I hesitated for a moment. Did I really want to help this guy play dirty? Really? I mean, he was the client, and I did need to pay bills, but I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him at all. But if I did nothing, he might decide on a fatal solution, and I couldn’t allow that.
“Ms. Cherabino?” he prompted, with a sneer to his mouth, like I was a dog who’d perform on command.
I comforted myself that, apparently, Joiner wasn’t a better quality person, and she’d gotten plenty of money out of him already.
“Mr. Collins. Abby Joiner is currently wanted in connection with the hit and run of an elderly male—the police haven’t been able to prove it, but they’re pretty sure she ran into an old man walking on the sidewalk and killed him. All it would take is the right set of evidence, and she’d be in prison for the rest of her life. I’d suggest that you confront her directly, tell her that you have proof of what she did—I’ll give you the details of when and where it happened—and odds are, she’ll cave. Neither of you wants your incriminating information to get out. You tell her that your lawyer has your information, she’ll tell you somebody else has hers, and the two of you call a cease fire.”
“She can’t get away with this!” he hissed. “It’s my fucking money she’s taking.”
“And it’s your secret that we’re protecting,” I said, flatly. “You do this right, it’s over. You want me to do it, you’ll pay the daily fee, but I’ll do it.” I understood Abby Joiner, or I thought I did, now. I could deal with her. “This is your best option to preserve your goals here,” I said. “We do this right, and she’ll end up confirming that she’s the blackmailer anyway. Your problem will effectively be solved.”
I felt a little scummy recommending these tactics, but it wasn’t like I had any hard evidence on Abby Joiner outside of the blackmail. Blackmail required a victim, and Collins wasn’t exactly going to stand up in court and be that victim, so, at present, there wasn’t a provable crime here. This was the best option, and scummy or not, I was getting the damn job done—something to be proud of—without any real criminal acts on either side.
Collins stared at me, contempt twisting his face. “I’ll handle Abby,” he said, finally. “I’ll write you the check now, I guess. You’ve done what I hired you to do.”
I paused and thought about insisting that I handle this. I couldn’t quite get there, though. I wanted to be done with this. Finally, I said, “You don’t seem happy.”
“My ex-girlfriend has been systematically fucking me over since we met. No, I’m not fucking happy.”
“If you’ll get me the samples of her DNA and bacteria—just a skin scraping, or something she’s touched a lot—we can confirm within twenty-four hours. That’s something I can still do for you.”
“I’m not interested in confirming. She was always weak. She’ll roll on this the instant I confront her.”
I frowned. That wasn’t at all the impression of Abby Joiner I had gotten—or really, any sane person’s opinion of a woman who’d set fire to a garage because of a romantic slight, then blackmail someone for a year over a criminal act he’d done. “Maybe it’s better that I handle this one.”
“I will handle it, damn it! Fucking women, leave me the hell alone.”
I blinked, pulling back. Now I didn’t just dislike the man, I was actively disgusted with him. He could go hang for all I cared. “You owe me the rest of my money,” I said and quoted the amount down to the penny.
He wrote me the check and left.
Honestly, I was glad to be rid of the bastard.
I served papers for the county for the rest of the afternoon, fielded a phone call from my mother, and then ate an easy pasta salad at my desk. I ate the stuff, ignoring the lack of decent seasoning or vegetables, and stared at the check I’d gotten from Collins. Something felt off, somehow. His case just didn’t seem resolved, and not just because he was a prick. It just didn’t seem like I’d finished things, and I took pride in finishing the job.
Why had Abby been in such a grimy apartment if she’d gotten all that money? Something didn’t make sense.
I sighed, in the end, and got in the car. I’d talk to Abby one more time before I called this done.
An hour later, I waited outside her door for the landlord to open the lock.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much. I’ve been so worried about her since she sent me that letter in Florida and she hasn’t answered the door. You’re such an amazing landlord.” I smiled then, friendly. Lying was so much easier as a PI than it had been as a cop, and I was enjoying that part of this new endeavor immensely.
The landlord, a woman with thick, curly grey hair, wearing a muumuu, just shook her head. “Well, you’re a good cousin, you are, to drive all the way up here to see her and make sure she’s okay.” She jiggled the door one more time and then turned the lock.
When she opened the door, my heart sank into my stomach.
The apartment was ransacked, top to bottom. There had been a struggle. And, there, on the edge of the kitchen counter, was a small reddish-brown smear, what could have been—and probably was—blood, like you’d get from a head impacting the slab.
And I was stuck on the horns of a dilemma—to report it, like a good citizen, and be immediately suspected, or walk away. The problem was, I thought I knew what had happened here, and it made me angry. Very, very angry. Too angry to stand around and answer questions.
“She’s kind of a pig, isn’t she?” the landlord said, in response to the mess.
I forced a laugh, a low, unkind-sounding thing. “Well, she always has been, I guess.” Then, on impulse, I added, to buy time: “Oh! Now I remember. She said she was staying with her mother and I should meet her there. I am so sorry to bother you.”
The landlord either wasn’t all that concerned about her tenants or was perfectly happy to get me out of the building because I was back in my car, fuming, within minutes. I cranked up the small fusion engine, waited for it to turn over, and then peeled out.
Collins was going to pay for this, so help me God.
I showed up at Collins’ ridiculously large house. It was dark outside, well dark, and had been for a while. The street lamp at the front of his house cast shadows onto its front, the old-style gingerbread woodwork along the windows seeming to move like knobby fingers with the wind. A car was parked in the long driveway ahead of me, a car still pinging as its fusion engine slowly cooled in the night air.
I knocked on the door, angry but not as hot as I had been. A butler-type answered.
“Where is Collins?” I asked him. “Where?”
“Madam, he is not receiving—”
I pushed past him. Ahead and to the right came the sound of men laughing and the smell of cigar smoke. I stalked forward.
The butler protested. “You can’t go—”
“Try to stop me,” I said, throwing off his hand and moving with intention.
There he was. In a study lined with old-fashioned paper books, the kinds with leather covers only silly rich people owned, heavy old furniture, and an oversized, old-looking globe of the earth. He sat in one of the oversized brown leather chairs, cigar in one hand, snifter of scotch in the other, right next to Todd Elmer, the head of the union of his company, who sat in a very similar position. The union. With the owner of the company. Celebrating something off the books, against all the rules. I knew what it was they were celebrating.
Collins set his cigar down in an ashtray on the coffee table in front of him and stood, scotch still in hand. “Ms. Cherabino. The woman of the hour. Your information was flawless.”
“You had her killed, you prick,” I said. “Didn’t you?” I stood in the arched entrance of his ridiculous study, my chest heaving as I breathed hard, furious all over again. “Didn’t you?”
I looked over at the union guy, who put his cigar and drink down. He didn’t look surprised.
Collins smiled and took a drink. “So what if I did? As you said, the problem is solved to my
benefit, and you did a bang-up job of finding my blackmailer.”
I looked back and forth between them, brain struggling to work through the haze of anger covering everything. “This was never about substandard materials, was it? Or safety? Or anything but that mob guy, and getting yours.”
“Certainly not,” Elmer said, speaking up for the first time. “The safety of my men is nonnegotiable. The safety of an outsider is not.”
I tried to think, tried to process. Then I said to Collins, “You disappeared your girlfriend, too. Or had Elmer here do it. Is that what you do to everyone who stands in your way? Make them disappear?”
“Ex-girlfriend. She was my ex-girlfriend, and hardly that.” Collins’ face tightened then, and the jovial mood was over. He took a step forward, towards me, and somehow, it was the most threatening thing in the world. “Ms. Cherabino. I think it’s really rich that a woman who was thrown out of the police force for beating a man to death really wants to challenge my tactics.”
Elmer stood then, too, behind Collins, in solidarity. “The mob is bad for business. They pocket all the profits that could be paying for healthcare, for paid leave, for raises.”
“They get into your business like cancer, and they never let go,” Collins said. “I did what I had to do.”
Elmer nodded. “It could have been an accident. Hell, sure, it was an accident. Always was. You get untrained personnel around the molten metal tanks, things happen. I said it then, I’ll say it now. Safety first. You don’t read the warnings, you don’t do the work, you have an accident.”
I looked back and forth between the two. “This was it, wasn’t it? The thing that settled the strike. You did it, didn’t you?” I asked Elmer. “It’s why you got the deal you didn’t deserve for your union workers.”
“I do what’s best for my guys, always have,” Elmer said. “That isn’t a secret.”
“It doesn’t matter who did what. There’s no proof there,” Collins said. “And even if there was, what difference does it make? You work for me, Ms. Beat A Man To Death Out of Temper. You work for me, and like you said, you won’t be testifying against me in court. Not that anyone would believe you anyway, not with your track record.”
Fury swept through me, fury and helplessness. They’d pay. They deserved to pay—but he was right. “That’s why you hired me in the first place, wasn’t it? Because nobody in this precinct would ever listen to me again when it came to this sort of thing. Because I’ve burned that bridge.”
“And you need the money,” Collins said and nodded, significantly. “Now that you’ve worked it all out for yourself, be a good girl and leave now before I get more irritated. Let your betters celebrate the victory in peace.”
“My betters?”
Contempt crept onto his face again. “Yes, Cherabino, your betters. You want to work in this town, you’ll have to learn the difference between the real people and the hired help. Arnold?”
And behind me, the butler I had forgotten about pulled out a gun and pointed it at me, thumbing the safety off with a click I could feel in my bones. “I’d suggest you leave now, miss.”
And I, the idiot that I was, the woman who’d stormed in here without so much as a plan, much less a gun, slowly raised my hands so everyone could see them.
I’d worked undercover for almost two years, and I knew when I had to make a turn. “Okay,” I said, with as much sincerity as I could claw out of my soul. “Okay, then. You’ve got me. I just don’t appreciate being lied to, and I don’t appreciate my information being used without me being involved.” I took a breath and said the thing that would sell it: “Anyway, if you really wanted her dead, you should have hired me to do it. Like you said, I’ve got bills to pay.”
Collins got a thoughtful look then.
Elmer smiled, just a little, like he’d finally figured me out.
And I wanted to throw up. A lot. But there was no getting out of here alive unless they thought I was just as bad as them. “I want ten percent,” I said, ignoring the gun behind me.
Elmer laughed.
“Ten percent of what?” Collins asked.
“Whatever money you were paying Joiner that I’m sure you just got back. Ten percent, and I’ll walk.”
“Three and a half,” Collins said, evenly. “Three and a half and I don’t hear from you again unless I hire you.”
I paused long enough to sell the character, and said with contempt, “Yeah, sure. That’ll do it.”
“It’ll do it or you’ll end up just as dead as Abby,” Collins said. “Arnold, see her out.”
I lifted my arms higher and let the butler march me out the door, while the two criminals behind me laughed.
This isn’t over, I promised myself, but it was an oddly empty promise.
I seethed in the car. Seethed. Hit my hands against the steering wheel over and over, while the butler looked at me from the front door, gun in hand, just waiting.
Finally, I cranked up the car, waited for it to warm up, and peeled out.
They’d gotten away with it. They’d get away with it.
I was sitting in the parking deck across the street from the police station where I’d worked just a few weeks ago, sitting there mentally composing a report on the whole damn thing while I seethed, and breathed, and seethed some more. Finally, I got out and found a payphone.
“Hello?” Tyler’s voice answered on the other end of the line.
“You’re right,” I said. “He’s a privileged asshole son of a bitch who’d eat his own mother given half a chance.”
“Who is—Isabella? Is that you?” he sounded groggy, like he’d been sleeping. Had they changed his shift again?
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said.
“It’s eleven o’clock and I have to be there at three,” he said. Then the sound of cloth rustling, the sound of springs creaking. “Wait, are you talking about Collins?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And you were right. He’s got this—”
“Don’t tell me,” he said, cutting me off. Then he sighed. “No, really, don’t tell me. There’s a case I got pinged on this morning—the ex-girlfriend of someone whose case I know you’re working on. Missing persons, and the landlady says somebody who looks an awful lot like you was there.”
“It wasn’t—”
“I mean it, don’t say another word. Actually, yeah, say one. Just one. Yes or no. You involved in this woman’s disappearance?”
I felt like he’d slapped me across the face. “No. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You sure?”
“Tyler, I’m certain.” It was mostly the truth. Mostly.
He sighed. “You’re sure this isn’t another situation, like with the man who was found beaten to death?”
“That wasn’t a…!” I took a breath. “Tyler, I swear on my mother’s life that the last time I saw Abby Joiner, she was alive and well and cursing at me. I—”
“Then that’s all I’m going to let you say. I meant it earlier, Isa. You can’t call me anymore. You can’t help me anymore. I’ll keep your name out of it if I can—but I don’t know if I can.”
I swallowed then. If he followed the evidence where it led—I could be an accessory to murder, legally, whether I’d known about the disappearance in advance or not.
And, worse, Collins was right. The more I talked about his business to the police, the more I got myself involved, the more I’d sink. He had lawyers and union flunkies and a hell of a lot of deniability. I couldn’t go in and report him killing a mob representative—without proof, at that—without opening up the real possibility of going to jail myself.
“Isa?”
“I hear what you’re saying,” I said, slowly, the sudden anger fading to a dull sense of disappointment. “I won’t call again. But Tyler—”
“What?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You’ve been really good to me, and that number thing was a shitty thing to do.”
“You know, it really was. I’ll see
what I can do for you. I will. But no promises.”
“I don’t expect any,” I said. I couldn’t expect any.
I listened to the dial tone then and reluctantly hung up the payphone, my breath fogging in the cold night air. I watched a late jogger muscle down the sidewalk next to the parking deck, his hand clutching the bright-orange tube of a can of pepper spray. Even across from the police station, this wasn’t the safest area; Adam and I had gotten mugged here before. Or the guy had tried to mug us while we were out walking, anyway; between my physical skills and Adam’s mental ones, the guy hadn’t stood much of a chance.
I missed Adam. I missed him a lot.
I sighed and picked up the phone. I called the department where I’d worked, the one place in the world I wasn’t welcome anymore. I called because I wanted to talk to Adam.
Stacey on the internal line picked up and tried to connect me, but said instead, “He’s in an interview. Can I take a message?”
I took a deep breath, in, out, the distant streetlight not illuminating nearly enough of the parking garage around me. The cold air hurt my lungs to breathe it.
I wasn’t going to jail, I told myself. And Collins was right, damn it. Right now, under the circumstances, nobody was going to believe a damn word I said. If I tried, I’d end up in jail while Collins walked.
“Tell Adam I’ll be at the PI office after dinner tonight when he’s done,” I said finally and left my name.
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks, Stacey.”
I made one more phone call before I left, calling in one final source. I couldn’t… I couldn’t let it stand, not like this, not Collins, and if I couldn’t go to the police, well…you make a deal with the devil, you get singed, my grandmother used to say. I was scorched, but I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t.
So I went to the Waffle Palace in the East Atlanta borough, a greasy diner joint whose prices might actually suit my budget. The waitress had a cup of coffee next to me, and a pecan waffle stack out in less than ten minutes—and I had a five-dollar bill out for her in just as little time.
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