someone else. You only lose it when you want to lose it.”
Avi’s face went blank. “Yeah, well, I did want to lose it. Life’s easier when that part of your soul is empty.”
Jackson hadn’t wanted to lose his humanity, though, Ellery thought. He remembered that moment when they were bracing for impact and he realized Jackson would be the one to suffer the worst if the Tank didn’t hold up. There hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation in his eyes, and not a moment’s regret.
There’d been children in that school bus, and if they had to throw themselves in front of the SUV to save them, that’s what Jackson would do.
He would have done it without the Tank. He would have stood in the road and laid down his life if he hadn’t been able to think of a better way.
Any pity Ellery might have felt for Avi abruptly vanished.
“Easier,” he said softly, thinking of his colleagues who would have defended Avi without question or qualm. “But not good. So, why did you end up hauling into the PD’s office with a semiautomatic weapon?”
Avi crossed his eyes. “Because Ziggy screwed up. He assumed that Tage Dobrevk would be just another kid lost to the system. Same thing for Ty Townsend, actually, but it didn’t matter so much if Townsend got off. Townsend didn’t know anything. Ziggy’s sources in the courthouse told us Dobrevk’s case was going to someone good, Ziggy told Alexei someone needed to make sure that didn’t happen, and that—that—was his plan.”
Avi swallowed, his face carefully blank. “I know what you think of me, and it’s all true. I’m a murderer. I’m a trafficker and a drug dealer. But I’ve never—and you probably don’t care about this, but it meant something to me—I’ve never killed someone not in the life. Alexei never killed the girls who slept with the wrong mobster. He relocated them to a different state, but he didn’t kill them for that. I’ve never killed a witness ’cause they saw too much. Ziggy’s plan was to go in like a random shooter, and Alexei, God, he was so tired of all Ziggy’s shit. The heart went out of him when he realized Ziggy had killed James Cosgrove. It was like he knew he’d gotten in bed with the devil, and he was just waiting for the devil to fuck him to death and get it over with. He gave that order and I… I had to do something or I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it, and the next person on Ziggy’s list to kill would be me.”
There was silence in the room then, and Ellery tried a little harder to hate Avi Kovacs and failed. He wasn’t a good man—would never be a good man—but he hadn’t been pure unadulterated evil either.
“Why’d Ziggy kill James Cosgrove?” Ellery asked. “Was it because he was asking Dima to back off?”
Avi’s expression grew haunted. “Yes. The kid was going to his uncle to help get Townsend out of jail. Ziggy was begging for Jimmy to wait because he wasn’t ready for the takeover yet. He had a few guys on his side and a couple of Alexei’s guys ready to come up. He’d had a football coach working for him for the last two years to help him get contacts at the school for girls and drugs, but things weren’t quite in place. So he… he killed Dima’s nephew, which was too fucking bad because he wasn’t a bad kid. Dima had tried to keep him out of the business. That’s why he changed the last name. So Dima was all fucking ripped up about it, and Ziggy pinned it on the Dobrevk kid, thinking it would be easy to take him out. Who was going to care about an immigrant kid, right?”
“We did,” Jackson said. “We cared for the immigrant kid, and the Black kid, and the dead guy named No Neck who bled out on the laundry room floor.”
Avi nodded again. “Yeah. I figured as much when you guys asked if you could come talk to me.”
“So why did you agree?” Ellery asked, but he figured he knew what was coming.
Avi looked at him and shrugged. “My brother’s dead. Most of his contacts are in the wind. I got no reason to go home and nothing to stay here for, but I don’t want to be a snitch. Ziggy’s dead. Dietrich and Karina are fuck knows where, and I just told you everything I know about them for free. I got my own money in an account that’s got nothing to do with the mob. All I want is for you to plead me out and let me do my twenty-five years someplace nowhere near Sacramento or Vegas. Let me serve my time in fuckin’ Washington or Colorado or something. Let me close my eyes and pretend I was born someplace else.”
Ellery’s eyebrows went up, and for a moment, he thought of saying no. But he had a better idea.
“San Quentin?” he asked. “It’s on an island near the ocean, if that helps.”
“You can get me something near the ocean?” Avi said, with a sort of wistfulness that actually hurt.
“Can you pay Tage Dobrevk’s and Ty Townsend’s legal fees?” Ellery asked, ignoring the suck of breath through Jackson’s teeth and Henry’s hum of surprise.
“You get me near the ocean and I’d pay Ziggy’s,” Avi said starkly. Then his face relaxed into a sort of smile. “Lucky me, I don’t have to, so I’m glad the fucker’s dead.”
Ellery agreed, and they shook hands on it. Then he told the guards to make the necessary arrangements to allow him to represent Avi Kovacs, and they took their leave.
As they neared the car, the weighty
heat of August tapering off a little in the late afternoon, Henry said, “But I thought you were going to do Townsend and Dobrevk for free.”
“I was,” Ellery said. “But don’t tell him that. This way I can keep you and Jackson in vehicles and health insurance for all of the other ‘free’ cases I do.”
Henry smirked, but after they’d gotten into the car, he still had one more question.
“Rivers?”
“Yeah?”
“Did your mother really sell you for a hit of crank?”
Jackson grunted. “She made me a perk. I elbowed the guy in the windpipe and became a liability.”
“And did a week in juvenile hall for attempted manslaughter,” Ellery added darkly, because stories like this from Jackson’s past were one of the reasons he defended kids like Ty Townsend and Tage Dobrevk for free.
“Who got you out?” Henry asked, his voice neutral.
“Jade and Kaden’s mom,” Jackson said softly. “She was a paralegal in a public defender’s office. Didn’t make much, but boy, she put the fear of the law into us.”
She’d also given him the love and stability his life had been missing until Kaden had brought Jackson home. The debt Jackson felt toward Toni Cameron was not something he could ever repay or work off. It had taken Ellery a while to understand that Jackson’s entire life had become dedicated to making the sacrifices she’d made for all three of them absolutely worth it.
“Good,” Henry said softly. “I’ll light a candle for her if I ever go to mass again.”
Jackson gave a sweet smile. “I think she’d like that.” The smile faded. “Why do you ask?”
Henry shrugged. “Just… just an odd thing to tell a guy like Avi Kovacs.”
Jackson was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Don’t you think the bad guys need confession?”
Henry grunted, and Jackson tried again.
“Didn’t you?”
“I was nowhere near—”
Jackson’s turn to grunt. “No, no, you weren’t anywhere near an Avi Kovacs. I’m just saying that when people are being human to you, you try to be human back. Even the bad guys. Every now and then someone pays it forward, but even if they don’t, it’s like Avi said. He gave away that thing that tried to be moral when he was twelve years old. You need to decide right now what the price is inside you.” He shrugged, but Ellery knew it wasn’t that easy. “Being human to a guy who’s about to go away for twenty-five years and who just made our job a little easier is not anywhere near that price, you know?”
Henry made a thoughtful sound. “You never think about it in the military. You assume the people telling you where to go and who to shoot have done the math. But here….”
Jackson’s eyes slid to Ellery’s before they refocused on the road. “Second thoughts, Junior?”
“God no,” Henry answered smartly. “But I do have a small request.”
“What do you need?” Ellery asked, knowing what it would be.
“Absolutely not,” Jackson told him, because Jackson wasn’t stupid either.
“Next time there’s going to be high-speed chases and daring rescues out apartment windows, you have got to let me in.”
“That doesn’t happen every day,” Jackson said with such a straight face that Ellery had to look at him twice.
“That ends with a y,” Ellery finished dryly. “Henry, I’ll tell you what. I will have you on speed dial so I can tell you what we’re doing next. How’s that.”
“That’s a deal,” Henry said smugly. “Jackson? Piss up a rope. I’m your backup, dammit. Treat me like it.”
“His boyfriend’s gonna kill us,” Jackson muttered to Ellery, and Ellery just laughed.
LATER—AFTER Henry was dropped off at the office and Billy came by with the car, Jackson and Ellery took an early day home.
“Is everybody getting nice and rehabilitated?” Galen asked, his voice arid.
“No,” Ellery told him, and then heat crept up his cheeks. “I mean, yes, we are both healing nicely, thank you, but that’s not why we’re going home early on a Friday.”
Galen’s eyes lit up. “Could we… could it possibly be… are you two having a date night?”
“It’s an anniversary of sorts,” Ellery responded with dignity, and Galen smiled back.
“You know what happened in mid-July?” he asked.
“The heat spiked to 110?”
Galen made a face. “Yes, but it was a dry heat,” he returned. “Besides that.”
“Not a clue,” Ellery said. “Besides perhaps that may have been about the time Jackson got so bored he took an online criminal-justice class specializing in children’s crimes, because why be a lawyer when you can take all the classes, right?”
Galen snorted. “Of course. But no, this was for me. See, two years ago in April, John and I met in Florida. I was in a really bad place, and John was coming out of a worse one. And we did all the things we weren’t supposed to do if you’re recovering addicts, and we fell in love. But John had to run his company, so he came back here, and I still had rehab, so I stayed out there. I could barely walk back then, even with the cane, and I was about thirty pounds underweight, and I was a mess. But John still loved me. Can you imagine that? Surrounded by some of the prettiest men in the world, and he still loved me.”
“He’s got good taste,” Ellery said, feeling his eyes sting for some reason.
Galen inclined his head modestly. “You are too kind. Anyway, I was working, not just on rehab, but also on physical therapy. So I could walk around the house without the cane. So I could drive in an emergency. So I could be the best man I could be for a guy who professed to be a porn mogul with no conscience. Do you know why?”
Ellery had met Galen’s boyfriend, and he was goofy and awkward and sweet, and he put 60 percent of his profits into things like health insurance and college funds and financial counseling and job placement so the kids who were young and sexy and excited to be naked and free with their sexuality when they started the business weren’t old and used up and cynical when they left it, usually a year or two later.
“To make him proud?” Ellery hazarded.
Galen shook his head. “To be good enough for him,” he said. “So mid-July, he and all those beautiful men are having a picnic by the zoo, and here he comes with his niece, wearing zinc oxide and a hat and carrying a giant gorilla, and I was there waiting for him, and it was the best moment of my life.”
Ellery swallowed hard. “A year ago,” he said gruffly, “sometime this week—neither of us remember the day—after Jackson and I had danced around each other for nearly seven years, pretending to hate each other, sneering when we passed each other in the hallways, making snarky comments when we knew the other one could hear….” He smiled slightly. “We finally gave in.”
“Ah,” Galen said, nodding. “That’s a good day to remember.”
“So much has happened since then,” he said, feeling this in his chest. “So much. You’ve seen part of it.”
“And researched a lot more,” Galen said with a half laugh.
“Yeah. And it all comes down to that moment, I guess. When we gave in. And I knew I wouldn’t ever go back. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him. He was mine in all the ways that counted, whether he knew it or not.”
Galen gave him a luminous smile. “So this is a very good day,” he said. “Happy anniversary, Counselor Cramer. May your celebration be lusty and good.”
The heat that had threatened Ellery’s cheeks washed over him completely. “Thank you, Counselor Henderson,” he said, suddenly very grateful for this man who had pretty much declared himself Ellery’s business partner and then made it so. “Our lives are very much richer because you’re in them.”
Galen’s cheeks washed pink as well, and he grimaced. “You are a gentleman, sir. Now kindly get the fuck out of the office. I do believe I need to see my boyfriend.”
Ellery laughed and limped away.
Fishy-versary
J
ACKSON HAD been prepared to try to cook, but Ellery had insisted on takeout. Fancy, fancy takeout that they actually put on plates and ate with silverware the moment they got home.
Neither one of them had been in a restaurant mood, although Jackson had offered.
“No,” Ellery replied, shaking his head. “Sometimes all I want is you and me.”
Jackson made sure Ellery had some of his favorite wine, and he drank pinot grigio to keep Ellery company. He cracked wise about getting the sweetest wine he could find for his unsophisticated palate, but the truth was, he was starting to appreciate other tastes too.
It was like cooking or classes in law or getting used to letting Ellery have enough control to let him feel comfortable about the times he wasn’t in control and Jackson had to be Jackson; it took practice, it took getting used to, and it took effort.
They’d put in both over the last year.
Their dinner conversation wasn’t profound. They chewed over the case, making all the pieces fit. At the end of dinner, as they shared a piece of divine cheesecake—a thing Jackson had never ordered before Ellery—he could sense Ellery’s exasperation.
“We’re not going to get Dima, Jackson. We’re not going to get Dietrich and Karina. I mean, we might. They’re out there. Dima can rebuild. Dietrich and Karina know how to make money gambling. They’re going to be a problem.” He shrugged. “But it’s nothing we haven’t faced before.”
Jackson had felt it then, the profound shift inside him that told him Ellery was right in this moment. Just like the night he’d had to rescue the Dobrevks. Things might change tomorrow—hell, they might change in an hour, or fifteen minutes from now.
But right now—right now—Ellery was dressed nicely for Jackson Rivers, of all people. He’d shaved twice, put on aftershave, and worn slacks and a button-down just to eat in their dining room.
Jackson had done the same.
