Considering he’s been sitting at the hospital with his partner for the last couple of days, the fact that he is now on the move is telling. It means in the absence of hearing from his men in Idaho, he probably returned to the signal.
And once he took the bait, seeing it sitting so close, he went on the move, heading into the office to begin making preparations.
Which means I now need to be doing the same.
Reaching to the ground beside me, I take up another burner phone. This one is a bit different from the standard model I use. It was tucked inside the goodie bag Mikey left for me, a simple push-button design with a small display screen no larger than a square inch at the top.
Reminding me of something I might have carried a decade ago, it powers immediately to life as I flip it on, awaiting my instructions.
The combination of the skin flap and the tracking device is good for monitoring his movement and letting him think he is monitoring me, though it isn’t infallible. If the man really is in as deep as Amy claimed, he also has alternative motives besides just finding his wife and stepdaughter.
And he’s got a veritable army of pissed-off police officers that know at least two of their brethren were put down at The Sundowner a couple of days ago. For as much of an arsenal as Mikey left me, I am still only a single person.
It’s time to clear the playing field a bit.
Beginning by calling information, I ask for the Hollenbeck Community Police Station. Transferring me straight over, I speak to a frazzled dispatcher that sounds to be typing up reports and eating lunch simultaneously, the background noise so loud I have to almost scream as I ask to be transferred to Detective Jensen Spiers.
Patched over to terrible elevator music, a full four minutes after first dialing, I am finally connected to the asshole I’m trying to reach.
“Spiers,” he says, the self-importance and dismissiveness in his tone exactly as I imagined.
Letting that animosity flow through me for a moment, I grip the phone tightly and ask, “How’s the nose?”
A full moment passes, likely as he checks the caller ID. Showing up either as this burn line or as the dispatch desk at Hollenbeck doesn’t matter, neither giving him much information.
As he does so, I can hear the sounds of the freeway rolling past, pavement passing beneath his wheels.
“Who is this?”
Why people insist on asking such inane questions, I will never know. Anybody with even a bit of sense should realize I won’t answer, and if I do, it won’t be the truth.
And they call him a detective.
“I hear your partner’s going to make it. Must be quite lucky.”
Luck doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it outside of him being extremely fortunate I was the one pulling the trigger.
Anybody else would have just aimed for his overinflated chest, emptying half the clip into it.
I can almost hear the synapses firing in his brain, threads connecting slowly, as he hisses into my ear, “You.”
“If by that, you were wondering who the woman was that whipped your ass at The Sundowner a couple of days ago,” I reply, “then yes, me.”
I get no joy in goading the man. It is merely a means to an end. Just seeing the way he dressed and carried himself, what he chooses to do for a living, everything Amy mentioned about him, it is obvious the amount of self-reverence he carries.
Poking at that, threatening to undercut it, is the easiest way to make him do exactly as I want.
“How the hell did you get this number?” the venom in his voice is palpable, so thick it almost distorts the words.
Not that it matters, his posturing and the question are both pointless. I have no interest in either.
“Shut up.”
The background din of the highway begins to fall away. Based on the visual balanced atop my knee, he isn’t yet to his exit, meaning he must be pulling to the side of the road for a minute.
Clearly, I have his attention.
“What the hell did—”
“Shut the hell up,” I respond, cutting him off. “We’re not friends, and this isn’t a conversation. Who am I and how I got this number aren’t important.
“All that matters is why I am calling you right now.”
On the other end of the line, I can practically hear him stewing. A few loud and angry breaths are the only sound, the man trying to swallow down his hostility, wanting nothing more than to reach through the line for me.
Another point in my favor. Hostility often clouds better judgment, making someone do something stupid.
Like thinking they can go head-to-head with me.
“Why are you calling me right now?” he spits out, each syllable uttered dripping with acrimony.
Letting it hang, I wait until he starts to repeat himself, just barely getting out the first sound, before inserting, “I have your money.”
Pulling up, he processes that a moment. “You also have my wife and stepdaughter.”
I cut my gaze over to the skin flaps, knowing full well he is checking his monitor, seeing the signal sitting no more than thirty miles from him.
“No, I don’t,” I say. “They’re gone. And they don’t want to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders for you, so they sent me to give back the money.”
The plan is a bit weak, but based on the amount of emotion I can hear in everything he says, the man is in a state of desperation. Even if he doesn’t buy what I’m telling him, he’ll have no choice but to act on it, trying in vain to sew things up as best he can.
“Bullshit,” he snaps, grasping at the most obvious response. “Where the hell is my wife? Let me talk to her.”
My clamp on the phone tightens at his insistence on referring to Amy as his wife. If ever there was such a time, it was only because I wasn’t around to stop it.
And even at that, it is now long in the past.
“Gone,” I reply, my voice iron. “The offer is the money. You want it or not?”
Despite sitting in the cool shade of the forest, I can feel sweat lining my brow. Most of the muscles and tendons in my arms are drawn taut, the act of merely having to speak to this man enough to raise my ire.
On the other end, I can hear a semitruck drive by, tires and horn blaring. I can detect the sound of air being vented into the front seat.
I can practically envision the smug bastard with his busted face sitting there contemplating my offer, trying to see what I’m really after.
And hating the fact that he has no choice but to accept my proposal.
“You have my money?” he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Leaning forward from the tree, I smile faintly. Just using the skin tag and letting him eventually make his way to me would have worked, but it would have allowed him to do things on his own time and with whatever backing he could pull together.
This will be much, much better.
Chapter Sixty
“Hey, Captain, you got a minute?”
Jensen Spiers presses his shoulder into the doorframe of Captain Wade Lucille’s office, leaning most of his body across the threshold. His voice lowered, he fights down the urge to look over his shoulder, ensuring nobody is listening in.
His face drawn and tense, it’s all he can do to try to keep the tempest of emotions he’s still feeling from the phone conversation a half hour earlier from spilling out.
Soon, but not just yet.
The reflection of Lucy’s computer screen reflects off the front of his glasses as he glances over, moving only his eyes. Peering over the top rim of his frames, he considers Spiers a moment before leaning back in his seat. Letting out a slow groan, he slides the spectacles away, placing them upside down on his desk.
The look on his face makes it apparent he doesn’t have the time or the inclination for the conversation he knows is coming, recent events being too much for him to actually say as much.
Spiers was banking on that eventuality when he made the de
cision to come upstairs.
He is hoping it will also get the request he is about to make granted.
“Sure,” Lucy says, raising a hand and motioning for Spiers to enter.
Doing as instructed, Spiers steps inside. Turning to close the door, he checks on the receptionist sitting nearby, her attention squarely on the phone in her hand. Down the hall, a pair of officers are in conversation, each wearing smiles and holding matching paper coffee cups.
As close to a clear scene as things outside this office ever get.
“I just got a call,” Spiers opens, turning back to face the captain and dropping into the chair opposite him. Like most of the items in the space, the seat is functional, though well past its prime. The padding on it has been beaten flat, the arms and legs made from wood sawed into basic squares.
Overhead, yellow fluorescent bulbs provide lighting, the back walls lined with bookshelves cut from the same dark wood as the desk and the chair Spiers now sits in.
A snapshot of an earlier time, the office is one of the last remaining vestiges of the original precinct house that didn’t get swallowed up by the renovation project a few years prior.
Rumor is, the decision was made on purpose by Lucy, wanting to keep interactions as brief as possible.
Already feeling the top corners of the chair digging into his back, Spiers can attest the theory isn’t without merit.
“From the woman at the hotel.”
His hands balanced on either arm of his chair, Lucy sits up a little higher in his seat. Dressed in full uniform, he runs his hands down the front of his jacket, straightening it as he settles in with a more upright posture.
“The woman,” Lucy says. “The one—”
“That did this,” Spiers says, motioning to his face. Again, he can hear the defiance in the woman’s voice as she came on the phone, mocking him, asking how his nose felt. “And shot Lucas.”
Grunting slightly, Lucy brings his hands together before him. Lacing his fingers over his stomach, he drops his chin, peering across at Spiers. “And?”
“And she wants to make a trade.”
Careful to keep his demeanor exactly as it was a moment before, Spiers stares straight across. From this instant on, everything he says will be a fabrication, the severity of it ranging from a slight alteration to a complete lie.
It is imperative that the captain picks up nothing.
“For what?” Lucy presses.
The story Spiers had presented to his captain Sunday night outside The Sundowner was that they were there checking on an active tip. Someone had called in stating they had spotted an enormous amount of activity at the place, believing it to be rife with cash and product.
That was his in. That was what he had to work with, making the captain believe that was still their goal without ever mentioning the inclusion of his family.
“Immunity,” Spiers replies.
Practically holding his breath, he sits and waits, seeing his response land, watching as the captain attempts to digest it.
As expected, his initial reaction seems middling, at best.
“Immunity?” Lucy asks, disbelief obvious. “From what?”
Sensing he is already losing the man, that the story is threatening to get even further off track, Spiers holds his hands up before him. “Let me back up.”
Pausing, he takes a breath, saying, “This is how she claims things went down. I’m not saying I believe her or not, but this is what she said.”
Turning his chin to the side, Lucy continues to peer at him, his gaze probing forward, his unease with the narrative palpable.
“She claims that she was there solely as a broker. She was a middleman, the motel meant to be neutral territory, a place where the buyer and seller show up, nobody flexes any muscle, and everybody goes home happy.”
“But it didn’t work out that way,” Lucy inserts, more of a statement than a question.
“No,” Spiers says. “She says we got there first, and everything went to hell.”
For the umpteenth time in the past week, Spiers can feel his shirt is damp. Every word that spills out seems to come faster than the one before, his heart racing. Blood flushes his face, his cheeks warming. Both hands press down against his thighs, making sure his legs don’t begin to bob up and down.
“Which is why there was no product or money,” Lucy says, coming to the conclusion Spiers had hoped he would.
“Right.”
Looking away, Lucy glances to the side wall. His gaze lands on an ancient framed poster advertising the Policeman’s Ball on December 14, 1957, and glazes slightly.
For a moment, there is no response, only the sounds of the hallway outside filling the office.
The story Spiers is peddling is paper-thin. He is aware of that, but given the narrative he’s already begun and the resources he has available, it’s the only thing that works.
Right now, he needs the captain to believe him, and he needs to be granted what he’s about to ask for. And for that to happen, Lucy at the very least needs to believe that Spiers believes what he is saying.
“So where does the immunity come in?” Lucy asks.
Seizing on the sliver of an opening, Spiers replies, “Apparently, the deal is still set to go down. They gave it a couple days to let things go quiet, and tonight they’re looking to make the exchange as planned.”
“As planned?” Lucy asks, his brows rising. “As in, back at the cheap motel?”
“No,” Spiers says, “but not far. All she said was it was in an old warehouse in Montebello, but she wouldn’t tell me the exact one until I could commit to what she wanted.”
“Immunity,” Lucy replies, the word appearing sour, his features scrunching slightly. “For assaulting a pair of police officers?”
Repeating the pose from a few minutes earlier, Spiers raises his hands. Meant to give the impression of feeling the same exact way, he lets them drop against his thighs before saying, “I said the same thing. Almost laughed, but she pressed it anyway. Said there is a shit ton of money and drugs coming together tonight, and if we can promise her not to prosecute for what happened, she’ll serve it all up to us.”
The story is ludicrous, sounding even more so out loud than in his head on the drive over. It seems like the deluded plans of a madwoman, someone rife with desperation, flailing to make things fit as best she can.
Which isn’t far from the position Spiers is in.
Still, it is the best he has right now, the number of moving parts fast outpacing what he can handle alone.
Taking another moment to consider things, Lucy levels his focus back on Spiers. He remains silent, pondering what has just been shared, before stating, “Sounds like bullshit to me.”
Responding in the only way he can, Spiers nods. “I agree.”
“I don’t get it,” Lucy continues. “What’s her angle? Why call you at all?”
“I asked her that,” Spiers replies. “Says there were a lot of people pissed after what happened, us included. Claims she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder.”
Nodding slightly, Lucy puts together what Spiers is saying, again shifting his attention to the side. “And of the three sides, we’re the one she fears the least.”
“Well, we’re the only one hamstrung by jurisdictional issues,” Spiers counters. “Not to mention…”
“The only one that can grant immunity,” Lucy says, no small amount of bitterness present. His head continues to move up and down almost imperceptibly as he mulls the proposition further.
What the woman really wanted was to hand over the money. She didn’t want him to ever have a need to look for Amy or Amber again, knowing that geography would never slow him as long as the issue of half a million dollars still lingered.
What she didn’t know was that he had a way of keeping tabs on his wife and stepdaughter. All he had to do was agree to the meeting, get the woman to leave their side, and then he could steal away and grab them.
And he now had an idea for how to handle him as well.
Trying to keep any sign of this inner turmoil from his features, Spiers sits and waits. He watches as Lucy plods through everything that has just been shared, searching for some tiny upside that doesn’t exist.
A search that ends with a heavy sigh as the captain shifts his focus back to face forward and asks, “So what did you have in mind?”
Chapter Sixty-One
The framed photograph hanging just inside of the door is the sole personal touch of any kind in the building. There are no knickknacks lining the window sills, no tchotchkes sitting on the desks positioned around the outside of the room. Not even a poster or pennant on the wall, declaring the Rams and Clippers as the teams of choice for those that dwell there.
Perhaps with time, once they are better entrenched in the community. After everybody knows them well enough to know that anything that adorns the place is meant to be welcoming, rather than sources of exclusion.
Until then, the photo is the only thing. Blown up to the size of a standard sheet of paper, it is eleven inches in width, eight and a half in height.
Another inch and a half are added along the entire perimeter in the form of a polished cherry-wood frame.
The picture was taken three years prior. In the center of it is Luis. His lower half was covered in tights and gym shorts, his high-school football jersey hanging loose around his shoulders. The number thirty-four is emblazoned across his chest in green, a thin line of orange trim lining the outside.
On either hand is a pair of receiving gloves, the wrist straps open and dangling down.
A football in one hand, his other is on the back of a stray dog that had just happened to wander by that afternoon. A mongrel mix of collie and a handful of other things, its shaggy hair was mostly black, dappled with gray and white spots.
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