Liquid Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 9)

by Alex P. Berg

  I heard Shay’s voice, then a grunt, and she rolled over the lip of the window above and landed beside me.

  Quinto’s voice followed her. “Mines and I will stay out here. Take a look around. If you find anything, report back and we’ll meet you at the front door.”

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  I hopped down and turned back to catch Shay as she followed me. I looked around, trying to make sense of the maze of crates, barrels, and containers around me.

  “Maybe we should’ve brought a crow bar,” said Shay.

  “Perhaps. Let’s look for anything that’s already been forced open. The Abanos’ wouldn’t have left unicorn horns lying around, not if they have half a brain cell between them.”

  I headed off along the edge of one of the tall racks, keeping my eyes peeled for broken boards, discarded lids, or rumpled tarps.

  A creaking sound stopped me in my tracks.

  I turned toward the front of the warehouse to find an entrance set inside the larger, barn-sized door at the front opening. Two figures entered, the latter closing the door behind him, but not just any two figures. Bronmuth Silverbrook and Orlando Abano.

  I shrunk behind the nearest crate, my mind racing. What the heck were the pair of them doing here, and together? I’d questioned Bronmuth’s motives, but he couldn’t possibly be on Abano’s side. He wouldn’t be complicit in murder, would he?

  I forced my heart to slow as I listened, Shay silent as a mouse behind me.

  “This is inexcusable, Bronmuth,” said Orlando. “To think that my brother was brutally assaulted, in my town, outside my own place of business! Explain that to me!”

  “Look, Orlando,” said Bronmuth. “We’re doing everything we can, I promise. It’s not as if—”

  Something whistled and thwacked. Orlando spun, crying out, as an arrow sprouted from his shoulder.

  Bronmuth cursed as a figure dropped from the trusses at the ceiling, bounding off a crate and rolling as he hit the floor. Bronmuth reached for his nightstick, but he was too slow. Joey Nicchi ditched his bow and crossed the space between them in two loping bounds. He jumped and kicked, striking the dwarf in the face and knocking him to the ground.

  I could barely believe it. I’d been kidding when I’d suggested Nicchi might’ve returned to the scene of the crime, and yet here he was, a knife strapped to his belt and his body coiled like a spring. He’d been lying in waiting for his chance at Orlando, just as we’d predicted.

  Bronmuth groaned and rolled, but Joey planted another boot in his gut to silence him.

  He turned toward Orlando, drawing his knife with a bandaged hand. “Well, well, Orlando. Fancy seeing you here.”

  Orlando groaned and grabbed his shoulder, stumbling to his feet. “What…? What the hell is wrong with you? You…you animal!”

  Nicchi spun the knife. “Me? You’re calling me the animal? After everything you’ve done? After what you did to my brother? You’re a sick, twisted monster. A gods-damned sadist. You don’t deserve as good an end as I’m about to give you.”

  He hefted his knife and stepped forward.

  I jumped from the shadows. “Joey, stop!”

  Joey spun, evaluating us with a cool gaze, almost as if he’d known we were there. Hell, he probably had. We hadn’t exactly been quiet. A good twenty paces separated us from him, and for a split second I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. He could’ve just as easily rushed us as plunged the knife into Orlando’s heart.

  He chose a different path. He yanked Orlando to his feet, secured him with one arm and pressed the edge of his knife to his neck with the other.

  “Don’t come any closer,” said Joey. “I’ll open him up from ear to ear. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I don’t doubt you, Joey,” I said. “I know you will. But you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to kill anyone.”

  “Bullshit,” said Joey. “This bastard murdered my brother. Him as that scumbag Carmine, both. And I’m going to make damned sure he pays for it.”

  “And he will, Joey. I promise you. But not like this. It’s not right. We can put him away for life. Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Joey laughed and pressed the edge of his knife further into Orlando’s throat, producing a croak from the captive. “You’re not putting anyone away for life, not on poaching charges. And something tells me you’re never going to prove he killed my brother either. I’ve looked around. They didn’t leave any evidence behind. This bastard and his brother were thorough.”

  I heard more noises. The front door yanked open again, and Quinto and Mines poured through, the latter with truncheon in hand.

  Joey took a couple steps back, Orlando still firmly gripped and the knife held in a vice-like grip. “Stay back! Don’t even think about it!”

  “Help me!” croaked Orlando.

  “Shut it,” threatened Joey, pushing the edge of the blade further into his throat.

  I took a couple steps forward, my hands outstretched. “You’re wrong, Joey. Orlando and Carmine are going down, not just for your brother’s murder, but Phillip Martinsvale’s, too. I can prove it.”

  Joey’s eyes flicked in my direction. “What?”

  “The man who ran the nature conservancy,” I said. “Orlando and Carmine killed him so they could expand their poaching operation. We were at his abandoned home this morning. I found hard evidence it was them.”

  Out of my peripheral vision, I could tell Shay was looking at me, but she didn’t say a word.

  “That’s impossible,” said Joey.

  “It’s not impossible,” I said. “They framed a poor idiot to make it look like a mugging. I can prove it. Listen to me, Joey. Carmine and Orlando are going away for life. You don’t need to kill him. I met you. I talked to you. I could see it in your eyes. That’s not who you are. You’re not like them.”

  “You’re damned right I’m not,” he spat. “This isn’t murder. This is justice!”

  I took another step forward. I needed a new approach.

  “You can’t bring him back, Joey.”

  Nicchi stared at me, his jaw set and his eyes hard.

  “I know you don’t want to hear that,” I said, “but it’s true. Joey, my own mother was murdered when I was a teen. I’ve dealt with that loss my whole life. Don’t you think I wanted to kill the men responsible at first? String them up and beat them before cutting them open? You’re damned right I did. But it got easier. That anger faded over time. And life went on. It didn’t seem like it would at first, but it did.

  “Now you, Joey? You have a decision to make. If you kill Orlando, you’ll go to jail for good, with today’s choice weighing on you every day for the rest of your life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Carmine is still alive. If he pulls through, all you’ll go to prison for is assault. You’ll be out in a few years, and maybe it doesn’t seem like you have anything to live for right now, but trust me, you do. You still have your mother, your sister. There’s a woman out there who you haven’t even met yet. A life with love and children. It’s there for the taking if you want it. It’s worth giving it a shot. For crying out loud, my friend Quinto found his missing family right here in Aragosto after two decades of searching, and I was a miserable wretch until my partner saved me.

  “Trust me, Joey, your life is worth living. You just have to put the knife down and let me do my job.”

  The younger of the Nicchi brothers hadn’t taken his eyes off me the entire speech, and I couldn’t tell at my distance, but there might’ve been a hint of a tear in one of them.

  His knife hand didn’t move, and his teeth grated as he spoke. “You promise me both of them are going away for life? Carmine and Orlando?”

  “I promise you, Joey.”

  Joey’s arm fell. The knife clattered to the floor as he pushed Orlando to the ground. The elder Abano brother stumbled to his knees, grasping his throat.

  Shay patted me on the back, and I heard her whisper, “Nice work.”

  I walked for
ward. Joey stood there, unflinching. I gave him a nod. “I won’t disappoint you, Joey. Now, come with me. Peacefully.”

  39

  I stepped out of the men’s restroom at the Aragosto police station, feeling dapper or at the very least clean. After washing my face and de-funking my armpits, I’d donned the change of clothes Quinto had brought with him from Shay’s apartment. With warm weather upon us, two days was more or less the respectable limit for how long a set of clothes could conceivably be continuously worn.

  I found Shay in the center of the station, seated at one of a half dozen chairs that had been pulled together. She’d already changed into her new garb, now wearing dark jeans and an airy purple blouse under her yellow blazer. The smile on her face indicated she was also glad to be out of the attire she’d worn for the past fifty hours.

  Bronmuth sat in one of the chairs beside her, holding a wet cloth to the side of his face. It couldn’t completely hide the ugly welt that had sprouted over his cheek. Looked like it would leave him with a nice black eye, too.

  “Hey, Silverbrook,” I said, taking a seat in one of the chairs. “The doctor cleared you already?”

  He grunted. “He poked and prodded me. Hurt like a mother, but he said there wasn’t any structural damage underneath. Said it’s somewhere between a grade three and four contusion, which apparently means it’s a wicked bad bruise.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s not worse.”

  After the incident with Joey at the warehouse, Silverbrook had left for the medical clinic to have Pryor or one of the other physicians look at him, and I have to admit, I hadn’t been sure if we should’ve let him go. Not that I had any legal authority to stop him, but his interaction with Orlando had me concerned. Of course, in the aftermath, I’d reevaluated the little I’d heard of their interaction, and there wasn’t anything incendiary in what either of them had said. Sure, Bronmuth’s personal relationship with the man was disconcerting, but he’d acted chummy with everyone we’d come across in town, even old crazy Connors.

  I tried to approach the topic from the edge. “So…hard to believe Joey skewered Orlando. Though I have to think he could’ve hit him right in the heart if he’d wanted to. I guess he wanted to get in the last word.”

  Bronmuth grunted again. “I guess I didn’t get the worst of it, did I?”

  “You worried about Orlando?”

  “Why would I be? He’ll be fine. And if he did what Joey accused him of, he deserved worse. I’m surprised you talked him down.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Hard to say. I got the impression you two don’t play by the rules.”

  I looked at Shay.

  She shrugged. “He’s not wrong. Except about his insinuation that we’d let someone get murdered for kicks.”

  “Honestly, I thought you’d be more upset about the ordeal,” I said. “You seemed chummy enough with Orlando.”

  The dwarf snorted. “I knew the guy. I never said I liked him.”

  I didn’t get a chance to press the issue, which was probably for the best. The front door opened, and Quinto and Mines walked in.

  “Hey,” said Shay. “That didn’t take long.”

  “Mostly because Orlando didn’t have much to say,” said Quinto.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Mines. “Doctor Pryor patched him up. The arrow hit soft muscle tissue, so he’ll be up and running in a week or two. I left Morris and Travers at the clinic to keep an eye on him. If anything, Detective Quinto oversold our discussion with him.”

  “That bad, huh?” said Shay.

  Mines nodded. “He maintained complete and total innocence in both the deaths of Johnny Nicchi and Phillip Martinsvale. Hell, he even claimed innocence regarding his poaching enterprise, and that was after we confronted him with the collection of powdered unicorn horn aphrodisiacs and mermaid scale handbags we found at the warehouse. Said if we had any evidence against him to present it in court and then asked for his lawyer. Wouldn’t say a word after that.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not stupid. He knows we have him dead to rights on the poaching charges, but he also knows that’ll only get him a few years in jail, maybe less depending on the quality of his lawyer. He’s hoping we don’t have any way to pin the murders on him or his brother.”

  “The latter of whom is now in a coma,” said Quinto. “Doctor Pryor gave him about a fifty-fifty shot of making it. If he does, it’ll be good news for Joey, but even so, I can’t imagine he’ll talk any more than Orlando has.”

  “Speaking of Joey,” said Shay. “How did you know your bluff was going to work, Daggers?”

  “What bluff?” I said.

  “Back at the warehouse. You told him we’d found evidence at Martinsvale’s abandoned home that incriminated the Abanos. Obviously, we didn’t.”

  “Oh. That,” I said. “I didn’t know it would work, honestly, but I was trying anything I could to talk Joey down.”

  Shay lifted a brow. “Seems kinda ballsy.”

  I shrugged. “That’s how I roll. Also, I don’t have a lot of experience in hostage situations. Good thing it worked, right?”

  “Well, regardless,” said Shay. “Joey’s given us his testimony, and while it’s nice to know we were right about him looking into his brother’s death, finding the unicorn horn at the warehouse, and subsequently getting into a fight with Carmine, I’m not sure how much that’s worth. He tried to kill both Carmine and Orlando, which kind of ruins his credibility as a witness, and all his suspicions about what they did to Johnny are just that. Suspicions. We can’t count on him to bolster our case in any way.”

  “Good thing we won’t need to,” I said. “Not with the ace in the hole he gave us.”

  “You seem overly confident your plan is going to work,” said Shay.

  “It’ll work,” I said. “Trust me, I know her type. Mines? You want to come with us?”

  “Might as well,” she said. “But I’ll let you two do the talking, if that’s okay.”

  “Fine by me.”

  I stood and headed toward the back, going into the hallway that led to the restrooms. Before I got there, I took a detour, cranking on a door handle and letting myself into a small room.

  Bianca sat at the table in the center. She looked up, her jaw tight and her brow creased in anger. “There you are! You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here, you know. This is no way to treat someone who’s had her life turned upside down in the last couple weeks. You realize I’m the victim, right? That I’m the one with the dead husband?”

  I took a seat before her, and Shay joined me. Mines closed the door and stood in a corner, watching.

  “Look, Bianca,” I said. “I don’t want to drag this out, so I’m going to cut to the chase. We know about you and Carmine Abano, okay? We know you were having an affair.”

  The young woman took a sharp breath and exhaled it just as sharply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you sure you want to try that strategy?” said Shay. “Joey told us what he found. We’re going to recover it from his home as soon as we can get an officer there.”

  “Recover what from his home?” said Bianca.

  “The broach,” I said. “The one Joey stole from your home when he broke into it the night before last. The one with the inscription on the back stating, and I quote, ‘To my dearest Bianca. Love, C.’”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Bianca. “Even if it does exist.”

  “Come on,” said Shay. “There’ve been rumors about you circling for a while now. You met him for drinks two nights ago, for crying out loud. You may have been careful, but do you really think someone in town hasn’t seen you sneak a kiss or hold hands at some point? Once we start pushing, how long do you think it’ll take until a few witnesses step forth?”

  Bianca didn’t say anything, but I noticed a bit of a waver in her gaze.

  “Let me lay it out for you, Bianca,” I said. “You have
two choices. Either you tell us everything you know, or we charge you with accessory to murder. I don’t know how familiar you are with the law, but the sentence for that isn’t much less than murder itself.”

  Bianca broke, and she broke hard. A deluge of tears poured forth, the dam holding them back suddenly broken. “Oh, gods! Fine! I admit it. I was seeing Carmine, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I’d been seeing him for months. My relationship with Johnny was a mess. If there was any love left between us, you sure as hell could’ve fooled me. But I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with his death! I’d never wish that on anyone, especially Johnny! I just… I just wanted what every girl wants. Some love in my life, and not to have to worry about where I’d get my next meal or if the roof over my head would disappear. And now that’s gone! You want to talk about Johnny? What about me? What was I supposed to do, huh? With my husband’s business failing? Our marriage on the rocks? But that’s all ruined now. Johnny’s dead. His debts are going to fall onto me. He already mortgaged the house to keep his business afloat. He thought I didn’t know, but I did! And now Carmine’s in a coma. Even if he does survive, he’ll be going to jail, right? But what about me? What about me? Gods, maybe I’d be better off in jail. At least there I wouldn’t have to worry about starving or freezing to death in the winter.”

  “Hold your horses, Bianca,” I said. “You’re not thinking this through.”

  The young woman wiped tears from her cheeks. “I’m not thinking things through? How dare you? My life is in tatters, and here you have the gall to—”

  I put up a hand to silence her. “If Carmine and Orlando Abano murdered your husband, they won’t just go to jail. You can sue them in civil court for damages. Their fortune may have been gained partially through illegal means, but they’re still loaded. It would be a slam dunk case for you. You’d be set for life.”

  The tears magically ceased, almost as if they’d all been for show. “What?”

  “It only works if you tell us what you know, Bianca,” said Steele. “If they both go down for murder. So start talking.”