Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  “What if this operation has leaked?”

  “Then the guy isn’t going to show up. He’s going to run, as hard and fast as he can.”

  “Maybe you give the captain a heads-up and he can keep an eye out for whoever is looking at those photos,” I said.

  Reed didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate. He called on his cell, spoke briefly and nodded at me.

  We might get one more little fingertip of evidence. An officer on the take. But in any long-term relationship, Forsythe would have built in some kind of protection. If we caught the officer, I was sure he’d only be able to tell us that someone he didn’t know and had never met was interested in anything the department did that concerned Forsythe. There’d be no obvious connection to Forsythe other than that.

  We parked a block south of Forsythe’s studio.

  Reed pulled up the photos that the stakeout team had taken on his laptop.

  “They’ll all go through the facial recognition system, but let’s do a visual pass first,” Reed said. “Try and see if anyone stands out for any reason.”

  I wasn’t exactly Lieutenant Reed’s greatest admirer, but he was a good man and he had some good ideas.

  We sat together and started working through the images, one ear on what was happening at the studio.

  The first image in his directory wasn’t from the judge’s house. It was the DMV photo of one Willard Bryant, Forsythe’s driver, a big man with a forehead like an anvil and sharp eyes.

  I didn’t need to see the guy’s rap sheet.

  Dante, what the hell are you doing?

  But it had spiraled out of my control. She was in a studio surrounded by people, and she had code words to alert us if she felt threatened. We had a good audio feed from her. She was wearing a GPS tracker.

  I kept glancing up at that blinking marker on the screen. I didn’t know about Reed, but I could be through those studio doors in less than a minute from where we were parked.

  She was about as safe as she could be.

  “This one.” Reed paused on a photo of a jogger. He was tall and looked fit. He was carrying a backpack. Brutally short haircut. What might have been a neck tattoo peeked out from above his shirt.

  “Hmm.”

  The guy got marked as suspect.

  Too obvious for me. Reed might be right, but I was looking for someone who didn’t stand out.

  We flicked on until one caught my attention.

  A woman. Medium height. Red ponytail. Really baggy top. She could have been carrying an RPG under that, let alone a .22 pistol.

  Her face was partly obscured. I squinted at the screen.

  Nah.

  She was breathing through a limiter to restrict her air intake. Training for a high altitude race.

  Still, we were running out of photos, so Ms. Redhead joined Mr. Neck Tattoo on the suspect list.

  More photos. Down to the last three.

  Then Reed and I both reacted.

  Mr. Nobody. Had a hoody, but it was down. Head down. Fists clenched. Medium everything, except his hair. It was long and he’d left it unbound. It partly obscured his face because of the way his head was tilted. And his jogging clothes looked so damn average it felt wrong—like there was no individuality in picking them.

  “Could be a wig,” Reed said. He drummed his fingers.

  “Or just a guy with long hair,” I said. “Bit tense for someone jogging, though.”

  “Maybe he just got an unexpected email for an unscheduled meeting with his boss. Who knows? Could be any reason.”

  Neither of us could pinpoint what made us suspicious, but the photo went into the suspect list in prime position.

  There was no one else that raised any obvious doubts.

  Reed called in and identified the three to concentrate on to a colleague he trusted.

  There was nothing more we could do but wait and talk.

  Reed and I played devil’s advocate to each other’s views about the case.

  Forsythe had to have known the judge was dead very early, for him to have the time to call KLOX in to interview him. I thought it could only be because he’d hired the killer. Reed argued that it’d be just about possible for someone to have been listening to the police radio and call Forsythe immediately.

  Reed thought Tamanny must have been bugged, for Forsythe’s people to be able to find her given the steps she’d taken—changing her clothes and hiding.

  “A tracker in the shoes. Or some jewelry she was wearing,” he said. “Forsythe’s the sort of man who wants to keep tabs on his investment.”

  I shivered.

  “What about the mother? She must know something. Has she been paid off?” I said, the thought turning my stomach.

  Reed grunted. “Maybe she has habits to feed.” I could tell it didn’t feel exactly right to him either. “According to Forsythe, she was hysterical and had to be sedated.”

  “Convenient. He probably drugged her himself.”

  Reed gave a shrug of acknowledgement. “Still doesn’t help us,” he said.

  We went back to the timelines, looking for something that might prove Forsythe was involved in the judge’s death.

  I got a steady drip-feed of calls on my cell.

  Yelena was pissed that I had left without her, but Matt had given her my GPS position. She was on the Kawasaki, parked half a block away, with a line of sight to us.

  In the afternoon, Lynch sent photos of Daniels in Vegas getting back into her jet, without the suitcases. I thanked him and sent him home.

  We’d need to follow up, but I couldn’t be distracted from Dante.

  I called Billie. She’d returned to watching Forsythe, who was back at home.

  “Daniels will be flying into Santa Monica—”

  “I’m getting short-handed,” she said. “The packs are calling some of their guys back. Something about Tarez asking for them.”

  I’d set the levels for a secure tail, and I didn’t want to compromise that.

  “Forsythe is the important one,” I said. “Keep the teams on him, but is there anyone you can spare to go tail Daniels?”

  “I don’t want to, Amber. Forsythe’s just gotten himself some new bodyguards. These are not your normal musclebound dickheads, and you can tell by looking, it’s not their first rodeo. I need more people, not less.” She hummed a second. “Tell you what. There’s a cub the Redondo want to keep out of the rough stuff till he toughens up. Now that I’ve seen Forsythe’s guards, I don’t want him here. Name’s Jacob. I’ll send him and text his cell number to you.”

  “Let’s go for that. Tell Jacob eyes only, okay? Only close enough to see where she’s going.”

  “Got it.”

  I ended the call and got through to Tarez.

  He needed all the Were the packs could spare him to get rid of the Basilikos in LA with one final hunt. As for Forsythe, Tarez wanted me to back off. Naryn had brought Tarez into Diana’s Emergence project, and Tarez was already talking to Agent Ingram.

  “We don’t have the resources to take on Forsythe’s trafficking network,” Tarez said. “The FBI do.”

  He didn’t actually order me to stop and I refused to make any comments one way or the other. Forsythe was my target. The FBI could have the rest of the network.

  An hour later, Daniels’ plane landed at Santa Monica airport. I spoke to Jacob as he tracked her returning home. He found a place he could watch the gateway to her drive without being seen from the house. It wasn’t a good surveillance, but it was the best we could do. At least Forsythe couldn’t move without us seeing him.

  All the time, Lieutenant Jefferson Reed was listening and storing up more questions to ask me later.

  The day passed at a snail’s pace. We ordered in tamales at midday. We took turns with the headphones.

  At 2 p.m., Mr. Nobody’s photo got a match. He was a guy from Arizona suspected of being a hitman for a mob operating out of Tucson. An APB was put out and the judge’s case became a suspected homicide.

&nb
sp; Reed checked in with the captain. ADA Bailey still wasn’t biting.

  But still, he started to relax. I could see gears turning in his head. Things were rolling. We were getting some breaks. It was a matter of time.

  Chapter 58

  It was 4 p.m. and Reed was on headphone duty when he waved urgently at me.

  Dante was talking to Willard Bryant in a stairwell.

  “Thought you’d forgotten all about me,” she said.

  He laughed. “I ain’t forgotten at all. Matter of fact, been thinking a lot about you.”

  “Oh? Good thoughts? Bad ones?” Dante’s voice lowered. “Or like, really bad ones?”

  “You are the biz, eh. Look, can’t talk right now. What you doing later?”

  “I’m done for the day, if it’s worth it.”

  “Huh. You still up for meeting Mr. Forsythe?”

  “Of course. What kind of meeting d’you mean?”

  “You like to party, babe? You want to get in good with the man? Real good?”

  “That kind of party.” Her laugh was breathy, seductive.

  “You got it.”

  “Yeah.” She drew it out.

  “Don’t sound so sure, suddenly.” He played her. “Cold feet, huh? Y’know, that’s fine, you’re not ready for the big time, girl, you’re not ready.”

  “No. It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  “Look, I’m not gonna end up like that stupid bitch who jammed out at StarBright. You gotta give me a heads-up first. Tell me what she got wrong. What I need to do. You know this stuff from the inside, right? Like, this is my big chance. Can’t make mistakes. I’ll go in, but I go in with my eyes open. You get that, don’t you?”

  It was quiet for a few moments. Had she gone too far?

  “Sure, I get that,” he said, his voice blurry and masked by background noises. He grunted, and there was a gasp from Dante. “I’ll give you the real deal, tell you what the man likes, what he needs. We’ll go slow.”

  I felt sick, imagining what he was doing to her, my legs tensing to move, but it ended as quickly as it had begun.

  “Sweet,” he said, his voice hoarser. “You gonna owe me. This a big deal I’m doing for you.”

  “Yeah. You get me in, tell me what I need, and you—” she laughed again. It was higher and it sounded forced to me, but her voice was still steady. “You get whatever you want.”

  “That some check you just signed, babe. ’Kay. I got one more job to run. An hour.”

  “Then?”

  “Well, can’t talk here.” His voice started to ooze with confidence. “Don’t know that I’d want to cash a check here either. We’ll go out, hit a bar. Or something.”

  “You know a bar where you can cash a check? That’s cool.”

  He laughed. “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll listen, huh, then we see.”

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know. Then I’ll show you what you need to do.”

  “Deal.”

  “The exit at the back of the building? The one the girls go out when they don’t want their pictures taken? One hour. Be there.”

  “Sounds dope.”

  “It will be.”

  “Cool,” Dante said. “Later.”

  It was silent for a second, and then I could hear her trotting up some stairs.

  “No!” The word burst out of me. “No way she’s going anywhere with that man.”

  “Chill,” Reed said.

  “I will not chill. You’ve got a civilian in a police sting, way over her head. You’ve got no resources for this kind of operation. Pull it now. Call her, or I will.”

  I got my cell out.

  Reed stopped me and showed me the screen of his.

  Dante had texted Reed as she went up the stairs. Big night. Alright. No prob. CU L8r.

  The agreed code for saying she wanted to go on.

  “No,” I said again. “What the hell are you thinking? We follow them in a big white van?”

  “I’ll get an unmarked car.”

  “You can’t run a tail with a single car.” He wasn’t getting it. “What would you do if it was your daughter?”

  He ignored that. “We can—”

  “Guys!” The other detective slammed his hand down on the bench. “They can hear you out in the street. Try harder and they’ll hear you all the way inside the studio.”

  “You know, we’ve done this kind of stuff before, in the police,” Reed said, talking through gritted teeth but keeping his voice down. “I’ll get a couple more cars.”

  “Still can’t do it,” I said. “This guy may be a thug, but he’s Forsythe’s driver. He’ll know about taking precautions. You need a minimum of six cars to run an effective tail without alerting him.”

  “We run tails all the time. And we have a tracker on him.”

  “Which needs a big van to receive it. One that stands out like a moving billboard.”

  “This may be the only way to get Tamanny Harper back, and it’s a police operation, Farrell. I’m running it. You’re here as an observer.”

  I’d had enough. I got out of the van and dialed her.

  “Dante, this is too dangerous,” I said. “I’m coming in.”

  “No!” she said. “No, please. Please? Just listen to me.”

  I stopped with an effort. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  I had to swallow down my fear for her, along with my frustration. She was part of my House. I owed her the right to state her case.

  “I need to do this.”

  “I’m not agreeing, but explain.”

  “You don’t see it the way…” She stopped and tried again. “Your House. Everyone has a part. A skill. I’m just the stupid girl who listened at the door. The one who thought it was all cool parties and orgies. It’s not. It’s real and it’s not fair and sometimes there are things that have to be done. And sometimes they have to be done by someone who hasn’t got all the skills they should have.”

  “Yeah, skills which have to be taught, and will be. There’s no way anyone in my House is telling you that you need to do this.”

  “No one except me,” she said.

  “But—”

  “It’s something I can do. Not just for you and Tamanny and all the other girls. It’s for me, too.”

  “It’s not just a dangerous situation. There’s the man himself—he’s dangerous.”

  “He’s about as dangerous as half the population when they think with their balls.”

  “It’s not some pose he puts on to look edgy, for God’s sake,” I said. “He’s violent.”

  Her voice seemed to shrink over the connection. “I know.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because it’s what I do for Dominé,” she said. “It’s my skill. It’s what I can do. I’m one of the safety valves at the club. I can handle it. I’m used to it.”

  This was the stark, harsh reality of the world that Dominé and Dante lived in.

  It wasn’t all sweetness and light, costumes and role play.

  Sometimes it was ugly. And even in an industry where few retained their illusions, there were those who handled it better than others.

  “I’ll get what the lieutenant wants. And if y’know, that means…” she went silent for a long moment. “Don’t think badly of me.”

  “Never. Dante, you’re part of my House. If you don’t feel like you’ve earned it yet for some reason, get this: you will. Without doing crazy stuff. You don’t need to do this to prove you’re brave enough.”

  “It’s not brave, because I know you’ll be there.”

  “Always. I’ll be there for you.”

  I tried once more, but in the end we left it that I would stop it if I heard him being violent, whether she used her code word or not, and regardless of whether we had the information we needed. And that I’d stop it if there was a breakdown with the wire.

  Which left me needing to crawl back into the van and build bridges with Lieutenant Reed.

 
; The detective who maybe knew more about a member of my House than I’d bothered to find out.

  Whose permission I needed to stay involved so I could keep my word to Dante.

  And who’d been listening to every word that’d been said in my telephone conversation.

  Elizabetta thought Detective Reed was a good man.

  He was.

  I didn’t have the opportunity to start speaking.

  “Let’s just shelve everything else for the moment,” he said. “I’m hearing you have a background in this kind of operation. So tell me what you think we need to do.”

  He’d put aside any curiosity about the conversation he’d overheard and focused straight on getting the job done.

  Still I hesitated, and he went on. “I called the captain. He’s getting Bailey back in, and we’re relaying the wire back to HQ. The moment she hears something she can use for a warrant, we close it down. We don’t get that warrant and this whole operation against Forsythe is over come tomorrow anyway.”

  “Bailey’s willing to do that?”

  “We’ve had to promise her everything, up to and including my firstborn.” He snorted. “She owns us.”

  “If I call it, we close it down?”

  He hummed. “Within reason.”

  He wasn’t going to just roll over.

  I had an ace up the sleeve called Yelena, who would close down this operation quicker than a SWAT team. I’d have to work her in and go ahead on trust.

  “Okay, what do we need? Six unmarked cars. Two people to each car. With walkie-talkies, not police radio. Agreed codes. The van stays a block back and my colleague follows us on her motorcycle to help coordinate.”

  “Another civilian?”

  “Motorcycle gives you a view you don’t get in a car. She can get past obstructions. But, yes, she’s a civilian, just like me.”

  His eyes narrowed at that, probably thinking over what he’d heard Dante say about my House and skills, but in the end, he sighed and nodded.

  A text came in from Billie: Forsythe on the move with bodyguards. Limo.

  Seems like Forsythe didn’t depend on Bryant to drive him around.

  Chapter 59

  An hour later, we had four of the promised six unmarked cars, with two in transit. Dante was standing behind the studios, where we couldn’t see her. The walkie-talkies had arrived. Yelena had one. They all worked. Yay.