“Ours,” I said.
She looked at me. One eyebrow lifted, a curious tilt of her head.
“Nicky told me once,” I said, “back when the feds were rustling the bushes, about the castle doctrine. You familiar with the concept?”
“Sure.” She nodded. “Somebody invades your home, you got the right to blow ’em away.”
“He phrased it as more of a…moral imperative. If you don’t fight for your home, if you don’t fight for what you’ve got, with everything you’ve got, you deserve to lose it.” I felt lead weights on my shoulders weighing me down as I took a deep breath and let it out in a tired sigh. “When I say I wasn’t there when you needed me, I don’t just mean the meeting I blew off so I could go chasing another clue. All this time, while a hurricane was coming our way, you were putting up sandbags and building a wall while I stood on the sidelines. Staying neutral, thinking I was untouchable, playing it safe. Playing it safe just got Paolo fucking mutilated, and that’s on me, because I let it happen. No more. I’m done playing it safe.”
“Still got a seat for you on the New Commission,” she said. “If you want it.”
I offered her my good hand.
“I’m all in,” I said. We shook on it.
She pushed herself to her feet. “Well, let’s rally the troops. Lotta work to be done. Can you fight with your hand like that?”
“Not going to be throwing any punches, but I can pull a trigger just fine. Don’t suppose you’ve got any prescription-strength painkillers on you?”
“C’mon back to my place, I’ll hook you up with some Tylenol Three.” She smiled, then glanced over at the lime-green Spark. “Let’s take my car, though, huh? You can’t drive that thing in my neighborhood. I mean, you can, but…you shouldn’t.”
I grabbed Canton’s top hat and tossed it into the backseat of Jennifer’s Prius, climbing in on the passenger side. She got behind the wheel and shot a look over her shoulder.
“What’s that?”
“Million-dollar top hat,” I said. “Beyond that, no clue. The Enemy wants it, though. And the magician who wore that hat back in the forties had a wand with a chip of bone in it, taken from the body of Damien Ecko’s first teacher.”
“Heck of a coincidence,” she said, “if I believed in coincidences.”
“Exactly. I don’t know, there’s some magic clinging to the thing, but I couldn’t tell you what it actually does.”
“Have you tried wearing it?”
I blinked.
“Well…yeah, of course I did. First thing I tried.”
“Liar.” Jennifer smirked, pulling on her blue-tinted Lennon glasses as we rounded a corner, driving toward the setting sun. It felt good. On the move, riding with an old friend, making a plan of attack. Maybe everything would work out fine.
Then the strobe of harsh lights in the rearview mirror, from the unmarked police car on our bumper, told me how wrong I was.
30.
A shock of adrenaline hit my veins, telling me it was time for fight or flight. Then I realized the smart play was “none of the above,” and forced myself to sit tight while my heart pounded a staccato beat. Your average cop would have no reason to recognize me, much less be looking for me now that I was legally dead. That said, if they ran us in, I was finished. One look at my fingerprints and alarm bells would be flashing from here to Quantico. Jennifer slowed down, pulling toward the side of the road, her lips pursed in a tight and bloodless line. She passed me her chromed .357. I slipped it into the glove compartment, safety off and the grip turned my way so I could get at it fast if I needed to.
They kept us waiting. Eventually, the doors on the sedan behind us swung open, and a couple of men in cheap department-store suits came swaggering our way. Jennifer squinted at the side mirror.
“Vespucci and Ames,” she said, her voice low. “They shouldn’t be rousting me. They already got their envelope for the month.”
I knew them by reputation. They were both vice detectives of the “selectively deaf and blind” variety, willing to look the other way if you slipped them some green and didn’t make a nuisance of yourself. A couple of bottom feeders out for a slice of whatever they could get. Vespucci didn’t bother pulling his checkered jacket back into place when a gust of hot wind pushed it back, baring his shoulder holster. His partner, in an Afro and shades, stood behind him with his arms crossed and his caterpillar-thick brows furrowed. Jennifer rolled her window down.
“I don’t suppose I was speedin’,” she said.
“Do we look like fucking traffic cops?” Vespucci asked her. “You’re a problem, you know that? We’re up to our necks in bullshit, and you just keep shoveling it on.”
“Me?” Jennifer said. “What’d I do?”
“Oh, I don’t know, started a goddamn gang war? The brass is all over us. Climbin’ up our asses, demanding we squash this thing. I ain’t seen my kids since the day before yesterday. I’m sleeping under my desk.”
“And if they’re all over us,” Ames said, “they’re all over you. We got orders to bring you in.”
Jennifer scowled at him. “On what charges?”
“On two counts of who-gives-a-fuck,” Vespucci said, “and one count of you’re-a-pain-in-our-asses in the first degree. It’s protective custody. You’ve been identified as a ‘likely factor in the current state of unrest,’ and the brass wants you off the streets until everything blows over.”
“That’s the deal,” Ames added. “You get three hots and a cot, and a room all your own. With bars on the window. As soon as the natives stop banging the war drums, we’ll cut you loose.”
Jennifer shook her head. “This is bullshit. What am I paying you two for, if you can’t cover my back with Metro? How am I supposed to end this fight if you pull me out of it?”
“This is us covering your back,” Vespucci said. “The brass wanted us to find some actual charges to bust you on, or make up a few. We talked ’em down to protective custody. You telling me you can’t steer your little army of bangers from inside a cell?”
“You gonna let me keep my phone?”
The detectives shared a look. Vespucci let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Come along peacefully, don’t start any shit,” he said, “and I promise we’ll ‘forget’ to search you. Deal?”
Jennifer leaned my way. Her voice dropped to a low murmur.
“Take the car over to my place by the airport. Gabriel should be there—tell him what’s up. He’ll rally the rest of the Calles, and I’ll call you both once I get settled.”
“You sure about this?” I asked her.
“Not even a little, but they’ve got a point. Lot harder for Chicago to take a shot at me this way, and I can still help from inside. Don’t you worry, I’ll be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
They led her over to their car. Uncuffed, but they still put her in the backseat like a perp. I had an ugly feeling, watching them cruise away toward the nearest on-ramp. A feeling that only got uglier as my phone buzzed against my hip. A call from Gary Kemper.
“Is this good news?” I asked.
“Opposite of that. Listen,” he dropped his voice. He sounded muffled, as if he was cupping one hand over the phone. “I can’t talk too loud. I’m at the precinct. It’s not safe here. Word came down the grapevine, words I wasn’t supposed to hear, get me? You’ve been green-lit. You and all your buddies.”
“Green-lit by who?”
“By the powers that be. Let’s just say the Mancuso family is writing a very large and generous check to the mayor’s reelection campaign. Whoever you think you’ve got in your pocket? You don’t.”
“Your theory,” I said as I clambered behind the steering wheel, “about cops on the take, switching sides to work for Chicago—”
“It’s not a theory. Chicago just outbid your ass. They’re in. Your people are out. They’re protected from on high. Your buddies aren’t.”
I stomped on the gas, tires squealing, the car lurching
out into traffic as horns blared behind me. I leaned into the wheel, squinting at the horizon as the sun shimmered down and turned the highway into a branding iron.
“And these dirty cops. Would Vespucci and Ames be among them?”
“Can’t prove it, but I’d bet two weeks’ pay. Hell, I’d bet a month’s. Those two are pirates.”
“Thank you,” I said. I cradled the phone against my shoulder, both hands on the wheel, swerving hard to sweep around the side of a lumbering semi and dart ahead.
“Faust? What are you doing? What are you gonna do?”
“If I don’t tell you,” I said, “you don’t have to deny anything later.”
I hung up on him and tossed the phone onto the empty seat beside me. The screen lit up, buzzing as he called back. I ignored it. The dusty white sedan was just up ahead, Jennifer sitting oblivious in the back while they carted her off to her doom.
I’d told her I was going all in. That I was ready to get off the sidelines and fight for my city. Now I had to prove it. There were certain lines I’d never crossed, the sketchy code that let me look myself in the mirror every morning. Never killing an innocent man, that was one of my rules—and I’d broken that one behind the walls of Eisenberg Correctional to survive.
Not killing cops, that was another part of the code. Then again, that rule was mostly intended for the honest ones.
The sedan took an off-ramp nowhere near a precinct house. They turned onto an industrial corridor lined with squat gray slabs of concrete and half-empty parking lots, an occasional delivery truck rumbling along the narrow strip of asphalt. The detectives apparently hadn’t noticed they’d sprouted a tail, or that the car behind them was still moving at highway speed and bearing down on them fast. I scooped up the phone and called Jennifer.
“Yeah, sugar?”
“Hey, Jen. Don’t react, just listen. Those two are bent, and not in our direction. They’re taking you for a one-way ride. Is your seatbelt on?”
“Always,” she said, her voice carefully even. “Safety first.”
“Good. Brace yourself, okay?”
“See you soon,” she replied.
I swung the wheel left, closing the gap, then veered hard to the right. Bumpers slammed with a screech of buckling metal, the sedan fishtailing wildly as I jolted against the seatbelt and a lance of pain shot down my neck. Behind the wheel, Ames recovered fast, wild-eyed and gesturing to his partner as he hit the gas. I was ready for round two. I pulled out of my lane, then jumped back behind them as a semi rolled by in the other direction, air horn blaring. As soon as we were clear, I swerved alongside the sedan, lining up the nose of the Prius with their crumpled bumper, and swung the car like a batter out for a home run.
The sedan spun out, tires smoking and leaving black streaks on the road, and I jolted to a stop right next to it. One hand clicked the seatbelt release. The other reached for the glove compartment and grabbed Jennifer’s gun. I felt the heft of the .357, the cool chrome heavy against my palm as I threw open the door and jumped out. Ames came up from the battered sedan with an automatic in his hand, taking aim. The .357 boomed like a cannon and his head snapped backward, blood and broken bits of skull spattering the sedan’s roof as he slumped to the pavement.
Vespucci popped up on the other side of the car. I got off two shots, one going wide and the other catching him in the shoulder. He grunted and clutched his wound as his piece clattered to the ground. He crouched low, fumbling for the fallen gun while I sprinted around the back of the sedan. I stomped on his hand then kicked his pistol under the car, just out of reach.
The detective’s face had gone pale. Scarlet lines trickled out between his clenched fingers. He stared up at me in disbelief.
“Jesus, you just…you killed him. You can’t do that. We’re protected.”
“Not by me.” I opened the back door, letting Jennifer out. “Not from me. You should have worn your Kevlar vest to work, Detective. Safer that way.”
I put the barrel of the .357 to his forehead, pressing hard enough to leave a ring-shaped welt.
“Of course, it wouldn’t protect you from a headshot. Now, I’ve got a few questions. Let’s start with this: where were you really taking her?”
“Fuck you,” he spat.
Jennifer sighed, casually walking over to crouch beside him. “Aw, sugar, this one’s just being ornery. Pain’ll do that to a critter. Let’s see how bad you winged him.”
She tugged back the shoulder of his bloodstained jacket and dug her fingers into the ragged wound. Vespucci howled, his feet thrashing against the broken street. She pulled her hand away and wiped her bloody fingers in his hair.
“That ain’t so bad,” she told him. “Looks like a clean through-and-through. Reckon it could get worse any second now, though. A lot worse.”
“Cobalt,” he stammered. “We were told to take you to the Cobalt Lounge.”
Jennifer gave me the side-eye. “Little Shawn’s place. Playboy Killers turf.”
“Told by who?” I asked him.
He let out a sputtering laugh. “The powers that be, man. The powers that be. Don’t you get it? It ain’t just a couple of cops on the take. Mancuso’s making deals with everyone from the mayor’s office on down. City hall had to make a choice, decide on the lesser of two evils, and they chose Chicago. You got no friends, not anymore. You show your face in a precinct house or a lockup, you’re dead. Walk into a municipal building, you’re dead. You call for a goddamn mailman and you’re gonna get a delivery of lead. It’s obvious who’s gonna win this fight. We’re all just falling in line behind the big dog.”
“You made a bad bet,” Jennifer said. “How much did they pay you to hand me over?”
“There’s a standing bounty. Five Gs for any member of the New Commission who won’t change sides. Ten for you.”
“Hope you got your money up front.”
“Cobalt,” I said. “Is Angelo there?”
Vespucci coughed. “Nnh—no. He doesn’t bunk with the plebes. Him and his inner circle are somewhere on the Strip, no idea where, swear to God. But Little Shawn is playing host to the rest of his ‘delegation.’ Buncha soldiers hanging out in the VIP rooms, waiting for orders.”
“How many?”
“Fifteen? Twenty? I didn’t count. Plus Little Shawn’s gang. More heat than you can handle. Listen, listen, Jennifer, we always had a good, you know, a good working relationship, right? This wasn’t personal.”
She patted his good shoulder and stood, dusting off her hands.
“You just tried to take me on a one-way ride, darlin’. Hard not to feel a little miffed about that.”
Vespucci’s gaze swung my way. Staring up the barrel of the .357.
“C’mon, man,” he whimpered. “You gotta let me go. I got a family—”
“So do I,” I told him.
Then I pulled the trigger.
31.
We left the two bodies where they fell, bleeding out alongside the wreckage of their sedan. The Prius’s hood was crumpled and leaking wisps of steam, but it was still drivable. The engine faintly rattled as we hopped in and fled the scene of the crime.
Jennifer gripped the wheel, scowling as she stared dead ahead. “The nerve of some people. Thinkin’ he could pull a stunt like that, then skate. You okay?”
I rolled my left shoulder, wincing. “Little banged up, no big deal. How about you?”
“I’m too pissed off to see straight. Okay, so we found the army, just not the general. We gotta shut this circus down fast and teach a few people who really runs this town.”
“Sounds like a call for grossly disproportionate violence,” I said. “Sorry about your car, by the way.”
“Aw, it’s fine. I was thinking about getting one of them Teslas, anyway. Goin’ full electric. Better for the environment, y’know?”
We stashed the car at Jennifer’s place, a stone’s throw from McCarran Airport. She’d bought up an entire tenement block slated for demolition and converted it into
an urban fortress. Spotters in Calles colors watched the streets in every direction with high-powered binoculars, the side roads blocked off with rusted-out cars, funneling any would-be invaders into a killing box. I didn’t see the snipers in the windows, covering us as we rolled into the courtyard, but I felt their crosshairs on my face.
Gabriel lumbered out to meet us. He was the big man in the Calles and a big man all around, three hundred pounds and change draped in a tent-sized Lakers jersey. He broke into a relieved smile, pulling Jennifer into a hug. Then he clasped my fist, yanked me close, and thumped my back.
“Good to see you two in one piece.” His voice, melodic, almost high-pitched, didn’t match his massive frame. “Word just came down from Eddie Stone and the Bishops. Couple of pendejos with badges snatched their number-two guy right off the street. They found him in an alley, carved up like a turkey.”
“We got a police problem,” Jennifer said. “Scratch that, we got an everything problem. Good news is, we found out where Chicago’s hitters are holing up.”
Gabriel clapped his hands. “Sweet deal. Let’s mount up and blaze these chumps, get this shit over with before suppertime.”
“They’ve got numbers,” I said. “Their guys, plus Little Shawn’s entire crew. More importantly, Angelo isn’t there. We can kill his soldiers all day long, but he’ll just call for reinforcements. To kill this beast, we’ve gotta lop the head off.”
“We need a meeting,” Jennifer said. “Every loyal member of the Commission we’ve got left. All hands on deck.”
Gabriel shook his head. His fingers stroked his sculpted goatee.
“That ain’t gonna be easy, mama. Way things are now, these fools ain’t setting foot on the street without at least ten dudes backing ’em up. Hell, I wouldn’t leave without five myself. That many people in one place is gonna draw the bad kind of attention.”
I racked my brain thinking of places we could gather and still keep a low profile. The Silk Ranch, Emma’s rehabbed brothel, was an obvious choice: outside the city, far from prying eyes. Too far, though. It was a long and winding drive into the desert, miles outside the Clark County limits, and we didn’t have that kind of time. Besides, Emma had probably figured out I hadn’t taken her daughter to the safe house by now, which wasn’t going to put me on her list of favorite people. I kept thinking; there had to be a place where we could meet in secrecy.
The Castle Doctrine (Daniel Faust Book 6) Page 19