“Shithead! Does Eddie hold anything here?”
Price stepped up. “Nah, man. Stuff always goes to the off-site.”
The storage unit in Florence. Tony had helped his uncle set it up with a fake name.
This was bullshit. Eddie was a born snake-oiler. He wore too much Tommy Bahama, and he obviously wasn’t smart enough to know when he was in over his ears. But he was mostly a good guy. Mom’s favorite brother.
The doer had kneecapped him first.
“Hey.” Ray spoke in a calm voice. Go easy. We need to think.
A bunch of other cops looking into Uncle Eddie’s affairs wasn’t going to work. Who knew where the guy had gotten careless? Once they started hitting red flags, it wouldn’t take much for some CIB asshole to look up and notice that one of the victims in his Halloween double homicide, a prominent local businessman, happened to have a drug cop for a nephew.
Tony spoke to Price instead of Mather. “Do you know the security schedule?”
Price shook his head.
“Ain’t one,” Troy Mather said. “Eddie used to have like these Wackenhut dudes overnight, but—”
“Who the fuck asked you anything?”
Mather shut his mouth.
Ray looked all the way around the perimeter of the ceiling. But Eddie didn’t use cameras in the back office. Tony stood in place and turned; the doer would have been standing on this side of the desk when Darla walked in. Bang.
Had Eddie been dead already? Or had the doer made him watch?
“Darla have any other boyfriends?” Tony addressed them both together. “What about the ex-husband? Either of you guys know anything?”
Price shrugged.
Mather said, “So I can talk now?”
“Careful,” Ray counseled.
“Her ex lives in Ralston. She and Eddie hook up whenever the kids go down there to stay.”
Tony could read the look on Ray’s face. Slow down, Serpico. We’re not going to orphan any kids.
But Ray was just going to have to get realistic. The setup was perfect, and they didn’t need much. Just enough to put the ex at the scene. Maybe a smear or two of Eddie’s blood inside a vehicle. It would be a slam-dunk picture, right down to the guy’s denials. No deep digging.
“You two,” he said. “Stay here.”
“Stay where, man?”
“You with the tats. Price. What’s your first name?”
“Derek.”
“Okay, Derek, I want you on point. Go to wherever the cleaning crew keeps their shit and find some kind of gloves. Then go to the camera banks and take all the tapes out of the machines. You following?”
Price shrugged. “Gloves, tapes. Yeah.”
“Stuff that shit in a sack or something and stay put. You. FUBU.” Tony pointed at Mather. “Don’t touch anything else.”
The punk had shown the sense to call them—okay, he earned a couple points there. But Troy Mather still got under Tony’s skin. He had a big mouth, a stupid face, and thought he was a tough guy. Bad combination all the way around.
“You guys are leaving?”
“We’ll be back.”
“Hey, fuck that, man.” Mather raised his hands. “I ain’t even staying around here.”
“Listen up, assface. You do what I tell you, when I tell you, and keep your mouth shut. Understand?”
“Nah, man. You can kiss my balls. I did my part. I’m Gandhi.”
Tony reached around his back and pulled the small-frame Colt from the lumbar holster under his jacket. Far from department-issue. He thumbed back the hammer and leveled on Mather.
“This is where you stop and think,” he said.
Mather’s eyes went wide. He held out his palms and shook his head. “Hey, shit. I mean, hey.”
Even while the kid stood there, still running his mouth, flashes started going off in Tony’s head. He thought about the scene. Thought about where he was standing. Thought about the odds of this mutt Mather keeping his shit together for more than a day.
He squeezed the trigger and shot him, high and right, one ring wide of center mass.
The range was too close, even for the low-grain rounds Tony carried. The bullet passed through Mather on a short rope of blood, spidering the one-way plate-glass security window looking out on the darkened store. The sound of the discharge in the space of the office was enough to make Tony’s ears ring.
Troy Mather flailed to his right and stumbled back two or three steps. His face had gone dull with shock.
“Motherfuck.” His features contorted and he gripped his shoulder. Within moments his sweatshirt had soaked through. “You shot me, man.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. He must have nicked the brachial artery, the way the kid was pumping out. “Why you standing around?”
“I…”
“You’re getting blood all over the place,” Tony said. “I’d be hauling ass out of here. That’s me personally.”
Mather didn’t look well at all. He looked at Tony like he’d been betrayed by a brother.
It took a lot to get a reaction out of Derek Price. He stood there, leaning back just a little on his heels, his expression somewhere between surprise and amusement.
All at once Troy coughed, turned, and staggered out of the office, trailing blood the whole way.
“Derek,” Tony said. “How’d you like a lifetime get-out-of-shit-free card?”
It took a couple beats before Price said, “Cool.”
“Drive him to the ER,” Tony said. “Take the long way. Make sure he’s out of mud before you get there. Get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” Derek said. He paused. “What do I say?”
Tony thought about it. “He have a cell phone on him?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“After he’s done, get his phone and call yourself. So there’s a record. At the hospital, say he called you from here and told you to come pick him up. Understand?”
“He called me from here.”
“You my guy?”
Derek Price shrugged. “Sure.”
“Get going.”
Price hustled out, following his buddy, being careful not to step in the blood trail. Tony thought, Attaboy.
He watched Derek disappear into the shadows leading out to the showroom floor. Then he went around the desk and pressed the .45 into Uncle Eddie’s cool dead hand.
He raised his uncle’s arm and fired two more shots, both in the vicinity of where Troy Mather had been standing a minute ago. They’d need blowback on Eddie’s hand for the lab. He lowered Eddie’s arm so that it hung the way it had been. He let the gun drop to the carpet.
Just before he turned away, Tony had another thought. He opened the whiskey drawer.
Yep.
He removed Eddie’s .38 and put it around his back, into the empty holster. He left the drawer open.
Ray was looking at him.
“What?”
“All finished?”
“About.” Tony straightened, looked things over. “What do you think?”
“I think we should be going,” Ray said.
26
Nine out of ten women murdered are killed by men, the fact sheet said.
She’d found it in the blue folder Detective Kenna had given her. Gwen had seen the sheet before. It was a flyer published by a local coalition titled “The Truth About Domestic Violence.” One of her professors had used it as a handout in her social welfare seminar last semester.
Of those women, half are slain by their husbands or partners.
In fact, she’d seen the flyer even before then. A couple of times a year, somebody from the YWCA would go around the student union and distribute copies to all the tables and bulletin boards.
The first time she’d looked at this stupid piece of paper, she’d been at school. Sitting in the auditorium with a hundred other girls, a handful of amusingly uncomfortable-looking guys.