Unless.
What if La Raza found out Beth was collecting and sharing information with someone outside the organizations about those shipments? Could that be it? Did La Raza know Beth was setting him up? Did he know Ryan was connected? If he did, that meant Maestro knew, too. The information that Beth had gathered for Ryan was nearly enough to bring the whole organization down. A chill started at the base of Ryan’s spine and crawled upward. Was he going to be another murder victim Kate had to investigate?
Ryan pulled the Monte Carlo into the open bay of a warehouse in the industrial district, and sat until the bay door closed. Then he pushed slowly out of the car. Before the car door even banged shut La Raza emerged from the shadows, flanked by two men on each side.
The men looked like typical thugs. Dirty jeans slung low on their hips, tattoos covered their necks and arms, and they all had shaved heads with blue bandanas tied around their foreheads.
Thugs-R-Us, he thought. Come on by and pick out your own stereotypical matching set of thugs for parties or intimidation. Choose from one to one dozen. These gangbangers are sure to make an impression.
Ryan bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the TV commercial-style voice in his head. Laughing right now would earn him no respect, and if La Raza knew about Beth and suspected Ryan was involved, it could get him killed before he even had a chance to explain the suspicion away. The thought sobered him. He needed to be ready for whatever was about to happen.
In contrast to the thugs, La Raza looked like he had just stepped off the cover of GQ magazine. He wore gray slacks sharply creased, and a cornflower blue Burberry shirt. The gray, paisley necktie had to be silk, and he was certain that the diamonds at La Raza's wrists and on his tie bar, were real. La Raza, looked like a businessman. Ryan knew he wanted to portray the image of a powerful executive, which he was, if you thought about the millions of dollars in product sales that he orchestrated each year.
La Raza didn’t want to be associated with thugs and gangbangers outside the warehouse compound. They did the dirty work. He greased the wheels by being involved in both the business community and several volunteer organizations. Ryan knew that in La Raza’s mind, he was a stand-up guy. The criminal activities were just a means to an end, like any other job, and he paid penance with the community work he did. Some might think it was conflicting activities, but Ryan knew La Raza saw it as different parts of his life. One was business, the other was who he saw himself to be.
“What did you find out?” Ryan was all business as he shook hands with the polished man. He played the part he always played. If La Raza didn’t know about his undercover activities, he didn’t want to create suspicion. It’s what made Ryan good at his job. He was a great liar. No matter the inner turmoil he might have, he could play a part convincingly, as he’d proven when he let Kate think he died all those years ago.
“Nothing.” La Raza led the way into an office. “Deveaux is like a ghost. We know he came back from North Dakota. And we know that he's been at his house. But no one can track him down.”
“Same problem I'm having,” Ryan said. “I drove by there before I came here. Still no sign of him. Tell me again what happened when Juarez was killed.”
“Hold on. Let me get Ramiro in here. He can tell you exactly what he saw.”
Ryan nodded. He knew that’s what La Raza would do. The man was known to prefer going straight to the source.
A few minutes later, a young man entered the office. He looked like the other thugs. The same jeans the same headband. Along his shaved head, a scorpion had been tattooed in black and red. Ryan thought of his own tattoos. He would have preferred not to have them, but it was part of his youth. Part of the life that prepared him for the job he did now. Mostly. A few of the tattoos on his head had been added during the years he was undercover. It was part of the personality he portrayed as a high-ranking member of the Mamoncetes leadership team.
He wished he could grow his hair back to cover them. He only had one tattoo on another part of his body, and that one he would never wish away. The tattoo on his back was one that Annalise talked him into getting. It was a woman with a painted Day of the Dead mask kissing a skeleton. He’d added an intricate clock behind the couple marking the limits of their time together and a jade green rosary framing the picture. The same rosary she’d always worn around her neck. The one that was now tucked away in a safety deposit box. That was the only ink he didn’t regret getting.
“Tell me what happened the day John Juarez died,” Ryan said to the young man sitting in front of him.
The kid went through the story. Ryan had already heard it several times. But he wanted to hear it from someone who was there. Maybe something new would come out.
The day that Juarez got shot, Kate and her partner, Jack Roe, had been coming to speak to him about a case they were working. Frankie Deveaux had sent a local, well-known addict to warn Juarez. He’d paid the addict with some premium drugs bought from a rival dealer. The message delivered made it sound like they were planning to pin a human trafficking charge on Juarez. A charge of which Juarez was not guilty.
The Mamoncetes had no previous dealing with Deveaux. In fact, the rumors were that he was a man you wanted to avoid. He could be mean, according to what Juarez and his men learned, but Juarez had no reason to doubt him and had a healthy sense of self-preservation, so he planned an ambush. If Roe showed up, Juarez would owe Deveaux a debt of gratitude.
“Only the messenger also said Deveaux didn’t want the woman harmed,” Ramiro’s knee bounded rapidly as he told the story. “He wanted the man killed, but not the woman. Juarez had other ideas. He knew this woman from his past. Before he came here. He wanted her dead.”
Ryan’s stomach clenched. Juarez wanted Kate dead because of her involvement with him. He shot Kate in the shoulder during the confrontation. Jack Roe, the man Juarez was supposed to kill, pulled her behind the cover of their vehicle but they were pinned in, and Juarez was advancing on them.
“Man,” Ramiro went still. “That’s when it went bad. Deveaux must have been watching us. He wanted to be sure we didn’t hurt her, maybe. I don’t know. He was el fantasma - a ghost. He appeared out of nowhere and killed Juarez. They must have called for backup, because then cops showed up all over the place. We all took off.”
This was the first time Ryan heard the information about Frankie calling for Kate’s protection. He knew Juarez’s grudge against Kate. She’d been allowed to live the day he and Kate were “ambushed” - the day Ryan died. Juarez had wanted them both dead. It was a testament to Maestro's control that Juarez hadn’t gone after Kate sooner, especially if she’d been on the Coast for a few years. But what did Frankie Deveaux want with Kate? Why had he tried to protect her?
After it happened, the news reported that Kate was the one who killed Juarez. The Mamoncetes we're willing to let everyone believe that. They would deal with Juarez’s death in their own way. Chaos reigned for a few weeks, until La Raza stepped up. Then, finding Deveaux had taken time. Now it was Ryan’s job to take him down.
“And you're sure this is what you saw?” Ryan leveled a gaze on the young man that could have melted steel.
“I'm positive. I saw Frankie Deveaux. I saw him shoot John Juarez.” The young man remained perfectly still. He returned Ryan’s gaze. If his body language was any indication, he was telling the truth.
“How did you know it was Deveaux, and why did you not kill him?” Ryan knew the answer, but he still wanted to see the look on the young man's eyes. Not all these young men were killers. Some of them were just desperate looking for a place to belong.
“Juarez sent me a couple of the boys to check Deveaux out. We had been watching him. But then Juarez pulled us away, because he wanted us at the cathedral that day.” Ramiro broke the eye contact and looked everywhere but at Ryan. “The cops were coming, man. we had to get out of there. Didn’t no one want to go to jail.” He knew he’d broken the code the Mamoncetes lived by and Ryan
was sure he feared the punishment for that betrayal.
Ryan nodded. He understood. The code Ramiro had sworn to uphold when he became a member of Locos Mamoncetes, made it his responsibility to protect his boss. But he couldn't protect anyone behind bars, so this time he would get a pass. It wouldn’t happen again. Being a part of this organization meant you learned to kill or be killed. There was little in the way of a future for most of these kids.
“You did the right thing.” Ryan stood up and looked pointedly from La Raza to Ramiro. The message was clear. There would be no action taken against Ramiro “This time. In the future, you remember who you are sworn to protect. You couldn't have protected Juarez this time, but next time you’ll have no excuse.”
Ryan hoped there would be no next time, but the truth was there probably would. He wished there was some way he could get these young men out of this lifestyle. He was trying. His job was taking down Mamoncetes, and between what he’d been doing and the information Beth Martin was passing him before her death, they had almost enough proof to do it. But what would happen to these kids? Anyone that didn’t go to jail would move on to the next gang to take over. They would have a hard life. Ryan wondered if all he’d sacrificed, if all the people that he had hurt, had been for nothing. Could he save Ramiro? Could he really save anyone?
They sent Ramiro away, and he and La Raza turned the conversation to Beth Martin and the shipments she had been tracking.
“You have no idea who might want to kill Beth? Or why?” Ryan still hadn't been able to figure out the motivation for her murder. He didn’t trust La Raza to tell the truth, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the other man wasn’t involved. It just wasn’t his style. What Ryan couldn’t figure out was why she was killed. Once he knew that, then he would know who did.
“No. No one is taking credit for it, and no one knows anything about it. I don't think it's related to the business that we do there.” La Raza straightened the cuffs on his expensive shirt. He was getting restless. It was a good sign. He didn’t suspect Ryan or Beth. It just meant that he was done with this conversation. “All of our shipments have been moving smoothly. There have been no issues. She was very good at her job.”
“Has anyone talked to her handler?” Ryan wasn’t done asking questions, so he took his time. There was information he still wanted to know, and he liked rubbing La Raza the wrong way. There was something about the man that he didn’t like.
Beside the fact that he’s a killer?
Yeah. There was something more, but Ryan couldn’t put his finger on what, but it underscored why Ryan had never trusted him. Something was off.
“No. We have arranged a meet for you with him later this evening.” The man stood. Ryan considered taking advantage of this moment to establish his status in the Mamoncetes organization, but the timing wasn't right. Ryan didn’t need to give La Raza a reason to look closely at him right now. He was there to do a job. That’s what he’d do. But he savored the thought of seeing La Raza in prison. He needed to learn his place.
“Good. I'll be back then.” Ryan skipped the formal goodbyes. He had things he needed to do, and pandering to La Raza was not on the list.
The drive across town to the Biloxi PD was uneventful. He took in the scenery and thought about what he would find when he spoke with Beth Martin's handler tonight. Greg Harrington was someone he had never met. He knew plenty about him, knew that he had been sleeping with Beth Martin, and he knew Harrington's wife didn't know.
The fact that Harrington was sleeping with Beth was a problem. It also added to the possibility that, despite what Ryan felt, La Raza was involved in Beth’s murder. Aside from being an unspoken rule that you didn’t get involved with those below your status in the organization, Greg Harrington’s wife was the cousin of one of La Raza’s top men. The affair was an insult to the La Raza commander, which meant it was an insult to La Raza. Ryan was surprised that Harrington was still alive. Again, it spoke to the control that Maestro had over his organization. Still, Ryan suspected that La Raza would handle it at some point.
Ryan wondered if his instinct was wrong this time. Beth’s murder wasn’t La Raza’s style. He would have had his men take her out in the middle of nowhere. Someplace it would be less likely for her body to be found. They would shoot her and walk away. That was La Raza’s style.
Ryan thought about Beth’s death. If he let himself, he could grieve for her. Beth was a good girl, caught in a bad situation like so many of the kids that got involved with Mamoncetes. She shouldn’t have died.
He shook his head. He didn’t have time for grief. Right now, he needed to find out who killed her, and he needed to find Deveaux before someone else involved with Mamoncetes took it upon themselves to kill him. He had murdered Juarez, and he had to pay for that. Ryan already had a plan in place to make it look like he murdered Deveaux.
Deveaux would actually end up in a federal prison, but no one in Mamoncetes would know that. Maestro would only know Ryan had done his job, and maybe, if things went well, Ryan could finish this business and get back to Miami before Kate discovered he was still alive. He wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted, but for now, it was how things needed to be.
Ryan pulled into the Biloxi PD parking lot, and parked the Monte Carlo in a visitor’s space. He started to get out of the car, prepared to go and speak with the captain, to tell him why he was here, but then he saw Kate coming out of the building with the man he had seen last night at her apartment. He dropped back into his car and pulled the door shut. He watched as they walked across the parking lot.
The man looked familiar. Ryan searched his memories trying to remember who he was. Then it dawned on him, he knew exactly where he had seen him. This was the man that was at Kate's apartment last night.
It was, but there was something more. Ryan watch them cross the parking lot and climb into Kate's vehicle. As they pulled away, the thought that had been fluttering around the back edges of his brain coalesced. That man. Ryan knew exactly who he was. That was Frankie Deveaux.
TWENTY-TWO
Metal squealed against metal as Kate closed the door to the old elevator. She punched the up button trying to figure out what to tell Caleb about Conner.
Conner was hard to explain. Kate preferred that Caleb meet her so he could form his own opinion of her before he found out about her rocky background.
“Anything I should know about this Conner person?” Caleb asked. He sounded distracted. “This is a strange place to meet someone.”
“Maybe.” Kate grunted as she pulled the metal grate open and stepped off the elevator in front of the door to Conner’s loft. “This is where she prefers to work. And sometimes live, if she’s working on something big.”
Before Caleb could say anything more, the plate metal door that led into Conner’s loft opened. “Kate. I’ve missed you.” Conner wrapped her in a hug that sent sparks of pain coursing through her injured shoulder.
“Missed you too, C. You’re killing me.” Kate laughed when Conner stepped back and looked sheepish.
“I thought you would be all healed up by now?” Concern softened Conner’s features.
“I am. But you’re stronger than you realize.”
Conner laughed. Then her gaze fell on Caleb and the laughter stopped. Distrust darkened her features. “Who is this?”
Kate had nearly forgotten Caleb was there. He remained silent. Leaned against the outside of the elevator. She glanced at him. Something about those green eyes. Those eyes would be her undoing.
“Conner Antosz, this is Caleb Castille. He’s my new partner.” Caleb stepped forward and extended his hand. Conner looked at it. Glanced at Kate. Looked at the hand again. Then finally stuck out her own and shook Caleb’s hand.
“I thought you said you’d never have another partner.” Conner’s voice was painted with skepticism.
“I did.” Kate indicated the computer Caleb had under his arm. She didn’t want to talk about how Caleb came to be her partner. That
was a conversation best left for when they were alone. “Brought you something,” Kate said.
“I got your voicemail,” Conner eyed the computer then stepped through the open door of the loft, indicating that Kate and Caleb should follow. “It was strange,” she said over her shoulder.
Inside the loft, the first thing Kate noticed was the sound. It always surprised her. The whirs and clicks of machines carrying out whatever instructions Conner provided could be unnerving. Kate felt the noise as much as she heard it and it made her skin itch.
After years of friendship, Kate still had a hard time reconciling Conner’s flower-child appearance, her stoner voice, and her genius brains. Conner was only 12 the first time she was caught hacking into school records to change grades. Kate met her when she was nearly 20. That time, Conner hacked into the traffic light system in Memphis and shut down every light in the city.
The gridlock was chaos. Conner’s mistake was that she left a signature the computer forensics experts could track back to her. Kate was still in training then.
She’d been given the job of keeping an eye on Conner during the investigation and the subsequent public service sentence the judge had awarded Conner, working on the city’s computer systems to build security that would protect them from future hacks like Conner had pulled off.
Eventually, they had become friends, but in the beginning, it was awkward and uncomfortable. Conner had an unhealthy distrust for law enforcement of any kind. It had taken Kate a while to get through to her and to build the kind of trust that transcended the wrongs of Conner’s past.
Biloxi Blue (The Biloxi Series Book 2) Page 14