by Jeff Shelby
“So what changed?” I repeated. “It just hit you that it was wrong?”
His gaze on the window was so intent I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me.
“Linc?” I said.
“She changed it,” he finally answered, his voice catching.
On my initial visit to his apartment, the girls had explained Rachel’s relationship with Linc. He wrote her papers and she slept with him in return. Maybe it had turned into more than that for Linc.
“How did Rachel change things?” I asked.
He moved his eyes back to me, confusion on his face. “Rachel?”
“You said, ‘She changed it.’ How did Rachel change things?”
He shook his head. “Rachel didn’t change anything.”
Now I was the confused one. “Then who are we talking about?”
Linc Pluto turned back to the window and the tears reappeared in his eyes. “Malia. Malia changed everything.”
Thirty-nine
Malia’s name exploded inside of my head.
“Malia Moreno?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Deacon Moreno’s sister,” Linc said. “Yeah.”
I couldn’t come up with another name that would’ve surprised me more.
“How did you know her?” I asked, trying to gather my thoughts.
“I went to make a drop to Deacon at their house a couple of months ago,” he said. “She answered the door, Deacon wasn’t there, and we started talking. She was going to State, too. It just sort of fell into place.”
A gigantic knot formed in my stomach. I’d already dropped the news about his brother on him. Now I was going to have to do the same about Malia.
“You were dating her?” I said.
His eyes iced over. “We weren’t just dating. I was in love with her.”
The way he said it made me feel dumb for suggesting any less. “Did Deacon know?”
“We thought we were being careful.” His eyes softened as he chewed on his lip for a moment. “But then Malia was pretty sure Deacon had heard her talking on the phone with me. He started asking who her new boyfriend was. She didn’t tell him, but I immediately started getting calls from Deacon and Wesley that didn’t feel right. They wanted to meet me at different places than normal. I got freaked and that’s when I went into hiding.” He rubbed his chin. “And then when Rachel was shot, I knew he knew. It was a message to me.”
“Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. A guy I know, he’s doing a semester abroad. But he kept the lease on the house because he didn’t want to lose it. I knew it was empty and I didn’t figure anyone else knew about it.”
“You said Rachel getting shot was a message to you. How do you know that?”
He sighed and sank back into the couch. “Dana told you about me and Rachel?”
“Yeah.”
“It was before I met Malia. I swear to God.”
“Okay.”
“When I started selling the guns, Deacon and his guys didn’t know me. So I had to act friendly with them. Hang out, talk shit, and all that, so that they’d trust me.” He shook his head. “Rachel walked out of her apartment one day when we were hanging out in the parking lot and they all went crazy, talking about how hot she was and everything.”
It was starting to come together.
“And you told them about having sex with her?” I said.
“It validated me with them,” he said, his voice straining. “It was dumb and stupid, but it worked.” He paused and I thought he was going to cry again. “And even after Rachel and I were done, I kept telling them that we weren’t.”
“So Deacon didn’t like the idea of you and Malia being together and he may have thought you were cheating on her?”
He blinked rapidly, tears clouding his eyes, and he nodded.
It seemed like every time Linc had tried to do something right, he’d made things worse.
He used the heels of his hands to dry his eyes and said, “I was there that day you came to her house.”
“What?”
“I was the one behind the door,” he explained. “She told you she was studying with a friend. It was me.”
My gut had tried to tell me that day something wasn’t totally right. His explanation confirmed it.
He started to say something, but it caught in his throat. He swallowed hard, tried to compose himself. “And I was there yesterday, too.”
Linc was full of surprises.
I shifted uncomfortably in the chair, remembering the scene. “You were?”
“They made Malia call me and tell me where to meet them.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been out there a couple of times before when I was with my dad.”
“You were the other shooter,” I said.
He nodded, his eyes oozing pain.
“Why did they take Malia?” I asked.
“They knew she and I were together.” He hesitated for a moment. “Lonnie saw us together a couple of weeks ago. We were having lunch at the pier in Imperial Beach. We were walking back to the car and I saw him with Mo at the other end of the lot. I tried to duck out of sight and thought maybe I had, because they didn’t follow us out of the lot.” He shook his head. “But I knew it. I felt him looking at me.”
I remembered the look I’d gotten from Lonnie at Peter’s house. It was enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
“She was supposed to call me after her first class yesterday. She didn’t, and I knew something was wrong. When she finally did call, she was crying and screaming,” he said, his voice wavering. “They’d been waiting for her in a parking garage at school. Lonnie got on the phone and told me if I didn’t show up, he’d kill her.”
I gave him a minute before asking my next question, the one that had been in my head since I’d stepped into Peter Pluto’s home.
“What did Lonnie want from you?”
His jaw went rigid. “I owe them money.”
“From the gun sales?”
“Yeah.”
“Here’s a question. Why the hell would you steal their money?” I asked, unable to keep the bewilderment out of my voice. “Both your aunt and your brother told me about your trust fund. Did you blow through it?”
“My trust fund only covers school and what I need to live on,” he said, irritated. “And that’s it. Tuition goes straight to the registrar and I get a monthly stipend deposited into my checking account. It can only be used for that stuff until I’m twenty-five.” He paused. “I didn’t take the money for me.”
I was skeptical that a kid who had recently lost both parents couldn’t pull more out of his trust fund if he needed it. “You couldn’t get more money from it after both of your parents passed away?”
He shook his head adamantly. “No. I tried. But there were no exceptions to how the trust was drawn up.”
I nodded. “Okay. Who did you steal the money for, then?”
He put his hands over his eyes again, pressing his palms into them, like he was trying to force whatever he was thinking out of his head.
He pulled his hands away and folded his arms across his chest. “You saw Malia’s house. Her neighborhood. Her financial aid didn’t cover everything. She was out of money for tuition. She wasn’t gonna be able to finish her last semester. If I could’ve used my own money, I would have. But I can’t. Couldn’t. So I took the money from the last sale I made, gave it to her, and told her it was from my trust. She didn’t want to take it, but I finally convinced her.”
The money explained why Lonnie and Mo had been looking for him when I’d run into them at Peter’s house. They killed Peter as a warning for Linc to pay up. And they’d killed Malia because they wanted to stick it to him, since they still hadn’t seen the money. And, probably, simply because she was a black girl dating a white guy.
Linc squeezed his hands together tightly, his fingers turning bright red. I wondered whose imaginary head was between his hands.
“Even if I had the m
oney to bring out there, they were gonna kill us. But I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t figure out how to get her out of there. And then it was too late.” He shook his head, the misery clenching his features. “I’m so stupid.”
I didn’t know where I stood on Linc’s stupidity. On one hand, he had attempted to help Malia and escape what he realized had become a situation that had spiraled out of his control. But on the other hand, the one that I wanted to slap him with, he had taken the worst route possible to try and make those things happen.
“Why were you back at the apartment this morning?” I asked.
“I wanted to get the guns I had left,” Linc said. “I’d already brought some of them here, but I wanted to get the rest. To get rid of them. I was gonna try and find someone else to sell them to, so I’d have some money to get the hell out of here. But they were gone. So I just grabbed my clothes and bailed.”
I was glad I had told Wellton about the guns in Linc’s apartment, because I felt confident that Linc would’ve somehow screwed up getting rid of the guns.
“So now what?” I finally asked. “You said you need my help. You want to escape? Get away from these guys?”
His head snapped up, anger back on his face. “That’s what you got from all this? That I’m just some scared kid who doesn’t want to get hurt?”
I said nothing because that was exactly what I thought.
He stood. “I don’t wanna hide from them anymore, you asshole. Those fuckin’ skinheads killed my brother and they killed Malia. As far as I’m concerned, they killed my father, too. Fuck them and their money.”
“What do you want, then?” I asked.
“I want you to help me finish this,” Linc Pluto said, his voice full of anger, back to where it was when I’d first sat him on the couch. “Finish them.”
Forty
“I’m not gonna help you kill anyone,” I said.
Linc stared hard at me for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. Then he shrugged. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I don’t need your help.”
I stood. “Yeah, you do.”
He sneered. “Oh, right. You’ve done such a bang up job so far on all this.”
The sympathy that I’d been feeling for the kid for the last few minutes was quickly shifting into anger. “And if your brother had been smart and just left you alone, I wouldn’t have been dragged into any of this.”
He turned away from me. “Fuck off.”
I grabbed his arm and spun him back. “Hey. You think I don’t feel bad about what’s happened? To your brother and Malia and Rachel? I do. And I wanna get it set straight. But you hunting down a bunch of assholes and killing them does nothing. For anyone.”
“Does for me,” he said, and lunged at me with his free arm.
His fist glanced off my shoulder. I slid my hand down to his wrist and twisted hard. His face screwed up into a knot of pain and I kicked his legs out from under him. He landed with a thud, the air rushing out of his chest.
“You can’t even take me out,” I said. “And I’m not even close to being as dangerous as Mo or Deacon or any of those other guys.”
The adrenaline surge made my skin tingle. I watched Linc lay on the floor and try to get his breath back. He was wincing, the pain in his back probably surprising him. Landing flat on your spine will do that.
“The best place for you is somewhere safe,” I said.
He grunted. “Where’s that?”
I ignored the question. “I will take care of this,” I said. “I’m better equipped.”
“You weren’t yesterday. You couldn’t save Malia.”
I resisted the urge to plant my foot in his ribs. “Neither could you, asshole. However, I will make sure Lonnie and Mo pay for what they did to Peter and Malia. And I will make sure that Deacon and his boys back off.”
“I can do it myself,” he said, sounding like a four-year-old trying to use a fork for the first time.
“No, you can’t,” I said.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, reaching around to rub his back. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care?” he asked. “My brother hired you. He’s…gone. It’s none of your business anymore.”
Lonnie and Mo had made it my business, but I didn’t feel the need to explain that to Linc.
“I promised your aunt,” I said, telling him part of the truth. “I told her I’d find you.”
“You did that.”
“My promises are all-inclusive. Finding you means keeping you safe.”
“I can keep myself safe.”
“Really? That why you’re hiding out here? That why you were hiding behind Malia’s door when I showed up?”
His chin dropped and he looked away from me, his jaw locked tight.
I sat down in the chair. “Linc, I’m not trying to embarrass you. But you’re in over your head right now. You’ve told me as much. I’ll clean it up. It’s what I do.”
He picked at his shoelaces, his head still hung. He looked like a puppy that wasn’t sure how to grow up.
“They killed my brother and my girlfriend,” he said quietly. “I’m not gonna let that go.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m telling you that I will take care of it. It’s better that way.”
He grunted and then looked up at me, confusion and frustration on his face. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
This was the part I didn’t know how to explain to him yet.
“I’m gonna put you someplace where no one can get to you,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.
He smirked. “Where? The Arctic Circle?”
I scrolled through the phone book, looking for the number I wanted. “A lot closer than that.”
The smirk changed to wariness. “Where?”
“Jail,” I said.
“What the fuck?” Linc said, leaping to his feet and knocking the phone out of my hand.
Lunging out of the chair, I caught Linc right in the sternum and shoved him backward. His head popped back when he hit the sofa and cracked against the wall. Before he had a chance to recover, I rolled him over onto his stomach and put my knee into his back. A holding cell was the safest place for him right now, even if he didn’t understand that.
“Linc, trust me,” I said
“Yeah, Linc. Trust the homeboy,” a voice said behind us.
I turned around.
Deacon and Wesley were standing in the doorway, each armed and smiling like they’d won the lottery.
Forty-one
Deacon jerked his head at Wesley. “Check the rest of the place.”
Wesley dutifully moved out of the room with his TEC-9 and disappeared into the back of the house.
“Bring it out,” Deacon said to me, fixing a massive handgun on me. “Slow.”
I moved off of Linc and reached around to my waistband, pulling out my Glock.
“Lay it down.”
I did.
He looked at Linc. “You been runnin’ from me, boy.”
Linc rolled over and stared at him, no fear or anger on his face. Just resolution.
“But you knew I’d catch you,” Deacon said, smiling at him. “One of my boys was watching your crib this morning, and damn if he don’t see some dude look just like you hauling ass outta there.” His smile got bigger. “Can’t nobody run from me.”
“Empty,” Wesley said, coming back into the room. “Some guns are back here, though.”
They were smart. Deacon stood by the front door and Wesley stood behind us. We were in the middle and cut off from any exit.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said, looking to buy a little time and try to throw him off track.
Rage bubbled up in his eyes. “Fuck you, you motherfucker. Don’t talk about my sister.”
“I tried to help her,” I said.
“Great fuckin’ job.”
“He tried to help her,” Linc said. �
�We both did.”
Deacon’s eyes shot fury in Linc’s direction. “You didn’t fuckin’ help my sister, you white cocksucker. It was your goddamn fault that she ended up like she did.”
“I didn’t want it that way,” Linc said. “I didn’t. I just wanted to be with her.”
“You are so fucked up, boy,” Deacon said. “I mean, so fucked up, okay? You think I was gonna let my sister date a little piece of shit like you? For real?”
Linc stayed quiet.
“She didn’t need you screwing her up, man,” Deacon continued. “She was gonna do something, alright? Get the fuck out of our ghetto house and do something with her life. But then you went and got all gigolo on her. And now she’s dead, motherfucker. Dead like you’re gonna be.”
Linc stared at the floor. “I loved her.”
Deacon took a step toward him, his muscles rigid. “What, motherfucker?”
“I loved her.”
Deacon shoved the barrel of the gun against Linc’s forehead. “Say it again, motherfucker. Say it again.”
“He loved her,” I said, trying to draw his attention.
Deacon moved the gun in my direction. “What the fuck you know?”
“They wanted to be together,” I said.
Deacon’s nostrils flared, his eyes ready to burst out of his head. “She ain’t here to love now, boy, is she? She gone and neither of y’all did shit to stop it.”
“Not true,” I said. “Think what you want. I’m sorry she’s dead. But Linc and I tried to prevent it.” I paused, weighing my words. “If anyone’s responsible, it’s you.”
Deacon took several slow steps back, looking at me in disbelief. “I know you didn’t just say that.”
“Those guys just swooped in and took her,” I said. “Come on, man. No one was looking out for her. You were sleepin’ on the job.”
Deacon shook his head, anger flooding his eyes. “No. Fuck you, man. This is your fault.”
“And what the hell, Deacon?” I continued, figuring I was already in deep. “You always wanna kill guys that date your sister? Maybe if you hadn’t shot his friend and acted like a maniac, Linc wouldn’t have had to hide from you and I wouldn’t have had to start looking for him.” I paused. “If he doesn’t have to hide from you, maybe Malia is left out of all this. And she’d be alive.”