by David Grace
Nothing about the video contradicted that, but was that what had really happened? Had the cops been onto Latwan? The cop had fired four times, but the TV said that the driver had only been hit twice. From the terrified look on the cop’s face Kyle figured he’d been lucky to keep even fifty percent of his rounds on target.
Latwan was apparently still alive. But is he talking? That depends on how much the cops know, Kyle decided. If they think he’s just some nut-job who hates cops and didn’t want a speeding ticket that was one thing. If this had really been about him being part of the crew, it was something else.
It was the fear on the lone cop’s face that decided Kyle. If they had known who Latwan was and what he’d done they wouldn’t have sent one wet-behind-the-ears traffic cop to take him down. No, they’d have used an entire SWAT team with vests and assault rifles. The fact that they didn’t meant that Kyle was probably still safe.
Latwan was no genius but he wasn’t stupid enough to volunteer his participation in multiple murders if they just had him on some traffic charges or resisting arrest. Eventually the cops would probably find out where Latwan lived and search his place but that would take time. Kyle couldn’t take the chance that Latwan had broken the rules and kept some piece of jewelry or whatever from one of their jobs, something that would tie him to the gang. He needed to clean out Latwan’s place now.
* * *
“Korean food?” Virgil asked when Stan picked him up the next morning.
“Go figure. Is checking for restaurant-deliveries some kind of Marshals’ standard procedure?”
“One of our many tools,” Virgil joked, not willing to tell Kudlacik that it was an idea that his subconscious had dredged up from an operation he’d been part of over ten years ago.
Stan gave him a quick sideways look as he prepared to make a right turn.
“You look better this morning. How do you feel?”
Remembering staggering into his apartment with barely enough energy to eat his dinner Virgil looked away.
“Good, good,” he answered. “Amazing what ten hours sleep will do for you. . . . How’d you find the place?”
“Monroe’s got a thing for White Castle, but they don’t deliver. We found three receipts from the same White Castle place in the trash in his back seat. That gave us a likely neighborhood for him. Lucky for us, he’s a slob. We got some uniforms who know the area to hit the restaurants with his DMV photo. The Koreans remembered him because he complained if they don’t give him extra kimchi. . . . That’s his place over there.” Kudlacik pointed to a four-story brick building halfway down the block.
“Do we have a warrant?”
“The judge authorized it before I picked you up. I pulled Monroe’s keys out of evidence.” Stan held up a key ring with a naked plastic woman as the fob. “I wonder if we’ll find any porn?” Kudlacik laughed.
The apartment smelled of old pizza and stale beer. Neither man regretted having to wear gloves. They each took a room then swapped assignments after the first pass. The living room was dominated by a sixty-inch TV and an XBox 360 fronted by a grease-stained leather couch. The DVD library was a fifty-fifty mix of action flicks and hard-core porno. A couple of the plastic sleeves held pills, Xanax and Rohypnol, and tiny envelopes of powders that could be coke or speed or both. They found almost four-thousand dollars in cash in the freezer stuffed inside a bag of frozen peas.
“Brilliant hiding place,” Virgil joked, holding up the plastic bag. “As if this guy’s going to come home from a hard day of robbery and murder and boil himself up a nice big bowl of baby peas. Jesus.”
The only other thing of interest they found in the general mess of empty bottles and cans and unwashed clothes was a turned-off Go Phone in the back of Latwan’s underwear drawer.
“Did we get anything off the phone he had on him?” Virgil asked as he scrolled through the log.
“Mostly calls to a bunch of burner phones that were no longer working. There was one number that had been alive until Latwan’s arrest made the evening news then it went dead too. We’re still waiting on the location data but all we’re going to get is the general area where the towers overlapped.”
“I wonder if any of these numbers still work?” Virgil said.
“Let’s find out. I’ve got a Bloodhound in the car.”
Virgil thought about that for half a second. “How fast can you get us a warrant for the location data on these numbers?”
“I don’t know. If Judge Claridge is in chambers, maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Make the call,” Virgil ordered. “I don’t want these bastards to skate on some technicality.”
* * *
Kyle spotted the DPD Charger the instant he turned the corner onto Latwan’s block. He was almost even with the building when two men came through the front door. The first guy was heavyset and carried a cardboard box. The second was the detective that had been running down Paulie’s friends, the guy who was supposed to have been killed in the house on Sergeant Street.
Fuck! Kyle kept his gaze fixed straight ahead then turned left at the end of the block. As soon as he was out of sight he pulled over and rang Ralphie’s phone.
“Hey.”
“Where are you?”
“Why?”
“We need to talk.”
“I’m listening.”
“Not on the phone,” Kyle snapped.
“Well, that might be a problem,” Ralphie said uneasily. “I’m in Vegas.”
“What the fuck are you – never mind. You need to get back here.”
“I could probably do Monday night,” Ralphie said.
“Now!”
“I’m kind of committed here. Do you want the details, over the phone I mean?”
Kyle closed his eyes and struggled not to scream. Why was everything suddenly turning to shit?
“Fine. Nine o’clock Monday night at the Club. As soon as you hang up take the battery out of your phone and lose the SIM card. And when you come back don’t go home, get a hotel or something. Do you have a clean ID?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Use it. And don’t talk to anybody.
“What happened?”
“We’ll talk Monday night,” Kyle said and hung up.
He called Dion next but just got the message. There was no way he was going to leave a sample of his voice. He immediately hung up then sent Dion a text telling him to get rid of his phone and text a new number to “my back-up phone.” Next, Kyle wiped down the phone, removed the SIM card, and tossed the pieces into the back of a dump truck hauling debris toward the docks. Half an hour later he bought two new burner phones from a CVS on Seven Mile Road, one for himself and one to give to Ralphie. On and off for the rest of the afternoon he tried to raise Dion from a random bunch of payphones but Jenkins never picked up. Dion was either strung out, coked out, laid out or locked up. By five o’clock Kyle decided that it didn’t matter. He didn’t have enough men left to keep the plan going. All he could do now was tie up the loose ends and get the hell out of town.
Just before six he made his first call on the new phone.
“Hello?” Danny Cathcart answered.
“It’s me.”
“You got a new phone.”
“Yeah. Write down the number then throw your phone away and get yourself a new one too.”
“Sure, OK. What’s up?”
“Things are getting tight. You’ve got to contact the new client ASAP.”
“I don’t have all the target info yet,” Danny complained.
“It doesn’t matter. Just make the pitch and get him to give it up.”
“I don’t like doing this without proper planning.”
“The guy is sixty-something, right? What’s he gonna do, slap you to death?”
“I’m just saying–”
“Man the fuck up and earn your share,” Kyle growled and shot a glance out his window. “Have you picked a spot or not?”
“Yeah, I’ve picked a spot,�
�� Cathcart said sullenly.
“Don’t fucking play with me!”
“Yeah, all right,” Danny answered, remembering that Kyle didn’t react well to whining and complaints. “He’s got a second girlfriend he visits every Tuesday night. He parks in the garage in her building. I’ll brace him in his car and make the pitch.”
“How much are you going to ask for?”
“Two, but–”
“We said ten!”
“That was before,” Danny replied, the whine back in his voice. When Kyle didn’t respond he continued. “Look, we never thought he’d pay ten without a demonstration. Now that that’s off the table I have to pick a number that might work right away.”
Kyle’s silence lasted a moment longer. “You think he’ll pay the two?” he finally asked.
“No, I don’t think he’ll pay the two. With ten he’d just tell us to fuck ourselves until they found the bodies and he realized that we weren’t kidding around. But two’s low enough that maybe he’ll make a counter offer.”
“How much?” Kyle asked.
“Maybe half a mil. Maybe nothing.”
“It better not be nothing,” Kyle said, his voice cold and hard. “I’ll fucking pop him for free if that’s how he wants to play it.”
“Maybe you should come along and tell him that in person. It might make him more cooperative.”
“Listen, up until now I’ve been doing all the hard work. Now it’s time for you to get your hands a little dirty. If you want the money, meet the guy and find a way to make him give it up. If you’re not up to the job I’ll do it and I’ll keep it all for myself. So, what’s it going to be?”
Cathcart was silent for a couple of seconds then said, “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Good. Tuesday night. What time are you going to meet him?”
“He usually gets there around nine.”
“You call me when it’s over.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it. You-call-me!”
“And I said I would. Anything else?”
Kyle hung up.
Chapter Forty
In a matter of seconds after getting the telephonic warrant the Bloodhound spit out the location of Dion Jenkins’ phone. Six minutes after that two uniformed officers spotted him in a back corner of Bob & Daily’s Bar with two other low-lifes and a couple of semi-pro girls. The guy across the table from Dion noticed the approaching uniforms and his head snapped toward the door.
“Cops!” he hissed and jerked his hands above the table, palms up.
Like animals in the wild scenting a threat, four heads twisted toward the light streaming through the entrance. One of the men was clean and just frowned at the pending interruption of their afternoon. The other was on parole and barely suppressed the urge to run, but some fragment of better judgment screamed that they might not even be after him and running would only get him violated for sure. The two girls’ only crime was intermittent hooking and they both knew that they had to be caught straight out offering sex for money in order to be taken away. They smiled and held their ground.
That left Dion who knew that he had participated in multiple murders, rapes and armed robberies and that if the cops ever grabbed him up he would go away forever. Now, out of the blue, with hands on their guns, two cops had pushed through the front door and were coming straight for him. Human Nature 101: Guilty conscience + Threat = Fight Or Flight.
Dion jumped up sending his chair crashing behind him. He started to reach for the gun under his shirt, but one of the cops already had his out and Dion knew that they would shoot him dead at the slightest provocation, so he turned and ran full out toward the back door.
He was about three feet from the table when he caught his toe on the leg of the overturned chair and crashed face down onto the filthy floor. He pressed down with both hands and had almost made it to his knees when the first cop landed on his back.
Dion squirmed and flailed like a wild beast, but then the second cop piled on and they twisted his arms half out of their sockets putting on the cuffs. Rough hands searched his waistband and one of the cops shouted, “Gun!” The other one instantly smashed Dion’s face against the linoleum and Jenkins heard as much as felt the bones in his nose crack.
Stunned, cuffed, blood streaming down his face, Dion was hauled to his feet. Sounds came and went in waves as they dragged him toward the door. One of the cops was shouting, “You have the right to remain silent . . . .”
Dion struggled to clear his head but the cop’s words dissolved in a storm of noise.
* * *
“You’re a lucky guy,” Virgil said, smiling at Dion across the interrogation-room table.
“How’s that, pig?” Dion asked.
“Pig? What are you, stuck in 1979?” Virgil laughed. “Stan, do hip dirt bags still call us pigs?”
“Hmmm, not so much. I think the with-it punks have pretty much switched over to ‘popo’.”
Virgil shook his head as if disappointed beyond words. “Damn, Dion, some fucking outlaw you are. You can’t even insult us right. Now I’m sorry I was going to offer you a deal.”
“I don’t need no deal. You got nothin’ on me.”
“Really? Nothing? What about assaulting a police officer? What about a felon in possession of a firearm? Even with time off you’d still do at least five just for that, if those were the only charges.” Dion tried to freeze his face into a blank mask. “You’re a shitty poker player. Anybody ever tell you that?” Dion just stared. “Actually, I was BSing you there about getting hit with assaulting a police officer and a felon-in-possession wraps. I don’t think the D.A. will ever bother to prosecute you on those charges.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Dion replied.
“I mean, what’s the point of screwing around with that penny-ante stuff when you’re going on trial for 13 murders plus five armed robberies and however many counts of rape?”
“What are you–”
“You’re going to have so many consecutive life sentences that you could live to be five hundred years old and you’d still never see the outside of your cage.”
“Bullshit! You’ve got nothin’.”
“Nothing? I’ve got Paulie Sturdevant and Latwan Monroe, and now I’ve got you.” Dion’s face froze at the mention of the two names, and his guts went cold. “What I don’t know,” Virgil continued in a breezy tone, “is who raped Marie Randazzo? She was fourteen years old. Whoever did that is going to pay for it. Whoever helps us get him, gets the deal.”
A couple of seconds later when Dion asked “What deal?” a little shiver went through Virgil’s chest.
“You get your pick of prisons, maybe one close to your family if you want. And you can stay in gen pop, Level II. The rest of your scumbag crew will in Level IV lock down for the rest of their lives. No mail. No phone. No TV. No radio. One book a month. One hour in the canteen every three months. One visitor every three months. 23 out of 24 hours a day locked up in your little cage with the lights on all the time. And the worst part is that you won’t even be able to kill yourself.”
Virgil watched Dion’s face subtly change as the fear began to gnaw at the corners of his eyes and the edges of his lips.
“But that doesn’t have to happen to you. You can do easy time, TV, magazines, regular food, candy bars from the canteen, companionship, if you swing that way. Just tell me who did the girl? Was that you?”
“I didn’t rape nobody. I wasn’t never in that house.”
“You weren’t in the house?”
“Na-unh. No!” Dion frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about no little girl getting raped.”
Virgil looked questioningly at Kudlacik. “He says he never went into the house. You believe that Stan?
Kudlacik just shrugged. “Hard to believe he never went in the house. Why would they leave him outside while they had all the fun?”
“That’s a good question. Hey, Dion, it doesn’t make sense that they would l
eave you alone outside . . . unless. . . ,” Virgil turned to Kudlacik. “Maybe he was the driver. That would explain it, why he never went inside. . . . Was that it, Dion? You never went in the house because you were just the driver?”
“I never did nothin’, never raped no girl, never set foot in that house,” Dion insisted.
“Because you were the driver? Is that your story?”
“I just drove the damn van. Whatever happened inside had nothing to do with me.”
Jackpot! Virgil thought, but never let the excitement reach his face. Instead, he turned to Kudlacik as if confused.
“What do you think, Stan? Do you believe him?”
For a second or two Kudlacik seemed deep in thought then frowned.
“I’m not buying it. All these punks claim they were just the driver while some other scumbag did the dirty stuff. How are we gonna know if he’s telling the truth?”
Virgil seemed stumped by the question then appeared to have an idea.
“OK, Dion, If you were just the driver prove it to me. What kind of van was it?”
“Ahhh, a Ford something.”
Strike two, Virgil thought.
“Shit! A Ford something? What does that prove? Come on. If you were the driver tell me something about it that the driver would know.”
“Like what?”
“Was it an automatic or manual?”
“Automatic.”
“How many gears?”
“I don’t know,” Dion complained, then seeing the frown on Virgil’s face, paused and thought some more. “It shifted like a real pig, not smooth like a car, kthunk, kthunk, you know, so maybe three or four gears.”
“Hmmm,” Virgil said, giving Kudlacik a knowing look. “Maybe you’re telling the truth after all.”
“Damn straight. I just drove that thing. That’s all!”
“I’m not convinced,” Stan complained. “Anybody could know that. He might have guessed.”