Will sat back down in the chair. He felt his jaw ratcheting tight. The silence wanted to come back. He could feel it like a shadow looming behind him.
She asked, “Who do you think the cop is who confronted Dr. Linton in the hospital?”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Sara anymore. He felt sick every time he thought about what she’d been through today. Alone.
Amanda repeated herself. “Who do you think the cop is?” Again, she snapped her fingers to get his attention.
He looked up. He wanted to break her hand.
“This isn’t about me. This is about Faith and getting back her mother. Now, who do you think the cop is?”
He cleared the glass out of his throat. “How do you know all of these people?”
“What people?”
“Hector Ortiz. Roger Ling. Julia Ling. Perry the bodyguard who drives a Mercedes. Why are you on a first-name basis with all these people?”
She was silent, obviously debating about whether or not to answer. Finally, she relented. “You know I came up in the job with Evelyn. We were cadets together. We were partners before they got tired of us busting all their cases.” She shook her head at the memory. “These are the bad guys who were on the other side. Drugs. Rape. Murder. Assault. Hostage negotiation. RICO cases. Money laundering. They’ve been around as long as we have.” She added ruefully, “Which is a very, very long time.”
“You’ve worked cases against them?”
There were fifty chairs in the room, but she sat down right beside him. “Ignatio Ortiz and Roger Ling didn’t just vault to the top. There are bodies they climbed over. Lots and lots of dead bodies. And the sad part is that they were human beings once. They were nice, normal people who went to church every Sunday and clocked into their jobs during the week.” Amanda shook her head again, and Will could tell that her words invoked memories she’d rather forget.
Still, she told him, “You know the word underbelly refers to the part of society that’s never seen, but it also means the vulnerable part. The weak part. That’s what monsters like Roger Ling and Ignatio Ortiz prey on. Addiction. Greed. Poverty. Desperation. Once these guys figured out how to exploit these people, they never looked back. They cut their teeth doing carhops for dealers when they were twelve. They murdered before they were old enough to legally buy a drink in a bar. They’ve slit throats and beaten old women to death and done whatever it takes to get to the top and hold on to that power. So, when you ask me why I’m on a first-name basis with them, it’s because I know them. I know who they are. I have stared into the darkness of their souls. But I guarantee you it doesn’t go the other way. They don’t have a damn idea who I am, and I’ve spent my career keeping it that way.”
Will was finished treading carefully. “They know Evelyn.”
“Yes,” Amanda allowed. “I think they do.”
He sat back in his chair. It was a stunning admission. He didn’t know how to respond. Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—she didn’t give him the chance.
She clasped her hands together. Sharing time was over. “Let’s talk about this cop who confronted Sara in the hospital.”
Will was still trying to wrap his brain around what had just happened. For just a moment, he’d forgotten all about Sara.
“Chuck Finn,” she prompted.
Will leaned his head against the wall. The concrete block felt cold against his scalp. “He used to be a cop. You don’t lose that no matter how much heroin you shoot up. He’s tall. He’s probably lost a lot of weight from his habit. Sara wouldn’t have recognized him from his mugshot. I’m assuming he’s a smoker. Most junkies are.”
“So, at the hospital: you think Chuck Finn discerned from Sara that Marcellus Estevez might live, so he sent Franklin Heeney in to kill him.”
“Don’t you?”
Amanda wasn’t quick with her response. He could tell what she’d said about Evelyn Mitchell still weighed heavily on her. “I don’t know what I think anymore, Will. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
She sounded tired. Her shoulders were slumped. There was a sort of detachment about her. He went back over their conversation, wondering what had finally made her admit that Evelyn Mitchell wasn’t squeaky clean. He had never in his life seen Amanda give up on anything. Part of him felt sorry for her, and another part of him realized that he might not ever have this chance again.
He struck while her defenses were down. “Why didn’t they shoot you outside the warehouse?”
“I’m a deputy director with the GBI. That’s a lot of heat.”
“They’ve already kidnapped a decorated police officer. They shot at you inside the warehouse. They killed Castillo. Why didn’t they kill you?”
“I don’t know, Will.” She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I think we must be caught in the middle of some kind of war.”
Will stared at the Meth Project poster on the wall. A toothless woman with scabby skin stared back. He wondered if that was what the junkie had looked like, the woman who had told Sara that there was a guy laid out by the Dumpster. How long had it taken before Marcellus Estevez was dead and Franklin Heeney was struggling with Sara on the floor, threatening to cut open her face with a scalpel?
Minutes. Maybe ten at the most.
Will couldn’t help it. He put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands. “You should’ve told me.” He could hear a distant voice in his head screaming at him to shut up. But he couldn’t. “You had no right to keep that from me.”
Amanda gave a heavy sigh. “Maybe I should have. Or maybe I was right to hold it back. If it’s the first one, I’m sorry. If it’s the second, then you can be mad at me later. I need you to talk this through with me. I need to figure out what is going on. If not for my sake, then for Faith’s.”
Her voice sounded as desperate as he felt. The day had utterly defeated her. Will couldn’t help it. As much as he hated her right now, he couldn’t be cruel.
And somewhere in all of this, the click happened. He hadn’t noticed it, but sometime during the last ten minutes, his anger had started to seep out, so that now when he thought about it, when he considered what Amanda had done about Sara, Will felt a festering anger rather than a burning hate.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it go as he sat back up. “Okay. We have to assume that all the dead guys worked in Julia Ling’s shop—some of them on the books, some of them off, all of them doing both sides of her business.”
“You think Ling-Ling sent Ricardo Ortiz to Sweden to pick up some heroin?”
“No, I think Ricardo got ahead of himself. I think he got all the young guys worked up, thinking they could take over Ling-Ling’s business. He took it on himself to go to Sweden.” Will looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock. “He was tortured, probably by Benny Choo.”
“Then why didn’t they just cut the drugs out of him and be done with it?”
“Because he told them that he knew where they could get more money.”
“Evelyn.”
“It’s what I said earlier.” He turned toward her. “Chuck Finn mentioned in one of his Healing Winds group sessions with Hironobu Kwon that his old boss was sitting on a pile of money. Cut to yesterday morning. Ricardo has a belly full of heroin and Benny Choo beating his ass. His friend Hironobu Kwon says he knows where they can get some cash to buy themselves out of the situation.” Will shrugged. “They go to Evelyn’s. Benny Choo tags along to keep them from doing a runner. Only, they can’t find the money, and Evelyn won’t give it up to them.”
“Perhaps they weren’t expecting to find Hector Ortiz there. Ricardo would recognize his father’s cousin.”
Will wanted to ask what Hector Ortiz was doing at Evelyn’s in the first place, but he didn’t want to make Amanda lie to him right now. “Ricardo Ortiz would know that killing Hector would bring some heat. He’s already turned his back on his own father by smuggling in the heroin. Ling-Ling is out for his blood because she�
�s found out that Ricardo turned on her, too. Ricardo’s gang can’t find the money in Evelyn’s house. She’s not talking. Ricardo has to see at this point that his life isn’t worth much. He’s packed full of balloons he can’t pass. He’s been beaten nearly to death. Benny Choo’s got a gun to his head.” Will ran through Faith’s statement about her confrontation with Choo and Ortiz. “Ricardo’s last word was ‘Almeja.’ That’s what Julia Ling called Evelyn, right? How would Ricardo know that?”
“I suppose if your theory holds that this all came from Chuck Finn, then that’s where he got it.”
“Why would Evelyn’s name be the last word on Ricardo’s lips?”
“It’s her street name. I’d be surprised if Ricardo knew her real one.” She explained, “It’s not just the bangers who give themselves nicknames. You work narcotics long enough, they come up with something street to call you by. Sometimes, that spills over into the squad. ‘Hip’ and ‘Hop’ were obviously shortened from their last names. Boyd Spivey was Sledge, as in hammer. Chuck Finn was called Fish, I suppose because they couldn’t remember the name for a lemming.” She smiled; another private joke. “Roger Ling took credit for coming up with ‘Almeja,’ which seemed curious at the time until we realized he doesn’t speak a bit of his parents’ language. Mandarin, in case you’re curious.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t work narcotics.”
“But they know you.”
“Wag,” she told him. “Short for Wagner.”
Will didn’t believe her. “Why did Roger Ling ask to speak with me?”
She gave a startled laugh. “You can’t really think that you’re the only man in this prison right now who despises me.”
There was a loud buzz and a clanging of gates opening and closing. Two guards came into the waiting room, followed by a younger man with Harry Potter spectacles and a floppy haircut to match. He was definitely not one of Amanda’s old gals. There were velvet patches on the elbows of his corduroy jacket. His tie was made of a knit cotton. His shirt had a stain over the pocket. He smelled of pancakes.
“Jimmy Kagan,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m not sure what strings you pulled, Deputy Director, but this is the first time in my six years as warden here that I’ve been called back to work this late at night.”
Amanda had easily transitioned back to her old self. It was like seeing an actor slip into character. “I appreciate your cooperation, Warden Kagan. We all have to do our part.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Kagan admitted, indicating the guards should open the door into the main prison. He led them down a long hallway at a fast clip. “I’m not going to disrupt my entire system no matter who you get on the phone. Agent Trent, you’ll have to go back into the cells. Ling has been in solitary for the last week. You can talk to him through the slot in the door. I’m sure you know the type of person you’re dealing with, but I’ll tell you straight up I wouldn’t be in the same room with Roger Ling if you held a gun to my head. I’m actually terrified that’s going to happen to me one day.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow at Will. “You make it sound as if the primates are running the zoo.”
Kagan gave her a look that said he thought she was either deluded or insane. He told Will, “At any given time in the U.S. penal system, at least half the inmate population have been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness.”
Will nodded. He’d heard the statistic before. All the prisons in the country combined bought more Prozac than any other single institution.
Kagan said, “Some of them are worse than others. Ling is worse than the worst. He should be in a mental ward. Locked down. Throw away the key.”
Another gate opened and closed.
Kagan listed the rules. “Don’t get close to the door. Don’t think you’re safe just because you’re an arm’s length away. This man is very resourceful, and he has a lot of time on his hands. The razor blade we found up his ass was wrapped in a hand-tied pouch Ling made from strings he pulled out of his bedsheets. It took him two months. He braided a Yellow Rebel star into it as some kind of joke. Must’ve dyed it with urine.”
Kagan stopped at yet another door and waited for it to open. “I have no idea how he got the razor blade. He’s in his cell twenty-three hours a day. His yard time is isolated—he’s the only one in the cage. He doesn’t have contact visits, and the guards are all terrified of him.” The door opened and he continued walking. “If it was up to me, I’d leave him to rot in the hole. But it’s not up to me. He’ll be confined another week unless he pulls something awful. And believe me, he is capable of the awful.”
The warden stopped at a set of metal doors. The first one clanged open and they went inside. “The last time we locked him in the hole, the guard who sent him there was attacked the next day. We never found the responsible party, but the man lost one of his eyes. It was plucked out by hand.”
The door behind them shut and the one in front of them banged open.
Kagan said, “We’ll have the cameras on you, Mr. Trent, but I have to warn you that our response time clocks in at sixty-one seconds, just over a minute. We can’t get it any tighter than that. I have a full raid team suited up and on standby if anything happens.” He patted Will on the back. “Good luck.”
There was a guard waiting to take Will through. The man looked filled with the kind of dread you’d see on a death row inmate’s face. It was like staring into a mirror.
Will turned to Amanda. He had broken his silence in the waiting room so that she could coach him on what to say to Roger Ling, but he just now realized she hadn’t offered any advice. “You want to help me here?”
She said, “Quid pro quo, Clarice. Don’t come back without some useful information.”
Will remembered again that he hated her.
The guard motioned him through. The door closed behind them. The man said, “Keep close to the walls. If you see something coming at you, cover your eyes and close your mouth. It’s probably shit.”
Will tried to walk as if his testicles hadn’t receded into his body. The lights were out in the cells, but the hall was well lit. The guard kept to the wall, away from the prisoners opposite. Will followed suit. He could feel a new set of eyes tracking him as he passed each cell. There was a skittering noise behind him as kites, tiny pieces of paper with strings attached to them, slid across the concrete floor in his wake. In his mind, Will listed out all the possible contraband in the cells. Shivs made from toothbrushes and combs. Blades fashioned from pieces of metal lifted out of the kitchen. Feces and urine mixed in a cup to create gas bombs. Threads from a sheet braided into a whip with razor blades tied at the ends.
Another set of double gates. The first one opened. They walked through. The first one closed. Seconds ticked by. The second set groaned open.
They came to a solid door with a piece of glass at eye level. The guard took out a heavy ring of keys and found the right one. He stuck it into a lock on the wall. There was a ka-thunk as a bolt opened. He turned around and looked at the camera overhead. They both waited until there was a responding click from the guard watching them in a remote viewing room. The door slid open.
Solitary confinement. The hole.
The hallway was about thirty feet deep and ten feet wide. Eight metal doors were on one side. A concrete block wall was on the other. The cells faced inside the prison, not out. There would be no windows. No fresh air. No sunlight. No hope.
As Kagan had pointed out, these men had nothing but time.
Unlike the rest of the prison, all of the overhead lights were on in solitary. The glow of fluorescent bulbs gave Will an instant headache. The hallway was warm and muggy. There was something like pressure in the air, a weighted, heavy feeling. He had the sensation of being in the middle of a field waiting for a tornado to hit.
“He’s in the last one,” the guard said. He kept to the wall again, his shoulder rubbing against the concrete block. Will could see the paint had been rubbed
off from years of guards sliding their shoulders across. The doors opposite were bolted up tight. Each had a viewing window at the top, narrow, eye level, like at a speakeasy. There was a slit at the bottom for passing meals and tightening handcuffs. All of the doors and panels were secured with heavy bolts and rivets.
The guard stopped at the last door. He put his hand to Will’s chest and made sure his back was flat against the wall. “I don’t need to tell you to stay there, right, big guy?”
Will shook his head.
The man seemed to gather his courage before walking to the cell door. He wrapped his hand around the slide bolt that kept the viewing panel covered. “Mr. Ling, if I pull back this slat, are you going to give me any trouble?”
There was the muffled sound of laughter behind the door. Roger Ling had the same heavy southern accent as his sister. “I think you’re safe for now, Enrique.”
The guard was sweating. He gripped the bolt and pulled back, stepping out of the way so quickly that his shoes squeaked across the floor.
Will felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck. Roger Ling was obviously standing with his back pressed against the door. Will could see the side of his neck, the bottom of his ear, a hint of the orange prison garb that covered his shoulder. The lights were on inside, brighter than they were in the hallway. Will saw the rear of the cell, the edge of a mattress on the floor. The space was smaller than a normal cell, less than eight feet deep, probably four feet wide. There would be a toilet but nothing else. No chair. No table. Nothing to make you feel like a human being. The usual smells of a prison—sweat, urine, feces—were more pungent here. Will realized there was no screaming. Normally, a prison was as noisy as an elementary school, especially at night. The kites had done their job. The whole place had ground to a stop because Roger Ling had a visitor.
Will waited. He could hear his heart pumping, the sound of breath going in and out of his lungs.
Ling asked, “How’s Arnoldo doing?”
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