I wished I could say no. “Yes, I did, but I ruined my camera when I dropped it.”
“So I’ve heard.” He glanced at Montez. “But the people who committed the murder don’t know that you did that. For all they know, you could be handing photos over to the police right now.”
“True.” The truth hurt, for sure.
“I’m not trying to frighten you,” he said in a grave tone of voice, “but you have to realize who we’re dealing with. They won’t stop at scaring you. Their biggest priority in a situation like this is to wipe out anybody who might get in their way. They want to be sure they can keep doing business as usual. You’re standing in the way of that. Believe me, I don’t need your business badly enough to scare you into accepting our assistance.”
“I can’t possibly afford you,” I murmured. I looked up at Montez. “I live in a one-bedroom in Queens. How can I afford the help of a private security firm?”
He and Paxton exchanged a look. “I think we can work something out,” he assured me. I didn’t know how Paxton felt about that, but he seemed to go along with it. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the manpower at this time to leave a police detail with you twenty-four-seven. And we can’t take chances.”
The cutie pie standing behind Paxton still hadn’t said a word, I noticed. There was a deep intensity in the way he looked at me, like he was sizing me up. I wondered if he was the guy who would be watching over me. Life could be worse. “Do I have to open my apartment up to your team?” I asked Paxton.
“Not to the entire team. Just to one member in particular.” He motioned to the other agent. I thought so. “We install surveillance equipment in your apartment, especially at the door and windows, so we’ll know if anybody tries to break in from outside. Otherwise, Brett Miller will be your shadow. If he needs to leave for any reason, another agent will take his place until he comes back. We also have a team of agents whose job is to survey the area outside a client’s home—they take turns going from place to place so they’re not obvious, parked out in front of a building all day long.”
“Wow. You think of everything.” I couldn’t deny the relief the thought of having protection gave me, but I still didn’t think I needed it. “And you’re sure you’re not taking a massive hit to your bottom line by taking me on as a client?”
Montez jumped in. “Like I said, we’ll work something out.” Paxton’s jaw was tight, but he nodded in agreement. Sometimes I wished I weren’t so observant.
I sighed. “All right. I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
“Good,” Montez smiled. “And this way, if you remember anything else you can tell us, we’ll be easy to reach via Brett.”
“Awesome.” I glanced at Brett, who was still staring at me. I wondered if he was mute. That wouldn’t bother me, since I didn’t feel like getting into conversation over the events of the night before. The more I said, the better the chance I would let something slip. And I couldn’t ever let them know what I hadn’t told them. I had to find a way to keep it a secret.
Chapter Three – Brett
“So tell me more about her.” I sat down in Ricardo’s office while Pax drove to Molly San Lorenzo’s apartment. He was going to call the team from the road and have them come in to start installation, and Molly would be there to ask any questions she might have. I had the feeling there would be plenty. She seemed like a pretty sharp girl.
The detective shook his head, then ran his hands through his dark, wavy hair. “I give up with her. I really do. She’s like a brick wall, but none of us can figure out why she’s being so secretive.”
“What could she have to hold back?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I really don’t. And the thing is, it’s not like she ever refused to answer a question. It’s just the way she answers, like she’s holding something back.”
“How?” I stretched out my long legs, crossing them at the ankles. A one-bedroom apartment. That told me she probably had a tiny little couch from IKEA or a thrift store in the living room. I wouldn’t get much chance to stretch my legs again until the case was closed.
“Like when we asked her to describe who she saw pulling the trigger. He was tall, wearing a black jacket.” He let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “I mean, come on. She took the guy’s picture. She had to crouch or kneel or whatever she was doing and focus the goddamned camera on him and snap a shot. And all she can tell us is that he was wearing a black jacket?”
“That does sound odd.”
“And she has no idea how many men were there with them—or if there were any other men at all. I was willing to chalk it up as shock in the beginning, but after twelve hours, it seems like she would remember something.” He ran his hands over his cheeks, covered in stubble. “Besides, it’s not like she ever acted like she was in shock. She’s been pretty even-keeled since she came in. If anything, she seemed irritated that the cop who pulled her over brought her in to begin with.”
“Stubborn,” I mused.
“Hiding something,” he fired back. “She’s got to be. Once we get the information off her memory card, we’ll know what.”
“I thought the camera was toast.”
“Oh, it is.” He showed me a picture of the camera. How meta, I thought with a wry smile as I checked it out. Then I whistled when I saw what a mess she had made of it—the lens was shattered, the case was cracked and scratched.
“What the hell do you have to do to a high-quality camera like that to do that kind of damage?” I asked.
“She fell when she was running away—her palms were cut to hell,” he explained. “If she was running and the momentum carried the camera away from her, I can see it coming down with a hard enough crash that it was destroyed.”
“And the memory card?”
“Jammed in there—even if we get it out, there’s a chance we won’t be able to extract anything. I have the tech team on it right now, but we have about seven or eight other cases that are even bigger than this one.” He rubbed his eyes, and I couldn’t help but notice the bags under them. “I need a vacation, buddy.”
“I hear that. You look like you do, too.”
“Thanks,” he smirked.
“So what does she say she was doing? Taking pictures? At an abandoned restaurant off the pier?”
“I know. That seems like a strange thing for a girl to be doing at eight o’clock on a Sunday night, doesn’t it? It was still fairly light outside at that time—it was a clear sky yesterday, so I can imagine there was good lighting out there. But it’s not a very pretty place. And she’s not one of those art school photographers trying to get a picture of the decay of the neighborhood for her final project.”
I snickered. “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” But I didn’t believe myself. There had to be another reason. Was she supposed to meet somebody there? The area in question was a known hangout spot for drug dealers and their clients. I had done a good deal of observation in the interrogation room—she didn’t seem like the type. Her arms were almost bare thanks to the short-sleeved shirt she wore, and they were clear of track marks. She looked healthy. Extremely healthy. So why was she there?
“And you said you know the guy who got shot?” I asked.
“Yeah. Willie Preston. Forty-two years old, originally from Newark. In and out of jail for small-time offenses since he was eighteen years old. He was a known associate of the De Marco family—low-level, but involved just the same.”
“The De Marcos.” I whistled through my teeth. So things were getting interesting, just like I had guessed they would. The De Marco crime family ruled New York’s underworld. They had taken control after a bloody war back in the eighties and had held power ever since. With an iron fist, most said. “Not exactly the type of people you wanna be indebted to,” I grimaced.
“No, not at all. Some would say the guy got what he deserved—hell, most people would say it, me included. You get wrapped up in shit like that, you have to know the way it’s gonna end
up.” Then he sighed. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to do everything we can to bring his killers to justice, et cetera. It just burns my ass that the Feds are gonna try to stick their noses in this, is all.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.”
He gave me a grim smile. “Yeah. It’s gonna be a lot of fun around here.”
“And our witness wants nothing to do with any of it.”
“Hell, I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want anything to do with this, either, especially when I heard the mob was involved.” He stretched, shaking his head to keep himself alert. “I wish she would tell us what she’s holding back. How can she expect us not to think she’s holding back? And when she does, it makes me wonder what she was doing that she’s afraid to tell us. For a girl who seems smart, she’s pretty slow.”
“Yeah, she has no idea she was incriminating herself all along.” I squinted at him. “So what’s with telling her you would work something out with Pax?”
He grinned. “He owes me, wouldn’t you say? How much business have I thrown his way this year alone?”
“I was just thinking about that in the car,” I laughed. “But that’s a pretty big favor.”
“Oh, hell, he owes me for the time I beat up Jimmy McNeil for him in the sixth grade. Kid was the biggest bully in school. If your boss grumbles about me, just mention that name. See if it shuts him up.”
***
She wasn’t kidding when she said her apartment was small. I just about had room to turn around in a circle with my arms outstretched without hitting something. That was unfortunate, since I liked having a little space. I paid a pretty penny for an apartment with an open floor plan because living in a housing project as a kid had given me respect for wide open space.
The fact that there were three of our techs walking back and forth as they set up surveillance didn’t help matters. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for me in the past, but I felt it creeping up on me the longer I watched them work. “Where’s Pax and the client?” I asked when it finally got to be too much.
“They’re out on the fire escape,” Tricia explained as she tested the camera she’d just installed in the corner of the living room. I went to the bedroom—pretty, frilly, too much pink for my taste—and leaned out through the open window. Pax and Molly were sitting on the stairs leading up to the next floor.
“There you are,” he said when he saw me. “All set?”
“Yeah, just went back to pick up clothes.” And I had only just finished washing all of them after moving back into my apartment when I wrapped up my last case. It felt like being a traveling salesman, only I never sold anything.
“I was just telling Molly about the role you’ll play in this, and how we’ll always be watching the interior of the apartment.”
“And I was just telling him how uncomfortable that makes me feel,” Molly added with a grimace. “I mean, being on camera all the time?”
“Not all the time,” I replied. “Just when you’re in the living room or kitchen. Otherwise, you have privacy in the bedroom and bathroom.” If anything, I was the one who would always be on camera, sleeping in the living room under Marcus’s watchful eye. I was glad he didn’t get sound on the feed, or else he might hear me snoring or talking in my sleep. That was all I needed—a smartass tech making fun of me for mumbling things while I slept.
“That doesn’t do much to make me feel better, I can’t lie.”
“Just know that it’s for the best.” I sat on the windowsill and looked out at her. She was a beautiful girl. I’d put her around mid-to-late twenties. Long, black hair in one of those braids girls started wearing after those Hunger Games movies came out. I always wondered how it was possible for girls to braid their hair without looking at the back of their head. She had a tight little body, on the athletic side. I wondered if she was a runner. She looked like one. In daylight it was even more obvious that she wasn’t a drug user—clear, smooth skin. Bright hazel eyes. Good teeth, not the rotting, yellowed teeth of a meth user. She was just a girl who got herself mixed up in something she couldn’t understand. Simple as that.
But there was still something. I could feel it. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
She came inside and wrapped her arms around herself as she showed me around the tiny bathroom, the laughable excuse for a kitchen. No, it wasn’t a studio, but it wasn’t much bigger than one. Having a separate bedroom was just about the only thing that made it livable—I wondered if the landlord hadn’t thrown a wall up in the center of the main room just so he could call it a one-bedroom and charge more money. Typical shady landlord.
I could tell she was uncomfortable from the way she held herself. It was a little chilly in there—at least the air conditioning worked, and good thing since we were in the middle of July—but it wasn’t cold enough for her to shiver like she did. I wondered how long it would take for me to break her down and see what was at the heart of the way she was behaving. I gave myself a week.
The techs filtered out of the place, and eventually it was just the three of us. Pax shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I guess that’s it for me, then. There’s really not much else I can do here. If you have any more questions, Brett will answer them for you—he knows just about as much as I know about what we do.”
I nodded. “No problem. It’s all taken care of.” One glance at the girl told me she didn’t think things were taken care of at all. Well, she didn’t have much say in that.
As he left, Pax wore a grim expression. I stopped him in the hall just outside the door. “Anything wrong?” I murmured, making sure she couldn’t overhear.
“No. Well, I guess I’m not thrilled over swallowing the cost of this one.” He looked pained.
“Oh, that reminds me. Ricardo gave me a message for you.”
“What is it?”
“Jimmy McNeil.”
His face went a shade of red I had never seen it turn before. Even the top of his head turned color. “Tell him I said he wins.”
Chapter Four – Molly
“Nobody would believe this if I told them.”
I looked over at my new shadow from where I sat on the other side of the room. That wasn’t saying much, really. We were only a few feet apart. I sat in a secondhand easy chair, feet tucked under me, with a cup of tea. He was on the sofa with his phone. I didn’t know if he was playing a game or texting or what.
“What do you mean?” He didn’t look up.
“I mean, the way life can change in the blink of an eye. Yesterday at this time, I was getting ready for dinner at my parents’ house. Tonight I’m sitting here in the living room with a new roommate.”
He smirked, but still he didn’t look up. “Roommate. Well, if that helps you get through it.”
“What would you call yourself, then?”
“Bodyguard.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t like the sound of that. It makes it sound like I’m in danger.”
“Aren’t you?” He finally looked up when I didn’t answer, and he must’ve seen my reaction on my face. “Sorry. That wasn’t nice.”
“I don’t need you to be nice. I would prefer you to be straight-up with me, to be honest.”
He smiled a little, then went back to what he was doing. “Good. I like being honest. One less thing I have to worry about—covering up for the lies I told.”
I rolled my eyes. He thought he was special, I could tell. I had known men like him in the past. Once, in college, I had a crush on a guy who I was sure was my ideal. Tall, dark and handsome, with a great personality and a willingness to help his friends no matter what it meant. Only after a while it became clear that he got off on being the good guy, Mr. Dependable, Mr. Generous. He acted like he did it out of the goodness of his heart, but I figured out after a while that he only wanted to feel special. Same thing with the man sitting on my sofa.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Would you like if I asked you how old you are?” he
asked.
“I’m twenty-five. And I thought you were always honest.”
His mouth twitched even though he kept his eyes on his phone. “Thirty.”
“Wow. Old man.”
“It’s better than the alternative,” he said in a grim tone of voice. A shiver ran through me. I couldn’t help but think again about the man whose life ended in front of me. The horror I’d felt when I realized what I was watching, wanting to scream out for them to stop, to not shoot him. There had to be another way.
Again, when I didn’t answer, Brett looked up at me. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just… Nothing.”
“No, it’s something. Tell me.” He wasn’t trying to be nice, the way Good Cop had tried. I never did get his name, did I? Or I did when I first got to the station, when everything was a blur, and I forgot it as soon as I heard it. Brett was frank, to the point. He didn’t want to spare my feelings. Maybe he didn’t think about them at all. Why would he? I was just a client, and he was just in it for the paycheck.
“You made me think about the man who got shot, is all.” I looked down at my tea, and the little leaves that floated around the bottom of the cup. No matter how find the mesh on the infuser I used, a little bit always sneaked through into the cup.
“Oh. I guess that was tough for you to see.”
I only snorted. “Yeah. Tough.”
“It was hard for me, the first time I saw a guy die.”
I looked up at him through my lowered lashes. Was he only saying that to butter me up? Was he playing Good Cop, too? Trying to break down my defenses and get me to pour out the whole ugly story? I decided to play along. “Was that in the war? I mean, your boss said you’re all ex-military.”
“We are, but it wasn’t then. I was ten when I first saw a guy get killed.”
That got my attention in spite of everything else. “You were? Wow. What happened?”
He shrugged, but his phone landed in his lap. He forgot about it for a minute, and I got the chance to look into his bright blue eyes. They were an almost surreal color, and the seemed to leap out of his tanned face. Thick, dark hair and dark eyebrows set them off even further. They seemed to go a little hazy, a little out of focus, when he remembered. “I grew up in a housing project. My mom…she did her best. My dad wasn’t around. Anyway, I was playing out in front of my building with a couple of the kids I knew. I shouldn’t have been playing out there—nobody should’ve been out in that courtyard at all, since that was where all the deals went down.”
Lewis Security Page 18
