“I’ll just be asking a few questions.”
“Sure.” Miguel chortled. He dug around in his desk drawer, retrieving a pack of gum and a set of car keys. “I’ll drive.”
“I don’t—”
“No offense, El, but if you go in there trying to talk to these kids with that bullshit earnest expression on your face? You’ll get nowhere.” He folded a stick of gum into his mouth and cocked his head toward the door. “Vamonos, my man. I’ve still got some clowns to schedule.”
20
Elliot
Julio’s grandmother insisted that he no longer associated with what she called bad boys, but it didn’t take much coaxing for her to admit a few friends still came by occasionally.
She offered them coffee and freshly baked empanadas, while Elliot attempted to jog her memory. He slid his plate across the table toward Miguel, who packed away the food with gusto. Elliot still didn’t have much of an appetite.
He struggled to curb his frustration when the old woman could only offer partial descriptions of Julio’s friends.
“What about someone named Juan?” He prodded. “Julio mentioned him a couple times.”
“Oh. Him.” Her already wrinkled face scrunched into an expression reminiscent of an unhappy Shar-Pei. “He reminds me of my son, with the drugs. But he does not like the cars.”
Julio’s voice from weeks ago floated back to him: he sells pills.
Elliot stared down at her hands clenched together on the table, at the swollen knuckles beneath tissue paper skin, and recalled what Lucas had said about the advance he’d given Julio: he said his grandmother needed meds.
“Has Julio ever bought anything from him?”
She glared. “My boy does not use drugs. It is the one thing his father taught him.”
“No, I know that.” He reassured her. “But if he was looking to buy your medications cheaply, is that something Juan may have been able to supply him?”
“He did not buy me anything. I get my pills from the pharmacy.”
Elliot was struggling not to think the worst, but if Julio had been trying to buy narcotics off the street and had wound up short of cash, robbing a convenience store might have been a temptation he couldn’t resist. “Do you know Juan’s last name?” he asked gently. “Or where he lives?”
“No.” Her expression had become mulish. Elliot recognized that look. She was an intelligent woman, and she had made the same connection Elliot had. No matter how fervently she insisted her grandson hadn’t committed a crime, she had years of long experience being disappointed by both her son and her grandson. She would refuse to help them out of fear of accidentally incriminating him.
“That’s okay. We don’t need it,” Miguel announced, carrying their dishes to the sink and giving them a quick wash. When he finished, he dried his hands on the towel that had been folded on top of the stove, and carefully set it somewhere that was less of a fire hazard.
He bent his enormous frame down far enough to give the old woman a kiss on her thin cheek. “Thank you for the food. We’ll do our best to get Julio home where he belongs.”
“What was that all about?” Elliot asked when they were back in the complex’s crowded parking lot. “How are we supposed to follow up without a last name?”
“If he’s a dealer, everyone in this neighborhood already knows him. He won’t be hard to find.” Miguel slipped a pair of mirrored sunglasses onto his nose and gazed up at the clouds, gauging the coming rain. “Let’s get this over with. I don’t want to get soaked.”
He was relaxed and confident, scanning their surroundings and homing in on a group of middle-aged men smoking cigarettes beside a rusted Pontiac.
Elliot followed, aware of the speculative stares of the other residents and feeling incredibly out of place.
Miguel greeted the men in Spanish, and Elliot’s mediocre college courses weren’t enough to allow him to keep up with more than every fifth word. The men were wary, judging by their closed expressions, but they hadn’t shut down the conversation.
One man with black ink creeping up the sides of his neck pointed insolently toward Miguel’s tattoo. His answer was sharp enough to raise the hair on Elliot’s arms. Miguel’s jaw was hard, but whatever he said made the men laugh.
Elliot had expected the conversation to go downhill after that brief moment of tension, but oddly, the group seemed to relax. One man shrugged and pointed down the street, a smoldering cigarette balanced between two fingers. Miguel bumped fists with the tattooed man before gesturing to Elliot with a jerk of his head.
He headed down the sidewalk with a fluid swagger that was normally absent in his daily activity.
“They gave him up, just like that?” Elliot asked in a low voice once they were well away from the parking lot.
Miguel glanced at him with one brow quirked. A faint smile danced over his lips. “They’re Latin Kings. They don’t give a damn what happens to a Surenos soldier. It’s not worth bringing the attention of the cops down on whatever reason they’re hanging in this territory.”
“We’re not cops.”
His massive shoulders heaved in a languid shrug. “I spent ten years on the force before going to law school. It leaves a mark.”
Perhaps, but Elliot was skeptical that was the only reason for their forthcoming attitudes. They had been awfully interested in the faded tattoos hidden beneath the intricate sleeve of ink on his forearm. He might have pressed the issue, if not for the hard expression on Miguel’s normally open face.
“Hey, thanks for coming out here,” he said instead.
Miguel blew out a breath, and his tension eased. He hooked one arm around Elliot’s neck, yanking him close in a rough side hug. “That’s what we do at the CLC, my brother. It’s what sets us apart from the assholes.”
“I think I’ve been one of the assholes,” he said grimly.
“Come to me next time. A boot in your ass is the best cure.” He flashed a bright, white grin.
Elliot couldn’t help but laugh.
A large, dilapidated building loomed ahead of them. Sitting in the stairwell was a young man in an oversize basketball jersey. A couple teenage girls flirted with him. They looked awfully young to Elliot, but it was impossible to determine their age with any certainty, thanks to the gobs of eye makeup and acrylic nails the length of small daggers.
The presence of the girls was distracting enough that they were almost upon the kid before he noticed them. His body language changed instantly, back straightening, chin thrusting up in acknowledgement. He nudged the girl sitting closest to him and she rolled her eyes before hopping off the step, dusting off the seat of her tight jeans before she and her friend headed down the sidewalk.
“’Sup?” the kid asked.
He wasn’t any older than Julio. They could be brothers, both average height and handsome, with dark, liquid eyes. But where Julio’s expression was open and his eyes lively, this kid had already learned how to shut everything down. He wasn’t overtly hostile, but there was a thin, jittery quality to him that had Elliot wondering if he sampled his own products. He had the sense of a snake retracting until a good opportunity to strike arose.
“Are you Juan?” Elliot asked. He and Miguel stopped a few feet away from the steps, conscious not to loom over the kid, who still sat on his perch.
“Depends who’s askin’.”
“I’m here on behalf of Julio Gonzalez. You hang with him, right?”
Something flickered in Juan’s dark eyes, buried before Elliot could identify it. He looked away and sniffed disdainfully. “Everyone knows Julio. Don’t mean nothin’. He ain’t around, if you’re lookin’ for him.”
“No, he’s in jail.” Elliot cocked his head. “Did you know he was having money problems?”
Juan’s laughter had an incredulous ring to it. “Everyone on this block has money problems, bro.”
“Even you?” Miguel asked, propping one foot on the step near Juan’s hip. Juan glanced down at it, and Elliot co
uld see the effort it took for him not to show weakness by shifting away.
“I do ai’ight.”
“Pills are big business,” Miguel said conversationally.
“I wouldn’t know, man.”
He was beginning to look jumpy. Elliot suspected that he, like the Latin Kings, had mistaken them for detectives. He didn’t want him to clam up before they got something they could use. “Look, Juan, we already know how you earn your money, and we don’t give a damn. I just want to know if Julio was buying from you.”
Juan shook his head. His skin was pale, and he hunched over on himself with one arm draped limply across his lap. Miguel’s gaze zeroed in on that arm. A muscle under his eye twitched.
Elliot decided to try a bluff. “We know Julio wasn’t in that convenience store. Someone is pissed enough at him to let him take a fall for them, and drugs are as good a reason as any. You’re the one who was doing business with him.”
Juan’s gaze dropped away, and he shifted uncomfortably on the step.
Elliot knew if he pressed just a little harder—
“Gun!” Miguel yelled. He was moving before Elliot could do more than gasp.
In slow motion, Juan’s hand withdrew from where it had been draped across his lap, and in his grip was a matte black handgun. Miguel had him by the wrist, the force of his leap taking them both to the ground, where Juan twisted like an eel until he came out on top. Miguel’s head was cranked to the side to avoid the barrel. The powerful strain of his biceps kept the gun aimed over his shoulder, but he was unable to get the leverage to toss the kid off him. All it would take was a twitch, and that gun would be aimed right in his face.
Elliot reacted without thinking. He went low and tackled the kid from behind, knocking him off Miguel’s prostrate form and pile driving him into the sidewalk. Juan kept hold of the gun, clinging to it like it was the only thing in his world. Elliot drove all his weight down onto the kid’s shoulder to weaken his grip.
Miguel had scrambled to his knees, chest heaving frantically. He dropped a knee on Juan’s neck and yelled, “Let it go, man! It’s not worth it!”
“Fuck you!” Juan gasped, and he gave a tremendous heave that almost bucked Elliot off him. Elliot had no idea how a scrawny kid could have enough strength in him to resist two grown men, but desperation turned even the smallest creature into a force to be reckoned with.
“Drop the weapon!” Miguel yelled again. His knee pressed harder into the side of Juan’s neck, and his hands joined Elliot’s in restraining the flailing arm.
“I ain’t going down because of that asshole!” Juan screamed. “He owed me that fucking money! I needed it!”
Elliot’s heart hammered against his sternum as if it was trying to break through the bone. All the sounds of the street came through muffled, nearly hidden beneath the drumbeat in his ears, though he gradually noticed loud voices behind him. Were others about to join in? Had the entire street mistaken them for cops? Did it even matter? All it would take was one friend of Juan’s adding his weight and the tables would turn in the blink of an eye.
Through the chaos, a siren blasted out a squalling yelp. Bright lights flickered on the periphery of his vision.
“Everyone on the ground! Drop the weapon! Drop the fucking weapon!”
Elliot didn’t dare move. He had no idea who they thought had the weapon, but he knew if he released his death grip on Juan’s arm, that gun was going off, and someone would take the bullet. He wasn’t sure the kid even cared who at this point. He was silent beneath their weight, body locked up in absolute resistance, breath chugging out of him like a freight train.
“Get on the ground!” A hoarse male voice yelled again.
“We can’t fucking move!” Elliot cried out desperately. “He’s got a gun!”
Within seconds, two more bodies joined the fray, and the situation devolved into a haze of chaos. There was a hiss, and Elliot sucked in a lungful of spice that smelled almost pleasant for the millisecond before it began burning. His throat seized up, and he began coughing, instinctively releasing Juan and rocking back on his heels. Miguel grabbed him by the bicep and yanked him away from the tangle of bodies on the ground. Juan had gotten the full blast of pepper spray and was coughing harder than Elliot, tears streaming down his face, as one of the two officers on top of him finally wrestled his hand free of the gun. They had him in cuffs within seconds.
Only then could Elliot relax and concentrate on clearing his lungs. He hunched over with his hands on his knees, hacking and spitting and struggling to draw a full breath. Miguel crouched beside him with a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll be okay,” he assured him. “You just got the tail end of the O.C. spray. It’ll stop burning in a few minutes.” He was slightly out of breath, but he sounded so calm that Elliot glared at him. Miguel held up his hands in mock surrender.
“You did this for a living?” Elliot asked incredulously.
Miguel chuckled, flashing a grin that said, clear as a bell, that he was glad to be alive. “Look at it this way, Smith,” he said cheerfully. “I think we cracked the case.”
21
Elliot
It was well past dark when Elliot pulled into the tiny parking lot of A.J.’s Garage. For the longest time, he just sat there with his hands on the wheel, staring blindly into the headlights of passing traffic. The effects of his adrenalin surge had faded long ago, leaving him tired and shaky, as if crashing from too much caffeine. His overtaxed muscles were sore all over.
He’d been running on autopilot for hours. He and Miguel had been trapped at the scene for what felt like an eternity, reciting their version of events to multiple uniformed officers, and finally to a surprised Detective Nilsson. It had quickly become clear that Juan was sampling his own product. He was jumpy and erratic, shouting in Nilsson’s face with each of her crisply worded questions.
It didn’t take a genius to parse out what had happened. Like a dumbass, Julio had decided to get his grandmother’s pain medication from the street, presumably because there was no cap to how many he could stock up on. Juan had arranged a six-month supply from his own distributor, but Julio had only been able to come up with half the agreed upon payment. Juan was left holding the bag, without a quick way to recoup his expenses. He’d robbed the convenience store for quick cash, but was tweaking hard enough on whatever he was sampling to have a hair trigger. It hadn’t been difficult for him to convince his buddies to give up Julio’s name as their accomplice. They were all plenty pissed at getting caught fixing his mistakes.
“He can’t stay in this neighborhood,” Elliot had told Miguel as they left the crime scene. “They won’t let it end here.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Miguel had assured him.
Elliot had gone through the motions of overseeing Julio’s release from county lockup and given him a ride back to his grandmother’s house, but he hadn’t gone inside. Neither of them had felt much like talking, though the need to apologize for doubting the kid weighed on him. Julio had made a dumb mistake, but it was out of concern for his only family. He could respect that.
It was only once all the obligations were handled that Elliot had floundered. He didn’t want to go back to his empty house. He didn’t want to sleep in his cold bed. He wanted Lucas. He wanted to feel the strength of his arms around him. He wanted to burrow into his hard chest and admit how terrified he’d been, not only of dying, but of dying with Lucas never knowing how much he meant to him.
He could have called, but he was afraid of being sent to voicemail. So, here he was, hat in hand, scared to death and hoping Lucas wouldn’t be as quick to chalk him up as a lost cause as he’d been during their argument.
He braced himself, slung his satchel over his shoulder, and climbed out of his car. A man with a blond ponytail was just locking up when Elliot crossed the parking lot.
“Excuse me!” he called. “Is Lucas Kelly still inside? I didn’t see his bike.”
The man paused while turnin
g his key. He regarded Elliot with skepticism. “He parks it in back,” he said slowly. Then, to Elliot’s surprise, “Are you Beyonce?”
“Pardon?”
“You the guy?”
That could mean so many things. But it sounded like whoever the guy was, Lucas was expecting him, so... “Yes. I’m the guy.”
“Huh,” the man grunted. He unlocked the door and held it open in a grand gesture. “For God’s sake, fix his attitude, will you?”
Elliot huffed out a relieved laugh. “I’ll try.”
He stepped inside, immediately smacked in the face by the overpowering smells of oil, rubber, and stale coffee. He took a quavering breath, squared his shoulders, and looked around. The storefront was dim and the back office was closed and dark. A small window in the door leading to the work bay was glowing, so Elliot followed the light.
Lucas was bent over a rusted junk heap with his head stuck in the engine. Classic rock played on an old stereo in the corner. For a moment, Elliot just stood there and drank in the sight of him. He’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and for some ridiculous reason, Elliot zeroed in on the liberal streaks of grease on those muscled forearms.
He cleared his throat.
“What did you forget?” Lucas called from inside the engine.
“You.”
Lucas jerked upright so quickly that he nailed his head on the open hood. He cursed and clapped a hand to his skull, pinning Elliot with a watery glare. His scowl gave Elliot the sinking feeling that he was about to make a giant fool of himself.
“How are you doing?” he asked weakly.
A muscle twitched in Lucas’s unshaven cheek. Elliot was torn between the impulse to run away and the desire to get closer and lick that spot, so he did neither. He locked his legs so they would stop trembling.
Lucas wiped his hands on a cloth and approached him. “I’m fine,” he answered roughly. “What brings you here?”
Elliot fumbled the strap of his satchel and pulled out the soft white lump of fabric he’d been carrying around like a talisman. “You, uh, left this at my place. I thought you might like it back.”
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