by Dave Daren
“Knew there was a man somewhere doing the real work,” the man declared.
I had no idea what the man’s name was and I’d barely spent anytime in his presence, but I would have been more than happy to land a couple of punches on behalf of women everywhere, and for Agent Smart in particular. She was a good agent, and she didn’t deserve to be belittled like this. Or to lose her job for punching her superior, which was clearly what she was thinking of doing.
I was saved from having to perform any more heroics by the arrival of several LAPD squad cars. The white collar boss went into salesman mode and walked over to the LAPD officers who were just clambering out of their vehicles.
“Go on, get out of here,” Smart told me. “I know where to find you when I’m ready to interview you. And you look like you could use some sleep after last night.”
“Let me know when you need someone to punch him for you,” I replied as I walked away. I glanced back and saw her try to smother a smile. She shook her head and marched towards the Burke house, yelling instructions as she went.
Epilogue
Agent Smart didn’t summon me to the FBI for two days. She asked only the most basic questions and didn’t pry into the events at the warehouse or the car chase on Slausson.
She did fill in some of the blanks for me. As suspected, Varona was the link between Burke and the various gangs. And not just the ones in L.A., but others in Mexico and the Caribbean as well. Burke had managed to avoid temptation for a while, especially given some of the worst tendencies of his new clients. But at some point, he’d decided he was smarter than any of the gangs, and decided to try his hand at beating the odds once again.
He’d successfully skimmed quite a bit of money, and probably would have gone on doing so if some of his regular clients hadn’t gotten suspicious and filed complaints. The gangs became concerned about their own funds and started asking for more information as well.
Gloria didn’t know about Matthew’s activities until she caught him trying to buy a fake ID in Mexico. Matthew had confessed his theft and his gambling and begged for her forgiveness. Both Gloria and Matthew admitted that the plan to fake Matthew’s death had been largely Gloria’s plan. Matthew had simply provided the needed contacts through Varona.
Once in Mexico, the plan had originally called for Gloria and Perrin to join Matthew there once he’d established a new identity, but Varona had, unsurprisingly, turned out to be an untrustworthy ally. He had tried to learn the whereabouts of all the accounts, and Matthew had been forced to disappear on his own.
That’s when Matthew met Peter McCaffery. Peter was in the process of becoming Geoffrey Dalton by then. As I suspected, Matthew had recognized another man who was trying to hide, and had pried enough details from Peter to research the rest of the story. That’s why he knew about the bowling alley incident, but not the attack at the apartment. The attack at the apartment had been quietly ‘disappeared’ from the local news when the sheriff admitted that he hadn’t responded to a complaint earlier in the day from Peter.
Matthew claimed that Peter had been killed in a run-of-the-mill mugging one night, and Matthew had seized the opportunity to become Geoffrey Dalton. He had even taken McCaffrey’s first appointment with Dr. Zamanda, beginning the long process of becoming Dalton. I had my own doubts about Peter’s death, as did Agent Smart, but the FBI was having little success tracking down any information about Peter McCaffrey’s death.
The Burkes had been offered a spot in witness protection, which Gloria and Matthew had quickly accepted. Perrin had been more reluctant, but family ties had won out and she, too, had gone into the program. Smart would tell me nothing else, other than Perrin was doing well.
As I left that meeting and walked slowly to my car, my phone rang with another unrecognized number. I didn’t give it much thought, just assumed it was another potential client. The office phones had been blowing up in recent days as word of my exploits continued to spread.
“Mr. Creed, I’m glad to hear you’re doing well,” an all too familiar voice crooned and I felt a chill along my spine.
“Mr. Aranda, I’m surprised to hear from you,” I replied. “I was under the impression that you were under arrest.”
“I have good attorneys,” Aranda replied.
“Then why the call?” I asked. “If you already have good attorneys.”
“I felt I had a point to clarify,” Aranda said. “As a friendly gesture to you.”
“How kind,” I replied.
“There’s still the question of the debt I am owed,” he mused.
“I never accepted your offer,” I pointed out.
“You asked for my assistance,” Aranda insisted. “And I provided it. I consider that a debt that you must repay.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” I replied. “The Burkes are in witness protection.”
“Ah,” Aranda sighed. “Yes, that does make things difficult. But there are other services a man of your skills could provide. I expect you to do so, without question.”
“I’ll have my paralegal draw up a contract, but I’m not sure you can afford my rates, given your present financial condition,” I replied.
He hung up without further comment and I admonished myself for making smart-ass remarks to the leader of a notorious street gang. But it was a beautiful day in southern California, and my practice was really taking off. I also had two hardened criminals who saw me as a threat to their empire. I chose to take that as a sign that I was doing something right, and I was smiling as I walked down the sidewalk.
Author Notes
Thank you for reading my novel! If you enjoyed it, and you’d like to read another story about Vince, please leave a quick review by clicking on this link.
Amazon will not update readers when an author comes out with a new book unless you follow that author on the store. So please make sure you click this link and then click on the follow button. Once you follow me on Amazon, you will get an update email from them a few weeks after my next book comes out.
If you want to get notified of my books the day that they come out, make sure you join my newsletter on my website. Then I’ll email you as soon as they are published.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Dave Daren