“Did you say Price?”
“That’s right. Know him?”
“No,” Worth said. “But I recognize the name.”
“How’s that?”
“Gwen said he came to see her in the hospital,” Worth said. “Price and another guy. Both friends of Russell James. Detective Kenna talked to them.”
“Happen to remember the other guy’s name?”
“Mather,” Worth said. “First name Troy, I think.”
“Dead on arrival at Mercy,” Vargas said. “Arrived at oh-five-thirty with a bullet hole in his chest and about eight pints of blood in the passenger side of Price’s Le Mans.” Vargas looked at Worth. “You’re sure you’ve never seen the kid before?”
“I’d remember the tattoos.”
“Yeah.” Vargas nodded. “He didn’t pick you out, either.”
Worth began to grasp the situation.
The lineup had been for Derek Price. Price had been the person on the other side of the glass. Vargas had tried for a connection and hadn’t gotten one; Worth had clipped another wire and still hadn’t detonated himself.
How much grace had it bought him?
“Price isn’t the shooter,” he said, testing.
“According to Price, Mather called him after the fact.” Vargas reached into a folder and handed Worth a sheet of paper. It was a printout of a digital photo, tagged with an evidence number. A blood-covered cell phone lying on a sidewalk. “Price initially claimed he drove from his apartment to Mather’s location and took him to the ER from there.”
“Initially,” Worth said.
“Something didn’t track,” Vargas said. “Based on the amount of blood at the location, the amount of blood in the car, the time stamp on the call, the attending doc’s assessment of the wound…Price either picked Mather up earlier than he stated, or drove him farther. One way or another, his time frame doesn’t work.”
Worth said, “Huh.”
Price had picked Mather up at the corner of 72nd and Q, Vargas said. The blood trail led six blocks in the opposite direction, all the way back to the warehouse/retailer where Price and Mather had been employed: Tice Is Nice Quality Used and Discount Furniture.
“That’s where Russell James worked,” Worth said. “The voice mails on his phone? Almost all of them came from Eddie Tice.”
Vargas nodded. “Also dead. Along with a third employee, Darla Mackler.”
“Jesus.” Three bodies. “You’re kidding.”
No wonder the place had gone hot. Three bodies constituted nearly ten percent of the citywide homicide rate for the entire year to date. All in one night.
All around Russell James.
“Eddie Tice had a nephew in the department,” Vargas said. “Kind of coincidental.”
“Who?”
“Tony Briggs.”
It wasn’t possible.
Vargas said, “There’s one other thing.”
Worth didn’t know what to say. He actually felt light-headed.
“Detective Kenna and Gwen Mullen are here.”
“Here at Central?”
Vargas nodded and said, “Briggs called the safe unit with instructions for the money drop thirty minutes ago.”
30
Within a few months after returning to a regular patrol rotation, Tony Briggs and Ray Salcedo had established one of the highest collar rates in the Northeast District. They led the precinct in drug arrests—presumably utilizing the knowledge of markets and players they’d developed over the course of their two-year stint with the Narcotics unit.
But irregularities in their undercover operations—including discrepancies in the amounts of cash and drugs seized during a joint OPD/DEA raid on the Orlando Heights housing projects last year—had attracted internal notice even before they went back into uniform.
“Based on their pattern of arrests, we suspected Ray and Tony were manipulating the street trade in certain areas,” Detective Neil Granger said.
He pushed up his sleeves and repositioned the condenser mike he’d taped along Worth’s sternum. Worth winced as the tape pulled hair.
“Ten months ago,” Granger said, “after ICE hit the Latinos, we started seeing new product filter in.”
Operation Community Shield. Last January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the department antigang unit, and uniformed officers from the Southeast District—including Worth himself—had arrested and/or deported more than fifty key members of Mara Salvatrucha, Sureños, Lomas, and other South O Street gangs that had come to dominate the distribution of cocaine and methamphetamine in recent years.
The operation had disrupted the Latino traffic for the short term. But in the years since Kelly had been gunned down, the black sets in the Northeast had mostly fallen into disorganiziation, turf warfare, and pointless homicide. A perfect time for a new crew to set up shop.
“In twenty years, I’ve never seen a serious heroin market,” Granger said. “Not in this town. But all of a sudden, we start seeing the crack and amp slingers carrying around dime bags of China White. And it’s not coming through the Salvadorans or the Mexicans.”
The supply shift Detective Granger described coincided roughly with Briggs and Salcedo’s return to the street.
Worth had still been married then, he realized. Not by much, but still. It hardly seemed possible, from then to this, that not even a year had passed.
“How’s that?” Granger said.
The audio technician in the other room adjusted his headphones and gave a thumbs-up.
“Before the public defender got here, we explained the particulars of involuntary manslaughter to Derek Price,” Mark Vargas said. “He’s been highly voluntary since then.”
“According to Price, this money Tony and Ray are looking for was supposed to have been en route to Chicago,” Granger said. “Price says that Russell James muled contraband between here and there, transporting product and returning cash.”
He motioned for Worth to button his shirt, checking for bulges.
“Price and Mather distributed the product to the dealer level via furniture trucks, inside television boxes and whatnot,” Granger said. “Price says they handled collections along the same routes. Ray and Tony handled protection and managed beefs on the street level.”
From the corner, Captain Torres said, “The ironic thing is, last compstat? Drug violence is down in the Northeast.” In her smirk, Worth saw the Gina Torres he remembered from the academy. “How’s that for community policing?”
“Regular crimedogs, Ray and Tony.” Granger motioned for Worth to unbutton his shirt again. “Cleaning up the streets one degenerate dirtbag at a time. How’s that feel?”
Worth shrugged. “Like a microphone taped to my chest.”
“Good, that means it’s working.” Granger crossed two more strips of tape over the base of the mike bud and said, “Still reading okay?”
Another thumbs up-from the audio tech.
According to Levon Williams, Tony Briggs had been placed on emergency family leave effective this afternoon. Ray Salcedo had posted for duty as normal, no doubt to maintain reasonable appearances.
The only real surprise was that the money drop wasn’t going to be a drop after all.
It was going to be a handoff. Adding yet another twist Worth hadn’t anticipated, Tony Briggs’s call had been to set up a face-to-face meeting, in public, at a midtown bar.
Worth felt as though he’d reached the inner core of the bomb.
It was getting difficult to keep track of the final snarl of wires. There were lies spliced with truths. Interconnected triggers. Who knew how many variables? All with one simple, unstable, incontrovertible fact at the center.
“Russell James has obviously been taken out of the picture,” the new guy said.
His name was Terry Farmer, a Special Agent with the DEA’s Omaha District Office. He’d arrived at Central Station this afternoon.