by Neal Griffin
Kane maintained eye contact as he crossed the open dance floor and closed to within three feet of Bell.
“Come on,” he said evenly, motioning with his arm. “We’ll talk in my office. More private.”
“We’ll talk here,” Bell said without moving.
Kane let his annoyance show. “What the hell, Curtis? Didn’t you hear me? It’s more private.”
“You should always be so concerned about privacy,” Bell said.
“Meaning?”
“Your run-in with the cops. What the fuck, Gunther? We’re in the middle of a major deal and you’re out trying to score some brown strange on a street corner?”
Because of their history, Kane allowed Bell to take some liberties, but history or not, he wouldn’t have Bell talking smack in front of a bunch of foot soldiers.
“That’s been dealt with.” Kane continued the stare-down. “And it’d be best if you limit your conversation to the business at hand.”
“Dealt with?” The dry tone made Kane wonder if he was being mocked—and Bell’s next words confirmed it. “‘Dealt with’ would imply you made a deal. You do seven days’ custody after assaulting an undercover cop? Remind me to get the name of your lawyer.”
Kane took one step closer, to narrow the gap between them. “It was nothing. Some dumb-ass flatfoot out of Newberg. Their case was shit and the DA knew it. And like I said, that’s got nothing to do with this business here.”
“Maybe that’s the way you see it, but that kind of notoriety? You start pulling down deals like that with a prosecutor, people will wonder about the nature of your legal relationships.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I got partners, Kane. Men still in uniform. People who don’t care to become part of your legal deal making. So until we reestablish some trust, I’ll say where and when we meet.”
Kane glared ahead, his heart pounding in anger. He wondered if that Suarez bitch had made good on her threat to sow seeds of doubt about his reputation. Several seconds passed before he relented and took a seat on the opposite couch with a low cocktail table between them.
“Fine. But if you end up stuck to the furniture, don’t blame me. It gets quite the nightly workout, if you know what I mean.”
“We had a deal.” Bell looked at Tanner, then at Kane. He kept his voice low. “A hundred pieces plus accessories. I’ve been sitting on this stuff for a week. Are you in or not?”
In his early thirties, with Nordic features, pale skin without a hint of pink, and white-blond hair clipped short, Curtis Bell had the look of the all-American male. The skin of his face fit tight to his skull. His plain, stark white T-shirt covered toned muscle that was not blemished with so much as a single drop of ink. His gray eyes never held any of the normal intimidation or fear that Kane was accustomed to seeing in the people he did business with.
Kane had also come to realize Curtis Bell could deliver. Whether a man needed an untraceable revolver scraped clean of serial numbers or a high-end semi-automatic forty cal still in the box, for the right price Bell would come through. They had made dozens of single weapon transactions, but this deal would take Kane’s relationship with Bell to the next level. This was where the real money got made. He was determined to make it happen.
“Don’t get all black ass on me, Bell. We’re getting ready to take shipment.”
“Getting ready isn’t good enough. This shit was supposed to happen a week ago,” Bell said. “Time to get it done or we’re moving on. It’s a seller’s market.”
“So you really pulled it off, huh?” Kane said. “That’s a lot of iron.”
“What the fuck? You ordered it. You thought I wouldn’t deliver?”
“That ain’t it. But like you said, I had that run-in with the local cops.” Kane tossed his head, indicating the men who stood back from the table. “Can’t trust these guys for dick. While I was locked up, I ordered a shutdown of everything other than legitimate operations. Our cash flow is down, but we’ll bounce back.”
“That’s not my problem, Kane. I need to move the inventory. A hundred pieces. Factory direct. Fully automatic. Plus fifty thousand rounds.”
“That’s a hundred large to me,” Kane said, confirming the agreed-upon price.
“Yeah, it is. Cash.”
Kane cocked his head. “That’s a lot of cash.”
“Maybe to some folks, but you told me your people could handle it. That you were ready to step up. Now we need to close this out.”
“Fine. I need a week. Maybe ten days.”
Bell shook his head, expressionless. “Not going to happen. You got five days. Otherwise I’ll unload this shit on some dinge gang down in Chicago. You can deal with the brothers once you scrape together your nickels and dimes.”
Bell’s voice turned smug. “But you might want to remember, those boys have a tendency to jack the price when dealing with folks who hold certain views on the subject of race relations.”
“Five days then.” Kane made sure his voice was filled with judgment. “Good to know where your heart lies.”
“Save it, Kane. My heart is green. This is business. My partners and I don’t need to get wrapped up in politics. If that race war all you Aryan types are worried about ever really comes, you can be sure we’ll be happy to supply both sides.” Bell winked. “You can’t get any more American than that.”
Couldn’t agree more, Kane thought to himself. But if the man wanted to think Kane was all about the movement, all the better. “Fine. Five days. We’ll take delivery on payment.”
Bell gave a long stare as if mulling it over. “Good. In the meantime, stay out of police cars. And that cop from Newberg? You might want to stay particularly clear of her.”
Kane huffed up at the thought. “Suarez? The hell with that bitch.”
“Not so fast, Kane.” A hint of condescension had snuck into Bell’s tone and Kane didn’t like it. “We checked her out. Before she was a cop, she did two tours in Afghanistan with a Marine sniper team. Last year she took down a pretty hard player on a tough case. Word on the street is she can be like a dog on the bite. Doesn’t have much in the way of quit.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Kane said. “You might say she and I have come to an understanding. If she’s a dog on the bite, she’s one of them little Mexican pocket dogs, the ones them rich bitches out in Hollywood carry around in their purses.”
Kane laughed at his joke and Tanner yucked it up from the perimeter. Bell remained stone-faced.
“I know all about your jailhouse conversation, Gunther. The report I got is you held up pretty well. Handled yourself like a real soldier. You should know, that’s the only reason we’re still doing business. But like I said, stay clear of her. She can be persistent.”
Kane nodded his head, intrigued. “God damn, Curtis. Ain’t you all hooked up? Even got yourself a man on the inside? You’re like some international spy or some such shit, huh?”
With no show of effort Bell stood, towering over Kane, who began to pull himself to his feet with a good bit of huffing.
“Don’t bother getting up.” Bell looked down at him. “And remember … my people aren’t interested in getting famous.”
Bell leaned down until his face was inches from Kane’s. “And they don’t like to be inconvenienced. We went through a good deal of effort to get this shipment together. Don’t disappoint.”
Tanner scurried after Bell as the man walked toward the front of the bar. Bell reclaimed his property, tucked the items back into his pockets, and turned to leave. When he opened the door, sunlight suddenly flooded the room, a reminder that there was still a world waiting outside the club. Pausing in the doorway, Bell turned back to Kane. He held up five fingers, brought his chin down sharply, then walked out. The door swung shut and the room fell dark. Kane turned to Tanner.
“What the hell are you standing around for? We got five days to score a hundred g’s. Get the bitches busy on the poles and pull out all the
stops. Even then, it’s gonna be tight.”
TEN
At moments like this, walking the tree-lined streets of downtown Newberg, Ben couldn’t help but be flooded with nostalgia. Even now, with him in full uniform, preoccupied with worry over Tia Suarez, the scenery took him back to boyhood. This small Wisconsin town, with its steadfast Nordic heritage, was the only real home he had ever known. Despite all the years he and Alex had spent in California, he’d never felt settled there, felt more like a gun-toting mercenary than a lawman. Being a cop in Newberg connected him to something he had come perilously close to losing.
“Afternoon, Chief Sawyer. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Hello, Mrs. Peterson.” Ben smiled at the passing woman, who had been teaching at Newberg Elementary since before Ben and Alex had entered first grade. “It is very nice, isn’t it?”
Like the Norgaard and Sawyer families, most townspeople boasted of being second-generation Newbergens, if not third. The twenty thousand residents of Newberg remained predominantly of Norwegian stock and maintained some Scandinavian traditions. These people farmed or worked locally, making their money as artisans or small-business entrepreneurs. Some worked in one of the manufacturing plants that still flourished in a township able to offer affordable housing, a stalwart labor force, and a wholesome lifestyle.
Ben walked past a Victorian home converted into a mix of apartments and commercial space. The occasional vehicle drove slowly along cobbled streets still pristine after a hundred years of use. He preferred the old-world charm of the central district to the outer edges of town, where large swaths of tract homes had begun to pop up to fit the modern lifestyle of the young suburbanites who commuted to Milwaukee, forty-five minutes to the east.
The new planned developments reminded Ben of the sprawling community his family had lived in out west. In California, people thought nothing of taking a thousand acres of scrub desert, redirecting a river or two, and churning out a sea of homes with five staggered floor plans, arranged and landscaped in a way Ben found nauseatingly repetitive. That might work in the frantic ten-year turnover cycle of California, but Wisconsin was different. When Ben looked at row upon row of new houses on the outskirts of Newberg, he didn’t see a transformed, arid wasteland.
He thought back to the nineteenth-century farms and the families who worked them. The tens of thousands of acres that fed millions of people around the country and beyond. Now the farms were mostly gone, the price of corn and barley unable to keep pace with the worth of a five-thousand-square-foot lot leveled and cleared for a four-bedroom, three-bath prefab. Ben recognized the weakness of his nostalgia, but he respected the heartiness of the old life and he hated to think of it passing from the earth.
As he walked, various citizens called for his attention, some wanting to stop and chat about the nighttime activity of a neighbor or to suggest a strategy for combatting the drag racing that went on every weekend out on State Highway 12. When Ben finally got close enough to smell the aroma of roasting coffee beans, he picked up his pace, nodding at passersby rather than speaking with them. After his contentious meeting with Tia, Ben had developed a sudden urge to see his wife. Over the past six months, during all her stages of setback and recovery, no one had been closer to Tia than Alex.
Books and Java, Alex’s coffeehouse and bookstore, was empty except for Ben’s wife, who was squatting down low, checking the temperature setting of the coffee roaster. He stood in the open doorway for a moment to admire the girl—now woman—he had known and loved since he was nine. All these years later, and just five months after the birth of their second child, Alex still had the body of a twenty-year-old. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her skin glowed with its usual rich summertime tan. When he realized she hadn’t heard the door open, he called out.
“Can I get one of those triple foamy caramel frappu things with whip cream and chocolate shavings?” Alex stood up and spun around, already smiling at the sound of her husband’s voice. Ben winked. “Nonfat milk, though, okay?”
Alex turned back to the commercial-grade roaster, shaking her head. “Walk down the street to the stoplight. Ugly green mermaid sign on your left. They’ve got just what you want.”
Ben walked over and gave his wife a peck on the cheek and slung an arm around her waist. She pushed him away, playing like she had better things to do.
“Not now, Ben. I’m getting ready to dump the seeds.”
“Hey, sorry.” Ben feigned offense. “I think you paid more attention to me when you drank Folgers.”
“I never drank Folgers.” Alex pulled on the large silver handle and the chute opened. Dark brown coffee beans, which Alex always liked to point out were actually seeds, cascaded out of the spinning drum and into the cooling bin. She switched on the metal paddle that began to slowly stir the warm beans, then flipped on the cooling fan, filling the air with the unmistakable aroma of fresh-roasted whole-bean coffee.
Soon after buying Books and Java, Alex began roasting coffee in the store. The eight-foot-tall, four-hundred-pound piece of machinery sat just a few feet inside the front door. When she was roasting, which was most mornings, Alex would leave the door open and the smell would bring customers from blocks away. In the winter months, when it was too cold to keep the door open, every patron’s arrival and departure sent a blast of warm, aromatic love into the world. Business had doubled. Ben didn’t know why he was surprised to add entrepreneurship to her list of skills.
“What’s the blend?”
“Sumatra Peaberry. Sit down. I’ll bring you a mug.”
Alex scooped some still-warm beans into her hand and went to the grinder behind the counter. Ben made himself comfortable at a nearby table. Alex had switched out the artwork since the last time he had come by, he noticed. Used books were stacked on the cement floor, waiting to be shelved. Head tilted, Ben was reading titles when Alex glided over, setting two steaming mugs onto the table and taking a seat.
Ben held a cup high and gave his typical salute. “Fuck-Bucks.”
Alex shook her head at his coarse language. “Cheers,” she said, lifting her own mug.
Ben took a sip of what most people agreed was some of the finest coffee sold east of Seattle. “So,” he said, doing his best to sound casual, “Tia come by this morning?”
“No,” Alex said. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I know she is a regular customer, just wondered if she’d been in.”
“So you walked down here to ask me? You can’t keep track of your detectives?”
Ben said nothing.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s just…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. “I don’t know. She’s going through some stuff. I thought she might have come by. She and I don’t really talk much. Not like we used to.”
“Why is that? She’s back to work right? Full duty?”
Ben had held off on telling Alex about the hooker detail, but he knew she would find out sooner or later, so he launched in. After fifteen years of being a cop’s wife and a lifetime as a cop’s daughter, Alex was more than familiar with all aspects of police work. Ben never had to dumb it down or sugarcoat it. In fact, if he ever tried Alex would call him on it. Ben gave Alex a complete rundown of the operation and how the wheels fell off with the prosecutor. Alex listened intently, without interruption.
“Disorderly conduct?” Alex said when Ben finished. “She has every right to be upset. Can’t you do something?”
“Apparently the deal’s been struck. Can’t unring the bell.”
“Should she have even been working a U/C detail? I mean, I thought you were going to start her off slow?”
“Yeah, that was the plan, but I didn’t make the call.” Ben thought back to his conversations with Sergeant Jackson. “TJ gave her the assignment, but Tia twisted the hell out of his arm. You know how she can be.”
“So she saw a girl in the back of the van?” Alex asked. “What now?”
&nb
sp; Ben sipped his coffee and looked over the top of the cup. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you doing about it? So what if the DA kicks it. Get back in there and build a stronger case, right?”
“That’s not going to happen.” Ben shook his head and began to question the wisdom of having brought it up at all. “I got a call from the prosecutor. She was all worked up about Tia going to see the suspect in county lockup. If we go sniffing around the case now, it’ll get really ugly.”
“So what then? Milwaukee PD?”
Ben shrugged. “That’s up to them.”
Alex sat back in her chair and shook her head. “Well, if I were Tia, I’d be pretty mad, too.”
“Come on, Alex. Really?” Ben’s voice reflected his disbelief. “A girl in the back of a van? Does that make any sense? When you consider all the circumstances—”
“Don’t tell Tia you feel that way. She might bite your head off.” Alex grimaced.
Ben thought about stopping there, but again, the woman was going to find out one way or another. “Too late. And you’re right. She wasn’t happy.”
“I can imagine.” Alex looked hard at her husband and Ben knew she suspected that there was more. “So now what? Back to business as usual?”
“Not exactly.” Ben looked into his cup. “I told Tia she needed to get cleared by Dr. Gage.”
Alex set her cup down. Her voice was pained. “Oh, Ben. Really? Gage? Do you realize how awful he has been to Tia?”
“I don’t have a choice, Alex. She was in a major fight. She says they tried to kidnap her. An event like that is considered traumatic and requires a fitness for duty eval.”
“But Gage?”
“Can’t be helped. He’s got the county contract. Tia just needs to answer the man’s questions and she’ll be back to work. That’s how it is.”
The couple sat quietly and Ben knew that Alex was pained by what he had done. He also knew she was wise enough to understand that he hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter.
