“Whose situation?”
“You and me. Sondra.”
For the first time in several minutes, Mark Vargas looked up from his notepad. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know if it means anything. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Are you saying they used her name?”
“To punk me,” Worth said. “Let me know they had my number.”
“Tell me exactly what they said. Word for word.”
“Briggs picked up the phone like he could call you at home. He asked me if I thought you’d answer.” Worth held up his hands. “Look, I’m not going to say it word for word. The two of them went back and forth on what they figured you guys would be doing that time of night. That was the gist of it.”
Vargas leaned back in the chair.
“Like I said, they were trying to work me over.” Worth shrugged, as though that had been the extent of it. “Look, you know half the force has heard some version or other. I walk into a room full of cops, half of them grin.”
“I don’t give a shit about half the force.”
“Me, either,” Worth said. On this point he was being a hundred-percent straight. “That’s why I’m talking to you first.”
Vargas sat with that. Worth let him sit. Sitting there, they both heard a faint sound, soft, like a dust cloth on wood.
Without saying anything, Vargas got up, crossed the room, and opened the door. Sondra jumped back. She stood there in a robe and shaggy slippers, looking up at Vargas, backlit in the doorway. Half defiant, half sheepish.
Vargas touched her shoulder and stepped out with her. He pulled the door after him but held the knob with one hand, not quite closing it completely.
Worth didn’t particularly feel like overhearing their conversation. While they spoke in low voices, he got up and wandered.
It seemed like a nice house. Comfortable. Based on the layout of the office, the way things were set up in here, Worth would have bet anything that the black leather furniture had all been out in the living room before Sondra had moved in.
He wondered if, one day, he’d be able to see any humor in the fact that he’d decided to take a poke at a guy with a speedbag and a pair of training gloves hanging in his den.
On the desk he saw the new issue of the police union newsletter, a SigArms catalog, and a Grisham novel. He picked up the newsletter, scanned the front page absently, dropped it back where he’d found it.
He overshot by an inch. The newsletter jostled the computer mouse, and the monitor screen seared to life. Worth saw the last thing Vargas had been looking at on the Internet.
Sports? News? Hard-core porn?
Baby cribs.
It was a shopping site, bright and pastel, cued up to a section containing cribs of all different kinds.
Worth wanted to hate the miserable prick more than ever. But he couldn’t seem to feel it. Standing there, looking at the computer screen, it was like he just couldn’t muster the voltage anymore. He thought again of how happy Sondra had seemed on Saturday.
If anything, he felt like he’d walked into a stranger’s home with shit on his shoes.
Over by the door: Yes, I promise. Okay?
Worth wandered back to his spot as Vargas stepped back into the office and closed the door. They reconnoitered at the magazine table.
“She okay?”
“A little freaked.”
“I’m sorry,” Worth said.
Vargas looked at him squarely. Back to business. “There’s a lot about this that doesn’t make sense.”
“I agree,” Worth said. “But I know John Pospisil put a lick on whoever attacked him at my place. And Tony Briggs has a fresh set of stitches in his head. I’d bet money the blood at the scene puts him inside the house.”
Vargas didn’t comment on that. He went over to a shelf and turned on a base model signal scanner. The buttons lit up and chatter came crackling.
“You know them, don’t you? Briggs and Salcedo. I could tell you recognized the names.”
“We crossed paths a few times last year.” Vargas tapped a button and found the digital traffic for the Northeast District. “They worked undercover at Orlando Heights.”
“Vice?”
“Narco.”
Worth felt a flush of triumph. Like he’d gambled, snipped an unmarked wire, and hadn’t blown his head off. “Briggs and Salcedo worked Narcotics?”
Vargas tweaked the gain knob on the scanner, his silence conveying the affirmative.
“Okay,” Worth said. “That explains a couple things.”
“Maybe,” Vargas said. “Maybe not.”
He returned and sat back down in his chair. Worth did the same. Vargas picked up his notepad and tapped it a few times with his pen. They listened to the radio for a minute or two.
Somebody was on foot, chasing a tagger northbound on 50th toward Military Ave. An Adam unit took a Signal 6 from central dispatch. Two Baker Four and Two Adam Sixty were eight-zero at California Taco downtown.
“Here’s my question,” Vargas said.
Worth waited. Tick tick tick.
“Last night, you say this girl called you from the safe house?”
“That’s right.”
“You give everybody on the street your personal mobile number?” Vargas looked him in the eye. “Or is that only for special circumstances?”
Red wire.
Worth steadied himself. He needed to carefully separate this wire from the rest of the snarl in front of him.
He reached out. Took hold.
“I guess you would have to say there are circumstances.”
Snip.
25
Sweet Jesus. That was Tony’s first thought. Aunt Joan smoked Uncle Eddie.
Poor bare-assed Darla, too.
They both looked humiliated to be dead. Sprays of blood and brain matter coated the doorway. The wall behind the desk looked like a slaughterhouse floor.
Tony had run through the names of a few good defense attorneys before he saw the cabinet behind Eddie’s chair. The door of the enclosed safe hung open.
“Out.”
Mather and Price stood there like a couple of retards.
“Guys,” Ray said.
Troy Mather blinked. “Is this fucked up? I mean, is this fucked up or what?”
“Step out for a minute.”
Price, the skinny one with all the tattoos, bit off a hangnail and headed out the door. Mather looked from Ray to Tony, then edged around Darla’s corpse like he didn’t want to startle her.
When they were gone, Ray said, “Shit, man. I’m sorry.”
Tony didn’t have a goddamned thing to say. He couldn’t believe this. Poor fucking Uncle Eddie.
“Thoughts?”
“Tonight was his meet-up.” Tony rubbed his forehead. “He said he had it handled.”
“You think he tried to short ’em?”
Jesus. The opposite, if anything. Eddie had been talking about how he was going to smooth the whole thing over. Actually considering giving the people in Chicago more than he owed.
Goddammit, Tony knew he and Ray should have been here, but no, Uncle Eddie had it covered. I changed your diapers, kid. That was exactly what he’d said.
“Not to push,” Ray said. “But this could be a problem.”
“I’m aware.” Tony looked at his watch: 2:37 A.M. “Hey!”
After a couple of seconds, Mather poked his head back in. He tried not to look at Darla on the floor but he couldn’t help it.
“Get back in here. Bring your buddy.”
Ray looked at the splatter on the door frame, traced it with a finger to about where Tony was standing. The back of Darla’s head was a ragged mess. The look on Eddie’s face was tough to take.
Price and Mather came back in. Tony said, “Does he hold anything here?”
Mather blinked.