He mustered a tired glare as he unpacked his groceries. Bananas, a six-pack of Sam Adams, a stack of microwave dinners, another six-pack.
“I heard you got sent to Eisenberg Correctional,” he said. “Then today I heard you were dead. Either of those true?”
The last of his groceries was a tiny chocolate cake under a plastic dome, dipped in fudge, sized for one.
“Both, sort of. Hey.” I nodded at the cake. “What’s with the fancy dessert? Are you…are you celebrating my death?”
He wrinkled his nose. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, smartass. I’m down for a twelve-hour shift, so maybe I’m gonna want a little cake and a beer afterward. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Twelve hours. Yeah, I can imagine, with all the gang violence now that Nicky’s gone.”
He twisted the cap off a bottle of beer and tossed back a swig.
“Clusterfuck. Unmitigated clusterfuck. We were supposed to take down Nicky and his entire organization in one big sweep. Sparkly clean Vegas streets and nice big headlines. Now? It’s total chaos out there. The task force is over, too. Lars went on disability leave from the DEA, and Harmony…hell, that’s just a pile of weird.”
“How do you mean?”
“She left.” He took a long pull from the bottle. “I figured back to the Seattle FBI office, right? But no, turns out she got reassigned to the ‘critical incident response group,’ whatever the hell that is. So I poke around, find out she’s supposedly running field investigations for a higher-up named Walburgh.”
He stepped around the counter and leaned against it, eyeing his bottle.
“I got a pal in the Bureau, and I asked him to get me in touch. Thinking hey, I never really got to say a proper goodbye before Harmony left town, and I’d like to give her a call. Well, wherever she is, she can’t be reached. And this Walburgh guy? As far as we can tell, he doesn’t exist. He’s a voicemail box in an empty office. There’s some shady shit going down in the Bureau, and Harmony’s neck-deep in it.”
I wished I could say I was surprised, but Agent Black had intimated that her connections in Washington ran deeper—and to far stranger corners—than anyone would have guessed. Whatever she was into, I just wanted to keep under her radar and out of her way.
And as long as Daniel Faust stayed dead and buried, I had a pretty good shot.
“Whatever it is you’re here for,” Gary told me, “say it and get out. You can’t blackmail me anymore. Sullivan and Lauren are both six feet under.”
“Technically he’s about fifteen feet under,” I said, “but that’s arguing semantics. I’m here to ask for your help.”
He blinked. “Help you? Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because,” I said, “you and me are gonna save some lives together.”
44.
“You’re seeing the violence in the streets,” I told Gary, “everyone fighting to fill the vacuum now that Nicky’s on the run, but you aren’t seeing the hand behind it all. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait a few more days.”
Gary’s frown dropped a couple more notches.
“The Chicago mob,” I said, “is about to make a move on Vegas. That murder that landed me behind bars and sent Nicky running? Frame job, from start to finish. They’ve got a shape-shifter on their payroll. He set the whole thing up.”
“Shape-shifter?” he snorted. “No such thing.”
I leaned back on his couch and tilted my head at him.
“Gary?” I said. “You’ve got demon blood. You know I’m a sorcerer and that magic is real. Are you really gonna take the ‘no such thing’ angle with me?”
He glanced down, biting his lip.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Fair point.”
“Their whole plan was to destabilize the Vegas underworld. As you’ve seen, mission accomplished. But that’s just the prelude. The Outfit’s gonna roll in here, guns blazing. In fact, I know they’re sending a delegation to hook up with some of the locals. The Cinco Calles are about to get ripped right down the middle.”
Gary finished his beer. He stared at the bottle for a moment, shaking his head. Then he uncapped another one.
“What are you talking about? Some kind of civil war?”
“A big and messy one,” I said, “and I guarantee there will be civilians stuck in the cross fire.”
“What’s your angle in all this?”
“The splinter faction, the one who wants to sign up with the Outfit, has a friend of mine. They’re holding her hostage.”
“So file a police report,” Gary said, “and let Metro handle it. That’s what we do.”
“All due respect, this isn’t a job for the cops. You go in all heavy-footed and she’ll end up dead. This is a job for my people. If you help me out, though, I can stop the civil war, and I can help push the Outfit out of Vegas. No civilian casualties. You’ve got my word on that.”
He studied my face like he was trying to read a book in Sanskrit. I could hear his mind turning, weighing his options, deciding how much he believed me.
“What exactly would you need from me?” he finally asked.
I set his purloined gun down on the coffee table. It didn’t look like I was going to need it.
“I need to find a high-level Calles banger, a guy named Cesar Gallegos. I figure you work gang crimes, so you might know of him.”
Gary flashed a bitter smile. “Know of him? I’ve busted him twice, personally. Guy’s a real piece of work. What are you gonna do when you find him?”
“Resolve the situation.”
“In other words, you’re gonna put a bullet in him.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say that.”
“Faust, do you even understand what you’re doing? You’re asking a Metro detective to set up a goddamn assassination. That is so wrong I don’t even know where to start explaining how wrong it is.”
“Come on,” I told him, “you were involved in dirtier business than that when you were on the Redemption Choir’s payroll. Besides, you need to look at the end, not the means. Way I see it, there are only two possible outcomes here.”
“Yeah? And those are?”
I ticked them off on my fingers. “One, the Calles turn on each other, with one side playing the welcome wagon for the Chicago Outfit. If you think you’ve got problems now, just wait. We’re looking at a full-on gang war in the streets with military-grade firepower. Two, you help me and I resolve the problem quickly, quietly, and outside the city limits. Nobody gets hurt but the bad guys.”
He paced the floor, half-drained bottle swinging limply in his hand. I let him think it over. He stopped in midstride, then looked my way.
“No civilian casualties.” Half question and half command.
“Not one.”
He nodded to himself, slow, and slipped a business card from his pocket. I rose from the couch and took the card from his outstretched hand.
“I’ve got seven guys under me,” Gary said. “Come sunrise, their number-one business is gonna be tracking down Cesar Gallegos. The Calles have hangouts all over the city, but if we spread out, we should get eyes on him pretty quick.”
“You’re making the right call,” I told him.
He watched me as I strolled to his apartment door.
“Faust,” he said.
My hand rested on the doorknob. “Yeah?”
“Something just occurred to me. It’d really suck for you if anybody found out you were still alive, wouldn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Fair to say.”
“It’s just funny.” He let out a little chuckle. “Now I’ve got something to hold over your head.”
* * *
Back at the Scrivener’s Nook, I laid out the game plan.
“Once Gary and his team find Cesar,” I said, “we’ll keep our distance and put him under surveillance. Pixie, can you get some gear together? Maybe a parabolic microphone or something?”
“Done and done.”
“Then what?” Corman asked. “Foll
ow him to wherever he’s keeping Jennifer?”
I shook my head. “Only if we have to. If we get lucky spying on him, maybe we can find out where the meet’s going to be and get there first. Then we can set up an ambush. For now, let’s all get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”
Caitlin hooked her arm around mine, steering me toward the door.
“I know you’re welcome on Bentley and Corman’s couch,” she said, “but given you’ve spent the last couple of weeks sleeping on a prison cot, I think you’re entitled to a real bed tonight.”
Music to my ears. Back in her penthouse at the Taipei Tower—an expanse of polished hardwood, black leather, and chrome with decor out of an ’80s music video—she led me into the bedroom. She undressed me, slow, her fingers unbuttoning my shirt with feathery grace. Her dress tumbled to the floor in the dark, a pool of shadow around her feet.
We sank under the storm-gray comforter together, sliding across warm satin sheets. I leaned in and brushed my lips across the curve of her bare shoulder.
Her fingernails, five little spear points, rested over my heart.
“Daniel,” she said. “What are you doing?”
I blinked.
“Uh, I thought, I mean…I thought we were going to—”
“You have a concussion.”
I couldn’t quite parse that.
“And?”
“And,” she said, gently pushing me onto my back, “the doctor’s orders were quite clear. No unnecessary physical exertion.”
“He didn’t mean sex.”
“I’m quite certain he did.”
“He could not possibly,” I said, “have meant sex.”
She rolled onto her side, facing me, and flipped her hair back with a toss of her head.
“Daniel,” she said. “Are you claiming that having sex with me is not physically exerting?”
She had me there.
“I’ve been in prison,” I said, trying a different tack. “All those long, lonely nights. I have needs, you know.”
“You were in prison for two weeks, not two years, and I need you to not die. In ten days, once the doctor says you’re in the clear, we will have a very lovely—and vigorous—evening. Now get some sleep.”
Somehow, I managed. For a fleeting handful of hours, anyway, before the alarm clock flipped to 6:00 a.m. and a shrill electronic whine hit me like a mustang kick to the skull. Aching, coasting on a wave of nausea, I trudged to the bathroom and tried to make myself pass for a functional human being.
Back at the Scrivener’s Nook, Pixie was ready for action and lugging a hard black plastic case about the size of a bowling-ball bag. As I walked in, she passed me a slim Samsung phone.
“Here,” she said, “figured you’d need a fresh burner.”
I did. The first number I called was the one on Detective Kemper’s business card. Gary picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said. “Any word?”
“My guys are canvassing the streets. This a good number?”
“Good for now,” I told him.
He hung up. We weren’t waiting for long. Maybe fifteen minutes later, the phone buzzed and lit up in my hand.
“Got him,” Gary said. “You know the taqueria on South Decatur? He’s at a table in the back with some of his homeboys. What now?”
“We’re on our way. Hang back, okay? We don’t want to spook him.”
He let out a disgusted-sounding snort. “I’m not leaving, if that’s what you want. If you break your word and start shooting up the place, I’ll be on you in two seconds flat.”
I hung up the phone. A minute later he sent me a grainy photo, snapped from under a nearby table in the restaurant. Five guys hung out at a corner booth, laughing, openly flashing Calles ink on their arms and rocking yellow and brown bandannas. “Gallegos is the skinny one, second from the left,” read a follow-up text.
“All right,” I said, “we need to keep a low profile for this. Pix, it’s you and me. Everybody else, stay by your phones and be ready to move fast.”
* * *
Caitlin lent us the keys to her Audi. Well, she lent Pixie the keys, pointedly telling her not to let me drive.
“He’s had a head injury,” she said.
Pixie gave me a sidelong glance. “That explains so much.”
Even with Pixie at the wheel, we broke speed records getting across town. The taqueria was styled like an old Spanish mission on the outside, with white stucco walls and clay shingles the color of fresh salmon. As we cruised by, I spotted Cesar and his boys in the back booth. Spotted Gary Kemper, too, passing for a casual diner with a low-slung ball cap and keeping a sharp eye on the place.
“What’d you bring?” My hands rested on the black case on my lap. “A microphone?”
“Even better,” she said.
Pixie pulled the car around the side of the restaurant, squinted, then kept going. We ended up around back, pulling in next to an overstuffed Dumpster.
“Getting a little close there, aren’t you?” I said as the front bumper nearly brushed dirty stucco. “This is Caitlin’s car, remember.”
“Limited range. We need to be within ten meters. I think this is just about right.”
I handed her the case. She clicked open the plastic hasps. Inside, another black box rested on a fuzzy felt tray. It was about the size of a claymore mine, and she handled it just as gingerly as she closed the case, set the box upright on the lid, and swiveled up a stubby antenna. A red light flickered on the side, then turned blue.
“Hold this,” she said, handing me the box, “and keep it steady.” Then she reached into the backseat and grabbed her laptop, booting it up.
“What is it?”
“That,” she said as a waterfall of luminous blue text flooded her screen, “is called a femtocell. It’s basically a miniature cell phone tower in a box. Short range but very, very nifty. Hand me that burner I gave you.”
She studied my phone for a minute, keying in digits with her right hand while she typed on the laptop with her left.
“Cell phones are designed to connect to the closest tower,” she explained. “Which, for every phone within ten meters, is now this one. There’s no permission request, no warning. You can’t even tell it’s happening. Which is fine, assuming the femtocell hasn’t been, say, compromised by a creative hacker.”
“And this one has?” I asked.
By way of response, she handed the phone back to me and tapped on the screen. I had a text message waiting. Well, I didn’t.
“Just stopping to get a bite. Did you call the babysitter about tonight?”
“Every piece of network traffic that passes through our little cell tower—incoming and outgoing—is now being copied to your phone,” Pixie said. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Hold up,” I said. “So you can take this thing and spy on anyone’s cell phone? Anywhere? And it’s that easy?”
“Yep. As long as they’re within ten meters, no biggie.”
I peered at the box in my lap. “So this is like, super-secret tech, right? Like some kind of stolen military prototype?”
“Two hundred bucks over the counter, totally legal, no questions asked. Like I said, I’ve done some tinkering with mine, but it wasn’t too hard.”
I watched messages scroll across the screen, fleeting glimpses into the lives of complete strangers.
“Sometimes, Pix,” I told her, “I think you’re scarier than I am.”
45.
Isolating Cesar’s phone amid the digital noise was a problem. Every piece of data that passed through the femtocell had a number attached, but we couldn’t tell which one was his; people didn’t usually sign their names to text messages.
“If we could only make him call somebody,” Pixie said.
I grinned as an idea hit me. “We can. Can I make an outgoing call on this thing?”
She rapped a few keys on her laptop.
“Go for it.”
I rang up Dete
ctive Kemper. His voice was low, furtive.
“You coming or what?”
“Already there,” I said. “Question for you: you ever rumble these guys? Just throw your weight around a little and let them know you’ve got your eye on them?”
“Sure, all the time. Easiest way to clear ’em off a street corner.”
“I need you to rattle Cesar’s cage. Go over there and tell him Gabriel’s in custody, and that he’s already talking about making a deal.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to spook these guys.”
“This is the right kind of spooky,” I said. “Trust me.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh. I hung up the phone and waited.
Sure enough, barely five minutes had passed before a flurry of text messages hit my screen. All in Spanish, though. I gave Pixie a helpless look.
“I took two years in high school,” she said. “Lemme see. Yep, that’s him! Cesar’s trying to get ahold of Gabriel and find out if he’s really in jail. And…there’s Gabriel, telling him not to be so gullible and—whoa. Those are some words I did not learn in class. Hold on, now that we know which phone is his, I’m isolating the feed and digging up his number.”
I tilted my head at her while she typed up a storm. “We have his number,” I said, tapping the phone.
“Not his phone number. Every phone also has an ESN—an electronic serial number—that interfaces with the network. Be quiet a second. I’m busy being awesome.”
I waited, as patiently as I could, while she did what looked like backward calculus on her laptop.
“Boom, headshot,” she suddenly chirped, pumping a fist. “We can turn off the femtocell now. Don’t need it anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Cesar’s phone. I cloned that sucker. As far as the network is concerned, your phone is his phone. Everything that comes into his phone comes into yours too, and everything that goes out from your phone looks like it’s coming from his number. Gets billed to his account, too.”
Before long, a new message pinged across, this time in English.
“Writing to confirm tonight’s appointment. The Doctor is eager to meet his patient.”
The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5) Page 25