by Joel Goldman
“So all that win-win, expand-the-pie bullshit,” I asked Quinn as we left Mendez behind, “is that just bullshit?”
“The basic principles apply across the board, but the board is a big place. Works great with two neighbors fighting over whose dog barks louder, but not so well with gun-running drug dealers used to getting their way the hard way. Mendez didn’t give it a chance, so we had to use a zero-sum strategy he understands. I hope you got what you came for.”
“All that and more. Mendez didn’t steal the guns. That was Frank Crenshaw, Nick Staley, and Jimmy Martin. Brett Staley had to have been part of it. They were supposed to sell the guns to Mendez, but something went wrong, the deal didn’t go through.”
“Maybe they got greedy and wanted more money,” Quinn said.
“That, or maybe they found another customer and decided to let the market set the price. Nuestra Familia isn’t the only cartel buying guns north of the border.”
“So Mendez or his competition upped the ante, killing Crenshaw and Nick Staley and going after Jimmy Martin.”
“Probably to convince them to sell at the right price. And, right about now, I’d say that the best offer Brett Staley is going to get is his life for those guns.”
“That will be the last deal he makes,” Quinn said. “No way do they leave him alive after taking out the others. And that means Jimmy Martin is doing time on borrowed time. But why kill Eberto Garza?”
“Eberto Garza was an accident, a victim of friendly fire if it was Mendez or mistaken identity if it was someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is that Brett Staley is the key now. He’s on the run, and I’m not the only one chasing him.”
Quinn nodded. “Where do you want me to drop you?”
“Had enough?”
“I told Kate Scranton I’d get you to a meeting with Mendez and bring you back in one piece. It wasn’t pretty, but I did my thing.”
“I envy you.”
“Why?”
“You know when to quit.”
“In my business, that’s the name of the game.”
“You ever look back, wonder if you should have stuck around or ask yourself if there was something else you could have done?”
Quinn shook his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. You’re a crusader, and I’m a mercenary. You have to feel that way, or you don’t have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But that’s a luxury I can’t afford.”
“Understood. You can drop me at Roni Chase’s house.”
“What are you going to do if she stiff-arms you again?”
“Offer her an orange.”
Quinn’s cell phone rang when we pulled up to Roni’s house. He answered and handed me the phone.
“Are you okay?” Kate asked.
“Never better.”
“I tried calling you on the phone Simon gave you, but you didn’t answer.”
I checked the phone. “Dead battery.”
“Lucy has been trying to reach you too.”
“Tell her I’m fine, and tell her I’m getting close.”
“You should call Joy. She’s worried.”
“You talked to her?”
Kate hesitated. “She called Lucy when she couldn’t reach you. Lucy told her about Quinn. She called to thank me for making sure you didn’t go after Mendez alone.”
“Call her back, tell her I’m okay, that Quinn’s taking good care of me, and that I’ll be home late.”
“It would be better if you called her.”
“I don’t want to lie to her,” I said and hung up.
I shook Quinn’s hand, thanked him, and got out of the SUV, watching from the curb as he drove away. He jolted to a stop halfway down the block, brake lights flashing, backing up to where he’d left me, his window down.
“One man’s trash,” he said, handing me the wastebasket I’d taken from Roni’s office.
“I hope is another man’s treasure.”
I turned on my cell phone. Joy had left me a text message asking if I was okay. I answered, telling her that I loved her. The superintendent at the Farm had also sent me a text message with the names of people who had visited Jimmy Martin, one name raising more questions than it answered.
The front porch light was on. I did a quick sort through the contents of the wastebasket, most of which was mail addressed to Roni and her clients. A collection agency was threatening to file suit against her grandmother, who guaranteed payment of her mother’s medical bills. The county sent her a notice of a tax lien that had been filed against the house. There were complaints and demands for a host of other creditors for amounts long since past due.
The mail was no different for her clients, most of them up against the same wall. There was one piece of mail different from all the others. It was a monthly statement showing an account that had been paid on time and in full by a client who couldn’t, reminding me again not to confuse the improbable with the impossible.
I rang the doorbell and waited, grabbing the heavy brass knocker on the front door and pounding it against the hard oak when no one answered. Lillian Chase opened it long moments later.
“Where’s Roni?”
“Out. She didn’t say where.”
“I need to borrow your car.”
Chapter Seventy-one
She was wearing a warm-up suit, no makeup, looking weary and worried, the lines creasing her drawn face hard won and honest. Her green eyes were cloudy, her red hair brushed out, gray at the roots. It was the first time I’d seen her look her age.
“If you don’t have a car, how did you get here?”
“A friend dropped me off. I don’t have a lot of time.”
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the wastebasket.
“Roni’s mail.”
“What are you doing with it?
“I need to talk to her.”
“You’re carrying a gun. Why?”
I looked down, forgetting that I was holding the wastebasket under my arm so that my jacket was pulled back, exposing the holster on my hip. I switched the wastebasket to my other hand, holding it at my side.
“It’s been that kind of night.”
“Is it a good idea for a man with your condition to carry a gun?”
I took a deep breath, considering and rejecting the possibility of pulling the gun on her.
“It’s a very good idea.”
“I see. Then you’ll have to tell me what this is all about before I’ll let you go running off after my granddaughter with your gun and my car.”
I followed her through the receiving area and the living room and into the kitchen. Terry Walker was sitting at the rectangular kitchen table, a pair of glasses slid halfway down his nose, a mug of coffee in one hand, a pen in the other, studying a crossword puzzle laid out in front of him. Lilly ran her hand across Terry’s back, pausing to caress his neck. Terry didn’t look up from his puzzle. She took a seat at the far end of the table, motioning me to the chair opposite her.
“I’d rather you just give me the keys.”
“Sit. Talk and then we’ll see,” she said.
“There isn’t time.”
She folded her hands on the table. “I won’t let you treat me like you’ve treated my granddaughter. If you want my help, you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
I was out of options, so I set the wastebasket on the floor and sat down.
“Nick Staley, Frank Crenshaw, and Jimmy Martin were broke or going broke so they decided to get into the stolen-goods business to make ends meet. Jimmy stole construction materials, and Frank resold them as scrap. Nick ran the show, and Brett helped out.”
Terry glanced up at me and returned to his crossword.
“Is that all?” Lilly asked.
“No. That’s the least of it. There’s a drug cartel in Mexico called Nuestra Familia. Cesar Mendez runs a gang in Northeast by the same name. It’s basically a subsidiary of the Mexican cart
el. Their main business is drugs, and they’ve got a lot of competition with other cartels in Mexico. Lately, the competition has gotten pretty rough. The cartels are practically at war with each other and the Mexican government. They need guns, and Mendez is part of a network to smuggle guns to Mexico.”
Terry put his pen down. Lilly clutched her robe around her throat.
“Go on,” she said. “Finish it.”
“Mendez shopped at Nick’s grocery. He got to know Brett, probably sold him drugs and probably talked about how he was in the market for guns. Brett must have told his father, who figured out a way to cash in. He and Brett and Frank Crenshaw and Jimmy Martin robbed five gun dealers in the last three months. They had a deal to sell the guns to Mendez, only the deal fell through and now Nick and Frank are dead and so is a kid named Eberto Garza. Jimmy Martin is in jail too scared to talk, and Brett is on the run.”
“I’ve known these people all my life,” Lilly said. “That’s not who they are.”
“It may not be who they were, but it’s who they’ve become,” I said. “They were going broke, losing everything they ever worked for or hoped for. I guess they didn’t see another way out. So they took a chance, and things got out of control.”
She sighed. “I still don’t believe it, but I suppose it’s possible. What went wrong?”
“They backed out on the deal with Mendez. Could be they wanted more money or they found another buyer. Either way, they made the wrong people mad.”
“What does my granddaughter have to do with any of this? Why are you looking for her?”
“I think she knows where Brett is hiding. I think she’s trying to protect him. It will be better if I find her before the police do.”
“And you know where she is?”
“I’ve got a good idea. Nick Staley had a couple of rental properties.”
“In Forgotten Homes,” Lilly said. “I handled the sales. He put them in a company I think he called Forgotten Homes LLC.”
“Where is Forgotten Homes?”
“A Northeast neighborhood roughly bounded by Prospect Avenue on the east, Paseo Boulevard on the west, Fifteenth Street on the south, and Ninth Street on the north. All pretty rundown but a few worth rehabbing and renting if you can get decent tenants. I tried to talk Nick out of buying them, but the prices were right and he saw the houses as a way of paying for his retirement.”
“The houses are in foreclosure, but the bank hasn’t taken them over yet. I think Brett is hiding in one of them.”
“I’ll get you the addresses,” Lilly said, getting up from the table. “Terry, come with me.”
Terry shoved away from the table and followed her. A moment later, Lilly came back in the kitchen, Terry right behind her carrying a gun at his side. I came out of my chair, reaching for my gun, knowing I was too late.
“Relax, Jack,” Terry said. “It’s Lilly’s gun. She wants me to go with you.”
“I don’t doubt your desire to help Roni,” Lilly said, “but I can’t leave my granddaughter’s safety in the hands of a man who shakes. I’m sure you understand.”
Chapter Seventy-two
The houses were next door to one another on Eleventh Street east of Brooklyn, narrow, deep, and close, brick resting on exposed limestone foundations. They shared a driveway, one smaller, on the corner and sitting in the shadow of the other, its second-story windows shuttered with plywood. The lots across the street were vacant, the houses that once filled them long since decayed, destroyed, and bulldozed. A lone streetlight cast dim light on the pavement, the rest of the block dipped in pitch.
There were no cars parked in front of Nick Staley’s houses. The records I’d seen on Roni’s computer showed that they were vacant. The greater surprise would have been if the lights had been on and the driveway full.
I told Terry, “Circle the block. If they’re here, they probably parked and walked.”
He made two circles, the second one covering a two-block radius. We passed apartment buildings, a church, an elementary school, and houses alternating with vacant lots like jack-o’-lantern teeth. Dozens of cars were parked on the street, in driveways and parking lots.
We found a Ford Fusion in an alley behind an apartment building that looked like the one I’d seen Brett driving when he left Roni’s office on Monday, a Staley’s Market bag on the floor of the backseat enough confirmation for me. A Toyota Highlander was parked on the street a block away, the license tag a close match to my memory of the one on Roni’s car.
I told Terry to park on Brooklyn. He rolled to a stop fifty feet from the intersection with Eleventh beneath a heavily branched elm tree that hid us while providing a decent view of both houses. He settled back in his seat, drawing his gun from his belt and resting it against his thigh.
I pointed at the gun. “You know how to use that?”
He racked the slide, confirmed there was a round in the chamber, put the safety in the on position, and returned it to his lap, the muzzle pointed at the gas pedal.
“Learned in the Army. It’s like riding a bike.”
“Range practice is a lot different than hitting a moving target in the dark, especially when the target is someone that’s shooting back at you.”
“Don’t doubt that for a minute. Must be even harder if you’re shaking.”
“Everybody shakes when the shooting starts.”
“Some more than others, I imagine. You been in a shooting fight since you got the shakes?”
“No. I’ve been shot at, but haven’t had to shoot back.”
“You scared what’ll happen if you do?” Terry asked.
“Never been a time when I wasn’t before or since.”
“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it don’t.”
I nodded. “Me neither.”
We had a better view of the house on the corner, the one with the boarded-up second-story windows. Ten minutes in, the front door opened. A man slipped out, trotting to the house next door and letting himself in. I couldn’t see his face, but his size and shape matched Brett Staley.
“Let’s go,” Terry said.
“Not yet. Let’s wait and see if he’s coming or going.”
A minute later, the man left the second house, carrying two large duffel bags, straining under the weight.
“What do you figure is in the bags?” Terry asked.
“Something heavy, the way he’s carrying them.”
“Guns?”
“Seems likely.”
“Why move them from one house to the other? Reminds me of being in the Army and having to move a sand pile.”
“We’ll have to ask him.”
A woman opened the door to the corner house, letting the man in, enough light behind them for me to recognize Roni Chase and Brett Staley. We watched as they repeated their routine three more times.
All I could think was that God sometimes gives us second chances. When I met Lucy, I thought she was my second chance to make up for not having saved my daughter, Wendy. Things turned out well for Lucy, but it wasn’t enough for me, my debt growing faster than I could repay the principal, a leg-breaker’s interest rate keeping me forever in the red. I knew now that saving Roni wouldn’t bail me out either, that no one could, that I was the only one who could forgive my debt.
“You still think that girl is just looking out for her boyfriend?” Terry asked.
“To tell you the truth, she reminds me of someone else who got sucked into something she never would have done on her own because she thought she was in love with a guy that was no good.”
“How’d that turn out?”
My body trembled, my head twisting as far as it would go.
“They both died. The girl was my daughter.”
Terry had the decency not to tell me how sorry he was, keeping the focus on Roni.
“You think that’s what happened to Roni, that her boyfriend sucked her in?”
“We’ll see.”
We waited another five minutes. Neither
Roni nor Brett left the corner house.
“Now?” Terry asked.
“Now. Careful and quiet.”
We crossed the street, surveying the front of the house from the curb. A light glowed from behind a shade.
“Must be a back door,” Terry said. “How about if I go around and come in that way?”
“I don’t think so. I know what I’m doing, and you don’t. I’d rather have you right behind me than not know where you are or what you’re doing.”
“I’d rather sneak up on them. No reason to make it a fair fight. You start shooting, and I’ll start ducking,” he said and took off before I could stop him.
Chapter Seventy-three
There was a small porch on the front of the house, a V-shaped portico above the door the only protection from the elements. The windows on either side were far enough from the porch that I could hide between one of them and the door after I knocked, giving me some protection if my greeting was answered with gunfire.
Holding my gun against my leg, I rapped on the door and moved to the side, rapping again when no one answered. A window shade moved an inch, but I had the angle, concealed in the dark. I knocked a third time.
“Who’s there?” Roni asked without opening the door.
“It’s me, Jack.”
She kept her voice low, hissing, “Go away!”
“Too late for that, Roni. Open up. It’s either me or Quincy Carter.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, opening the door enough to step outside, arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want, Jack? Why can’t you leave me alone?”
Two gunshots echoed from the back of the house, Roni muffling a scream with one hand over her mouth.
“That’s why!”
She ran into the house. I tried to grab her, but she slipped out of my grasp, stumbling, slamming the door at me. I caught the door with my shoulder, bulling past it and into the house. There was a stairway in front of me and a room to my right, no furniture, just a dozen or more duffel bags stacked like sand bags against the far wall. I glanced up the stairs. The second floor was dark, muted scuffling sounds coming from somewhere above me, quick and soft enough to be squirrels in the attic roused by the gunfire.
