Mack nodded. Fong didn’t catch on, he asked, “What?”
Mack said, “One is a psycho who liked the idea and wished he’d thought of it first.”
“And the other?” Fong asked.
I said, “The other is someone borrowing the MO to dispose of a problem.”
“Okay, so we still got this puke for the others, right?” Fong asked, missing the full ramifications of the words.
Mack said nothing and held my gaze. He put it together in his mind and didn’t like the end result.
Fong leaned forward. “What? What are you guys thinking?”
I said, “I really don’t like the way this is playing out.”
Mack looked out the window into the dark night. “He’s an asshole and I wanted to rub his face in it, but not this. The team’s reputation’s on the line, the entire department.”
“Who?”
I turned in the seat to talk to Fong. “My car in the Taco Quickie parking lot.”
Fong wasn’t chosen for the Violent Crimes Team out of ineptness. He cut me off. “What about your car? What are you trying to say? ” It came together for him, only he fought it more than we did. We knew the “who,” we just couldn’t rectify in our minds the why.
“What did you recover out of my car?”
Fong didn’t hesitate. “Dope and a gun. Rock coke, about three grams.”
I didn’t smile. His reply confirmed it.
Mack came out of his reverie, “What was in your car?”
Mack made the leap. I now stood as a full partner to be trusted with covering his back and more, the reputation of the Violent Crimes Team. “I had forty-five thousand cash, taken from Q-Ball Bridges, and a Smith & Wesson model 645.”
Mack hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
No question. He believed me.
Fong sat back. “Son of a bitch.”
Ruben sputtered, “I didn’t do it. I’m innocent.”
“Shut up.” Fong elbowed him in the chest.
“What kind of gun did you find in my trunk?”
Once I accepted the “who,” truly believed it, the beauty of the flawless, perfectly executed plan, awed me.
Mack read my mind. “Something’s missing. He wouldn’t do it for forty-five K. No chance. If he went off the reservation, he’s smarter than that. He could take down a hundred times more.”
As each move fell into place, more questions popped up. I had been made a patsy to the point of comedy. It was almost funny all the crap he’d laid at my door. “Tell me about the gun. Who is Kendrick?”
Mack’s head whipped back. “The last guy torched.”
I stayed ahead of Mack in my thinking, not by much though. “Who found the gun in the trunk of my car?”
Fong cut in, “He did. Hey, should we be talking in front of this shitbag?” Referring to Ruben.
Mack said, “The last guy torched is the key.”
When he said it, I’d already gone by that part. I’d played back all of our conversations from the very beginning. “It’s not just forty-five K.”
No one said anything.
I said, “How much money did you guys get from my crash pad on 117th?”
Fong said, “We haven’t found any money yet.”
Mack said, “How much?”
“Total? Close to two fifty.”
Fong said, “Where the hell you get that kind of money?”
I didn’t answer and went on. “The ballistics of the gun in my trunk matched the Bressler kill, didn’t it?”
Mack nodded. “It all comes back to Ahern, doesn’t it?”
“Who contacted Jumbo to set up the take-down at his house?”
Mack said nothing.
I looked at Fong. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, said, “What are we going to do?”
“It’s a double-blind, me and Jumbo. We need to give Jumbo a visit.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“No chance.” Mack shook his head. “No way. What good will that do? He’s too smart. Jumbo’ll just lawyer up. And besides, who’s he going to be more afraid of? Us or him?”
“I could talk to Jumbo. Guaranteed he won’t want to see me.”
Fong smirked. “You’re on your way back to the can.”
“Stop and think about what you just said.”
“All right, I’ll say it again, you’re going back to the can. I’m not putting my ass on the line for you.”
I didn’t look at Mack and take an unfair advantage. He owed me. I let it hang in the air. When Mack didn’t offer up, I spelled it out for Fong. “What did you book me on?”
“Murder, multiple counts, ex-con with a gun, possession of cocaine.”
“And you base all of this on what?”
He didn’t answer. He knew.
“I’ll tell you what you based it on,” I said. “Planted evidence in the trunk of my car. And to make matters worse, your whole team was on me during these purported murders, most of them anyway, following my every move. It would only take one instance where you had the eye on me the same time a murder went down. Just one. You’ll have detailed records of your surveillance. How are you going to explain that in court? I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t do it.”
“You admitted you had forty-five thousand and a gun in the trunk of that car, and you’re on parole, that’s two to five on top of the parole violation.”
“Sure, you’re right. Produce the gun and the money. What you got is pie in the sky.”
“We booked you and took you out. We have to take you back in or it’s our asses. The court’ll let you out when the DA scraps the case.”
“You can blue sheet me, an 849.b2.”
Fong waited for Mack to ring in on the subject. When he didn’t, Fong shook his head. “No, Homicide’ll have our asses, making a unilateral decision like that. It’s their case now, not ours.”
Correct, if you wanted to follow procedure. Didn’t matter if we could prove I hadn’t done it. Protocol dictated Homicide handles the disposition or gets their nose bent out of shape. I had interrogated too many suspects and interviewed too many victims. Fong held something back. I opened the door.
Fong broke leather, pulled his gun. “Don’t.”
I put my foot out on the curb.
Fong pointed the large handgun at me.
I looked at Mack and slid out. Mack put his hand on the gun, lowered it.
Fong said nothing.
I closed the door, got down on one knee, leaned in. “What do you have my girl for?”
“Aiding and abetting a felon.” Mack said in a lowered voice.
“If you no longer have the felon then how can she be abetting?” My heart started to soar upward into the cloudless night.
“There’s—” Fong started to say.
Mack held up his hand to quiet him. “There’s the other charge.”
He yanked me back down to earth. I got up and walked around the front of the car, the headlights off. I wanted to see his eyes. He rolled down his window.
I put my hands on the ledge and got a little closer. All this time no one had mentioned the kids. They sat like the elephant in the room.
I said, “What other charge?” My throat went dry, my voice cracked.
He waited a long interminable minute. “You know, Bruno.”
“Say it.” I said, the bottom dropping out of my world. What did they have? Was it enough to hold her? Was it enough to hold me, and he was just going to let me walk because of what had happened between us? If so, I couldn’t let it go down that way. I would have to get back in the car, take the fall with her.
“What it’s always been about.” His pale blue eyes, sad.
“What? Say it. I want you to say it.”
“The kids.”
A large knot rose up in my chest. To deny it disrespected the man, someone I had grown to like. I tried to speak, my voice sandpaper at the back of my throat. “You guys don’t have a case.”
He didn’t move. My heart skipped. I watched his eyes.
“No, we don’t have a case.”
I stood and looked down the street as my eyes teared up, that old emotional man thing again. I said, “Then you’re going to release her?”
“The FBI is coming down in the morning to put a hold on her. They’re adopting the case.”
I rode that same roller coaster back down into the basement. “You could go in and blue sheet her tonight. You could do that.”
“It’d be my job.”
I wanted to tell him so much. Tell him about each child, the untenable environments, the sadistic physical abuse, and the system set up to protect them that put them right back into harm’s way. I couldn’t help it, I threw my trump card. I leaned back in, the tears heavy in my eyes, said, “You got a cigarette?”
Mack never looked away, “Man, I’m soaked in gasoline and you wanna smoke?” He smiled. “I got to get these things off. You take care of yourself.” When he put it in drive, the red brake lights lit up the dark street. He didn’t move.
He finally said, “You’re not going after Jumbo, are you?”
I shook my head.
He said, “I didn’t think so. Tell Wicks—tell him I’m the one that let the junkyard dog loose on his ass. You got about a two-hour lead, enough for me to do the paper on this case, then I’ll be right behind you.”
He hit the gas. The back tires screeched.
“What about my girl?”
He didn’t stop or even slow down. The purple-black night slammed down. It took my breath away. I started running.