by Frank Zafiro
When he finished with his questions, Manning walked me to the door. I stepped through, then stopped.
“My car is still at the factory,” I said. “I need a ride.”
“Your car has been impounded as evidence,” Manning said.
“Evidence of what?”
Manning just stared at me. Then he said, “You have a phone, right?”
I tapped my pocket. It was still there. “Yeah.”
“Then call a taxi.”
He pulled the door shut with a resounding click.
TWENTY-FOUR
The next time I heard a door click shut, it was Helen’s hotel room door closing behind me. She was all over me, squeezing and kissing and asking a hundred questions all at once.
After a few moments I took her by the hand and stopped her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing that I’d rather do more than lose a couple of hours with you here. But I don’t have that luxury. Things are moving too quickly.”
“But you said on the phone that you were safe. That it worked.”
“The part with Falkner worked,” I said darkly. “And I figured out who’s loyal to me and who’s not.”
She gave me a strange look. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound like that before.”
“Like what?”
“So…dead. So scary.”
“I’m not trying to be scary. Just practical. I have more business to attend to. I only came by to see you for a minute, and to show you I was safe.”
She drew me in for another embrace. “I’m glad you’re safe.” She hugged me quietly for a long moment. Then she added, “You should let me help you with whatever you have left to do.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’ll come for you after.”
“Jake, I can –”
“I said no!” I snapped at her.
She recoiled from the words and fell silent.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
She shrugged. “I just want to help.”
“And I just want you to be safe. Goddamnit, we’ve been through this once already.”
“No,” Helen said. “You’ve had your say once already but we have definitely not settled this.”
“What do you want, Helen? You want to go along with me while guys try to kill me? While cops try to arrest me? You want to be part of fighting back against that?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want to be with you .”
I shook my head. “Not right now. Not until this is over. Meanwhile, did you call your friend in Arizona?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. He’s willing to be our supplier.”
“What’s the deal?”
“We still have to meet with him and pass his smell test.”
“ Smell test? What the hell is that?”
“He said he wanted to make sure you didn’t still smell like bacon.”
“What the fuck, Helen?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just his way of saying he has to meet you and make a final decision about whether he wants to go through with the deal.”
“Fine. But did you discuss details?”
She nodded. “The price of the product fluctuates, as you might imagine. But he’ll wholesale it to us at a price that will allow us to triple our money.”
An ironic smile sprang to my lips.
“What?” she asked, looking slightly perplexed. “Is that funny somehow?”
“No. But tripling our investment is what got us doing business with Ozzy, too.”
“Arturo is no Ozzy,” Helen said. “Or, rather, Ozzy is no Arturo.”
“Fine. What else?”
“Arturo guarantees the shipment and the quality. And early on, if we need it, he’ll rent us some enforcers.”
I thought about that. “We’ll see. But call him back and accept the terms. And set up a time for us to meet him within the next week or so.”
“Here, or in Phoenix?”
“I’m thinking he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t go to people. He’s probably used to people coming to him. Besides, some sunshine might be nice.”
“All right. I’ll do it, Jake. But...”
I raised my fingers to her lips. “No buts. This is how it has to be. I am going to finish this. Give me six hours, then I’ll meet you back at my place. It’ll be over, and then we’re going to start a new chapter together, you and me.”
“Partners?” she asked.
“Absolutely. And all those nice things you got used to down in Phoenix, you’re going to have them here, too.”
She smiled warmly at me. “Six hours.”
“Six hours,” I agreed.
“Okay. But be careful out there.”
I chuckled, but she didn’t get the unintentional reference to Hill Street Blues that she’d just made. So I kissed her lightly on her confused mouth, then a little harder, and that took all the confusion out of it.
TWENTY-FIVE
I took Helen’s rental car and drove to one of my storage units. On the way, I kept watching for any kind of a tail. I didn’t know who I was most worried about. Falkner was likely in jail or tied up with administrative matters either with the Staties or down at the PD. But he might be able to reach out with just a phone call.
I knew Ozzy could. Still, I couldn’t think of why he’d care enough about me at this point to have me followed.
I wondered briefly if Manning’s curiosity or Lauridsen’s anger at me was enough to merit keeping tabs on me. I doubted it.
Plus, I was in a rental car that no one would be familiar with.
I told myself all of this as I drove. But I still watched for a tail, and I still took the most circuitous route possible to the storage facility.
In the end, I chalked it up to me being somewhere between paranoid and careful.
I figured it wasn’t a bad place to be these days.
At the storage unit, I slid the door up, stepped inside and hit the light switch. Then I lowered the door immediately. The eight by sixteen chamber was filled with stacks gaming consoles, stereo equipment, three lawn mowers, two snow blowers, power tools, hand tools, and boxes full of miscellaneous items.
I found a good shovel and set it by the door. Then I went to the pile of boxes. I lifted the top one and reversed the stack until I got to the bottom box.
When I opened it, two other boxes were inside. One was a large wooden box where I kept jewelry. It was always good to leak those items out slowly in ones and twos, and preferably out of the area.
The other box was made of hard plastic. I removed it, flipped the latch, and stared down at the compact prize inside.
After he didn’t answer the first time, I knocked on Matt’s back door even harder the second time. I pounded against the wooden door with the heel of my hand relentlessly, calling out his name. The glass in the small window panes rattled with each blow.
When he finally answered, his hair was askew and he was shirtless. The jeans he’d probably just pulled on were still unfastened.
“You busy?” I asked.
He rubbed his eyes. “Busy sleeping.”
“I thought I had you on a mission.”
He squinted. “Mission?”
“To figure out how we’re going to handle the Brent situation.”
“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes again. “Yeah, well, uh, I was meditating on that, you know?”
I brushed past him and into the kitchen. “You got a girl here?”
“No, not since…” he shru
gged, then said, “No.”
“Good.” I looked around the kitchen and spotted his wallet and cell phone on the counter. “That’s one less thing to worry about, then. Get dressed.”
Matt nodded and slipped out of the kitchen. A few moments later, I could hear thumping from his bedroom as he looked for clothes.
“What’s up, Boss?”
“Well, seeing as how you haven’t come up with a master plan, I took it upon myself to figure something out.”
There was a pause, then he said, “Uh, what?”
“I’ll tell you later. Get dressed.”
“I am getting dressed.”
“No, you’re standing in your bedroom, half-dressed and listening to me because you can’t fucking multi-task. Now put your clothes on.”
There was a moment of silence and then the thumping renewed. A couple of minutes later, Matt returned to the kitchen, wearing a T-shirt and an unbuttoned long sleeve shirt. The laces of his work boots were still untied.
He sat down at the kitchen table and went to work on the laces. When he looked up at me and opened his mouth to speak, I held up my hand.
“Do me a favor and just shut up. I’ll explain everything once we’re set up. But this isn’t easy for me, and I don’t want to dwell on it, okay?”
A shadow passed over his features. He swallowed, and nodded. “Yeah, okay, Boss. Sure thing.”
“Good.”
He finished getting his boots laced up. When he walked to the kitchen counter and scooped up his wallet and phone, I shook my head. “No. Leave the phone.”
He squinted at me. “Why?”
“Because they’ve got GPS in them.”
“So?”
“So if the cops are on to any of our numbers, you can bet they’re pulling the GPS history, too. I don’t know if they can view it live or only as an historical record, but either way, I don’t want them to pin down where either of us was tonight.”
Matt frowned. His fingers curled protectively around the cell phone. He cleared his throat. “It’s just that this girl, she –”
“You think with your prick way too much, you know that?”
“Boss—“
“Leave the phone. You can call her when we get back.”
Reluctantly, he let the cell phone drop onto the counter.
I smiled at him without any humor. “Good. Now let’s go solve our problem.”
Matt drove the rental car. I wanted to keep his mind occupied. He tried to ask a few more questions but I waved them off.
“Just head north on 395,” I instructed. “Toward Deer Park.”
“All right,” he said, his voice resigned.
We drove in silence along the highway. A few miles outside of Spokane, it narrowed to two lanes. Residential neighborhoods gave way to occasional homes, which gave way to open fields.
“Take Staley Road,” I told him.
This time, Matt turned without protest, heading east.
We rode another five minutes without a word before I let out a long sigh. “We have to be sure, okay?”
Matt glanced over at me, then back at the road. “Sure about what?”
I didn’t answer him right away. I just stared out my window at the green alfalfa field bathed in the late afternoon sun. I expected a rush of intense emotion, but all I felt was a low, cold anger.
“Boss? Sure about what?”
“Just sure,” I answered. I turned to face him. His boyish features bore that open, slightly perplexed expression that he always seemed to have. “Take the next left,” I told him. “It’s a dirt road, so slow down.”
“Okay.”
He found the dirt road, and turned. The roadway was straight for about a hundred yards, then began to twist and turn as it entered a wooded area. The road itself was choked with weeds. I could hear them raking the underside of the car.
“What’s out here?”
“A place I used to camp,” I said. “When we didn’t have time to take off for a long weekend, we’d drive up here and pitch a tent.”
“Cool,” Matt said. “But I meant, what’s out here?”
“Nothing. And that’s the point.”
He nodded slowly. I could see the concern riding just behind his eyes.
“We’ll meet Brent here in about forty minutes,” I said. “And we’ll get the truth out of him.”
“Okay,” Matt said. “But how?”
“Leave that to me. Pull in there.” I pointed to a tree just off the roadway.
Matt parked the car and shut off the engine. I held out my hand for the keys. He gave them to me.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ve got work to do.”
I got out of the car and went to the trunk. When I popped it open, it was empty except for the shovel I’d retrieved from the storage unit. I reached in and grabbed it.
“Oh, man,” Matt breathed. “No way.”
“Relax,” I said. “We’re not going to kill him. We’re not bad guys, right?”
He shook his head. “No, we’re not.”
“Exactly. But we’ve got to scare him. And Brent’s no weak sister, either. He’s got to believe we’ll do it. And I figure there’s no better way to convince him than to show him his grave.”
“Oh, man,” Matt repeated. His lip quivered. “I don’t know if I can do that, Boss.”
“You’ll do it,” I said. “Or we’ll both end up in prison.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“C’mon.”
“Shit,” he said again, but followed me.
I walked about twenty yards off the road, through the trees until I found what looked like a soft spot. Without ceremony, I drove the spade into the ground and scooped the dirt aside.
“I’ll start,” I said, “and you finish.”
“Okay,” he murmured unhappily.
“Keep an eye out for anyone on the road,” I said, and started digging.
The ground was as soft as it looked so I made good progress. In about twenty minutes, I had the beginnings of a shallow grave carved out of the black earth. Matt split his time between watching the direction we came and casting nervous glances at me. I played it cool, digging away.
Finally, I stopped and wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. “Jesus, this is hard work. I should’ve brought some water along for us.”
“You want me to take over?” Matt asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, you can finish. I’ll watch for Brent.” I glanced down at my watch. “He should be here in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
I stabbed the shovel into the ground and held out my hand. Matt took it and pulled me out of the shallow hole. Then he hopped down, picked up the shovel, and started digging with gusto. I figured he was burning off nervous energy.
Time went by much slower than I expected. Five minutes. Then ten. Finally twenty. By then, Matt’s progress was deep enough for my purposes.
I reached into the small of my back and pulled out the Glock I’d retrieved from storage.
“That’ll work,” I said.
He stopped mid-shovel stroke, and looked up. His eyes bulged when he saw the barrel.
“Boss, no! I –”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “I know it’s you. Don’t even try to deny it.”
“No, it’s not. I swear to God!”
“Stop it, Matt.”
“It’s not me! I swear it! Oh, Jesus, Boss, don’t –”
“The cops were waiting for me at Marconi’s, Matt.”
He hesitated, blinking at me. “That…that doesn’t prove anything. It wasn’t me.”
He stared at me for another moment, panic setting into his eyes. “Maybe they were following you.”
I shook my head. “It was you, Matt. And we both know it. So stop denying it.”
“It wasn’t me,” Matt said, but his voice fell to a whisper and lost all conviction.
We stood in silence for a few moments. I thought about shooting him right then but I had to know more.
“The whole thing was Falkner, wasn’t it?”
Matt just stared at me, his mouth hanging open as he drew in ragged breaths. Flecks of white phlegm dotted the corners of his mouth.
“Come on, Matt. Tell the truth and we’ll be friends again.” I gestured with the barrel of my pistol. “It was that fucking Detective Falkner, wasn’t it? You can tell me. It was him, right?”
Slowly, as if he was hearing my words from a distance or through water, Matt nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking. “It was him.”
“Why?”
Matt tried to clear his throat, but it seemed to catch. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and gave me a half-hearted smile. “You were right about that water, Boss,” he croaked at me. “I sure could use some right about now.”
“Tell me why,” I said, my voice sounding sadder than I felt.
“He hates you,” Matt said. “The guy is fucking obsessed.”
I shook my head. “No, I know that. I mean, why’d you do it?”
“Oh.” Matt dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. “It was that assault thing. Over in Idaho. He told me the guy I hit had a aphormism a couple of days later.”
I scowled. “A what? ”
“You know, that thing where a vein or something busts open in your brain?”
“An aneurism?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s it. A aneurism.”
I motioned with the gun for him to continue.