“Fine. But you have to find a way to get me into protective custody without alerting the task force.”
His eyes were a little wild, and when he took a step closer to her, she couldn’t help but flinch away.
“It’s not safe.”
Darger stared at him and held her breath for a moment.
“Because the task force is compromised?”
He nodded.
Chapter 57
“How do you know I’m not compromised?” Darger asked.
Jaworski smirked.
“Because you came after me even when you weren’t supposed to,” he said, then shook his head. “For all I know, I’m fucked no matter what. I don’t know if you can actually protect me, but I don’t really have a choice, at this point.”
Darger went over the last few days in her mind, putting together the pieces of Lijah’s story and what Cherie Howard had said about the strange shadowy figure stalking her husband at the banquet. She’d begun to doubt her theory about the mole. As she watched the crime scene techs log the evidence from Deputy Huettemann’s car, she’d started to think she’d gotten him killed for nothing. A wild goose chase.
And now here Jaworski was, confirming her suspicions. She should feel vindicated. Pleased, even. Instead, Darger felt almost nothing. They’d already lost too much for her to call it a victory.
“You know I’m going to have to call someone to get you a deal,” she said. “I can’t do this by myself.”
He considered this.
“You have someone you trust with your life? With absolute certainty?”
She nodded.
He gestured at her with the gun, indicating she could make the call.
She dialed Loshak. It took some time to explain it all, her suspicion about the mole in the task force, the secret stake-outs, and finally, that Jaworski had come to her wanting to cut a deal.
“He’s in your motel room? Now?” He kept his voice low, but she could still hear the incredulity.
“Yep,” Darger said, eyeballing the wounded giant who was just now using Darger’s service weapon to push the curtains wide enough to reveal a sliver of window and the daylight beyond.
“Are you hurt? Did he threaten you?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
Her ankle was back to throbbing like a motherfucker, actually, but that was beside the point.
“Can you do it? Can you get in touch with the federal prosecutor without tipping off the task force?”
“I can do it. The real problem will be keeping a lid on it once the prosecutor’s office is running the show. But I suspect once we’ve got the AUSA on the hook, he’ll want to do everything in his power to keep the witness safe.”
“Tell them we need to work fast.”
“Will do. Hold tight for now, partner.”
Darger ended the call.
Jaworski wobbled a little on his feet, and Darger found herself feeling some amount of sympathy for him again.
She stared into his cold, black eyes. Eyes that had fixed on her with homicidal malice the night before. But the fierceness had gone out of them for now.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she said, pointing to the other corner of the bed.
Jaworski raised an eyebrow and flinched at the slight movement of facial muscles. That seemed to decide things, and he hobbled over to the mattress.
The springs creaked in distress and Darger felt her side of the bed rise like a see-saw.
Jaworski turned his head, and she saw that he was smiling a little. Or trying to through a grimace of pain, anyway.
“Look at us. Couple of gimps.”
Darger blinked.
“I don’t think… you’re not really supposed to use that word anymore.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not like I called us a couple of retards, is it? I mean, what else am I suppose to say? Couple of cripples?”
Darger sighed.
“Forget it.”
The next several minutes passed in silence. Finally, Darger worked up the nerve to ask about Huettemann.
“I have to ask. The deputy that disappeared…”
He nodded and waved the gun to indicate he knew who she was talking about.
“Did you figure him out? Is that why you killed him? Or was it an ordered hit?”
“What, did you get knocked in the head in our scuffle yesterday? What part of I’m not saying another word until I have a deal in writing do you not understand?”
“I’m not… it’s just… it was my idea to put a car on you. And I can’t stop thinking that it was my decision that got Huettemann killed.”
Jaworski pressed his lips together. Half a minute of silence stretched out, and then Jaworski said, “I shot—”
Darger held her breath, wondering why he was telling her.
“—a bunch of people, but I did not shoot the deputy.”
Jaworski chortled at his reference, and Darger was suddenly struck again at who she was dealing with. A stone-cold murderer. He didn’t give a shit about doing the right thing. This was all to save his own skin.
He must have sensed a shift in her demeanor, because he wiped the amused smirk off his face and stopped humming the song.
“Can’t a guy joke around a little? Jesus.” He shook his head. “But I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill the deputy.”
A thought that was equal parts horror and hope hit her like a kick in the stomach.
“Is he still alive?”
Jaworski laughed again, saw her face, went serious.
“Christ, no. Sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”
“No. I mean, sort of. He just… didn’t deserve that. He was one of the good ones, you know?”
The two hunks of granite Jaworski called shoulders inched closer together as he shrugged.
“He died quick, if that makes you feel any better.”
“But you didn’t kill him.” She threw it back with an acidic tone before she could think of the ramifications of getting snarky with a mafia hitman.
“Let’s just say I had… intimate knowledge of his demise and leave it at that, alright? Jesus, you know I shouldn’t even be talking like this. I told you I wasn’t gonna open my mouth until I got a deal.”
Her phone rang then. It was Loshak.
Jaworski told her to answer it, and she did.
“It’s done,” Loshak said. “Now here’s the plan…”
Chapter 58
A swarm of law enforcement bodies huddled around Jaworski in the motel parking lot. Shackling him. Prodding him. Plucking the hunk of metal from his knee and giving his wounds a preliminary cleaning. Strapping a bulletproof vest on his chest. He felt like a show dog surrounded by judges, just waiting for someone to lift his tail and take a look down Main street.
They stood on the wet asphalt slab outside of the motel, the room being too small to accommodate even a quarter of the manpower called out for this transfer. A fleet of police cruisers, a couple of armored trucks, and three unmarked sedans belonging to the FBI filled the lot to the brim, eschewing the yellow lines to park in two rows, ready to fall into a specific formation as soon as they headed out.
The scale of all of this seemed like overkill to Jaworski. Did they really need a small army to move him a few miles? He thought not. They’d fussed around so long, the whole thing could have been over by now. But the way Agent Darger had explained it, the federal prosecutor had insisted things go down this way. It meant they were taking him seriously, at least. They knew a big fish when they had one.
Now the wave of cops and feds surged like a rising tide, moving out toward all of the police vehicles, their collective momentum seeming to shove Jaworski into the back seat of a cruiser with Agent Darger riding shotgun. She gave him a little nod and what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile, but she couldn’t hide the anxiety in her eyes from him.
Darger, too, sported a bulletproof vest, as did everyone by now. The last few stragglers pulled their Kevlar armor
on before they climbed into their cars.
And now the convoy was ready to move out. The lead car slushed through the mud puddles that obscured the ramp out of the lot, and they were off. Gliding down the street.
The quiet of the car shifted the atmosphere. For the first time, the reality of what was happening settled over Jaworski, and he felt strange. Perhaps in shock.
He was going to snitch, turn rat. And he was going to leave Urszula to her own life, the only way he could keep her safe.
He was giving up everything.
He would be shuffled into the witness protection program, probably sent out to Arizona to sell used cars or something. The feds would likely give him a phony name like Clark Thompson or Chet Farnsworth or Garth Cockle.
The weight of that struck him then — the story of Dominik Jaworski had reached its end. When he got out of this car and walked into the Wayne County Jail, he would become someone else.
The police convoy swung left at an intersection, moving into a deader part of the city. Vacant buildings peeked at them through boarded up windows. And overgrown grass lots filled the empty spaces where so many houses used to stand, where so many families used to live and breathe and dream.
Jaworski’s testimony would break the Battaglia family up for good, most likely. Take everyone down. Put Rocco, Carlo, and Lombino behind bars, among others. But he harbored no illusions about this making any difference in this place, in Detroit. He knew some other crew would ascend to power and take their place, even if the cops pretended otherwise.
There was a time when snitching was unthinkable for him, a time when he’d rather die than talk to the police. But once Rocco threatened Urszula, they left him no choice.
Here was something the new wave of mobsters like Rocco Battaglia couldn’t understand. Something more important than business or honor or any of his individual ambitions. A person he loved, a person he would sacrifice everything for.
He would burn the city to the ground to save her, burn the whole world.
He’d left a message telling her to get out of town for a few days, telling her that it was life or death. He only hoped she’d listen.
Because once he’d disappeared into the witness protection program, hurting Urszula would accomplish nothing. In fact, it may embolden Jaworski to retaliate, if anything. Even an animal like Rocco would know that, especially given some time to ponder it. A few days out of town for Urszula would be enough for Rocco’s initial burst of desire for vengeance to die back, enough time for reason to prevail, hopefully enough time for the feds to start making arrests.
He reached up to scratch his nose, just able to reach with the way the cuffs and shackles were clasped together. His chains tinkled against each other as he lowered his hand, the sound bringing him back to the present, back to the rear of the cruiser.
It was almost over now. And in a way, all was lost. His relationship. His career. Even his name. His life as he’d always known it was over, but strange as it felt, he did not feel sorrow, did not feel down or depressed.
He was doing this for her, doing something good for someone else. If a person as callous and fucked up as him — a cold-blooded killer — was still capable of that, capable of generosity, maybe the world could still make sense.
Chapter 59
The procession advanced as planned, the whole lot of them plugging along at a decent clip, periodically flipping on their lights and sirens to be able to stick together through red lights and stop signs.
A convoy this dramatic? It probably looked like the President was in town, Darger thought, or maybe royalty from abroad. Perhaps even Beyoncé.
Darger swallowed in a dry throat, reached a hand over her shoulder to paw at a tight wad of muscle knotted in her upper back. Tension. Anxiety. She couldn’t shake them. She felt calm on the surface, palms dry, heart rate normal, but somewhere deep down, the paranoia of this whole trip persisted, swirling tendrils of fear into every thought, every moment.
She wanted all of this to be over, wanted things to go back to normal. As much as they could, anyway. Getting through the transfer of Dominik Jaworski into federal custody was the last major hurdle. After that, the ball was in the prosecutor’s court.
The ride had been placid enough so far, and they seemed to have adequate police on hand to fend off a small army, but she wouldn’t fully relax until Jaworski’s statements were officially filed, until all this effort had produced something of tangible value.
She eyed the hitman in the back seat now. He slumped in an awkward position, stretching one leg out to the side funny, the other all folded up to accommodate the first — trying to keep his bad knee straight from the looks of it.
Strands of steel chain bound his ankles and connected to the cuffs on his wrists, but the restraints looked small on him. Like he could spread his arms and snap them like threads.
She thought about trying to get him talking again. His eyes looked faraway, though, dazed and slow-blinking as though he were lost in thought. Better to leave him alone, probably.
She took a big slug of coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Black sludge. She grimaced a little at the burned note that stuck to her tongue, tried wiping her tongue on the roof of her mouth to no effect. More coffee surely wouldn’t wash the foul flavor away, but she dumped more in nonetheless.
The driver had brought a cup of the black stuff for each of them, Deputy Dan Healey of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, their escort for today’s transfer. He seemed a nice enough guy, perhaps a little too chatty at first, but he’d quieted down once they got going, and she was thankful for that.
The edges of Detroit slid by the windows, the dead part of the city, eerie in its lack of pedestrians, lack of traffic.
The concrete blur flashed green in patches as they neared the city actual, all those empty spaces on the blocks where houses used to be, vacant and gapped and strange, like a mouth full of missing teeth. It wouldn’t be far now.
The jail was located in midtown Detroit, just next to Wayne State University. Jaworski would give his statement there, cut a preliminary deal with federal prosecutors, probably be taken into the care of the U.S. Marshals and the Witness Security Program within the day. A few more miles to go. That was all.
A thunderous grinding noise erupted somewhere ahead, its volume swelling. Darger recognized the sound before she had time to process it fully — a car hurtling this way at top speed.
In the time it took to inhale once, a lot happened:
The car burst into their field of vision. A black Chrysler 300. A dark blur rocketing into the intersection ahead. Too fast.
Its front end speared the lead cruiser of the police procession like a missile, the impact booming like a shotgun blast.
Glass and sparks exploded everywhere. Fragments of bumper and quarter panel flung into the air like confetti.
Both cars spun out of control. The dark Chrysler swiveled like a top, bashed into the next police car in line, effectively dead-ending their progress with violent efficiency. Its front end now looked tattered and spread wide, somewhere between an opened can of tuna and a cigar exploded as a prank. Black smoke fluttered out of the wounded place.
The police cruiser rolled sideways, somersaulting like a tumbleweed. Crumpling and compressing into something smaller. Glass crashed like cymbals with each revolution. It cartwheeled down the cross street and moved out of Darger’s frame of vision.
Most of a fender skidded over the sidewalk and smacked one of the vacant buildings, propped up neatly like someone had set it there intentionally.
And then everything was still. Quiet. Strange.
Darger blinked, eyes swiveling back to where the lead car had been seconds before. Tried to make sense of the scene. The driver of the Chrysler hadn’t even hit the brakes.
A puddle of anti-freeze smeared over the asphalt there, dumped out of the radiator on first impact. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know it had ever been there, she thought. The bits of debris in that vicinity were too small to
even see from this distance.
“An ambush,” Healey said, and he reached for his radio.
Darger blinked again, knew what he said was the truth she’d been searching for in her own mind. This was no accident.
“More like a bloodbath, if it’s Rocco Battaglia’s men,” Jaworski said from the back seat. “And it most definitely is.”
More vehicles closed around them then, a band of SUVs and sedans blocking the way forward and back.
And then the clatter of automatic weapons started up in all directions. People firing from the tops of buildings, from the mess of vehicles pouring in to surround them.
Oh, shit.
Chapter 60
Everything around them sprang into motion.
The SWAT team streamed out of the police truck directly in front of them. The heavily armored men and women fell out in formation, motioning at each other with raised fists and arm waves. They took cover behind fenders and car doors, moving into position methodically, raising their own automatic weapons to return fire.
One helmeted SWAT officer squatted just in front of their car, using it as cover. He bobbed up and down twice, firing off a few shots each time he went up.
The third time he rose, his head exploded into a bloody spray. Just gone.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Healey said, his voice just above a whisper.
“We’re surrounded,” Darger said. “We have to move.”
The driver didn’t hesitate. He veered out of the line of law enforcement vehicles, speeding toward the lone gap in the mafia vehicles penning them in — an opening near the intersection. It might be wide enough for them to squeeze through if they hit it hard enough, Darger thought.
Healey floored it.
The car rode higher on its wheels, taller and prouder for this brief moment.
But the gunfire intensified. Loud cracks and pops. The weird reverberations of rounds ricocheting off the concrete.
Darger bit her lip. Eyes locked on that little breach ahead, that little space between two black SUVs.
Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Page 27
