“You do know him?”
He nodded.
“From his father’s grocery?”
Another nod.
“You sell him dope?”
He shrugged. “I know he gets high.”
“Did he ask you to hook up his cousin, Frank Crenshaw, with a gun?”
Mendez shook his head.
“Did Crenshaw come to you for the gun?”
He shook his head again.
I didn’t see any of the tics or twitches that Kate relied on as signs of deception. He was looking at me straight on, not ducking. His answers were all gestures except for one spoken reply that didn’t answer the question directly, making it hard to assess his honesty and even harder for me to testify against him.
“Did you sell or give the gun to Crenshaw?”
Mendez smiled, his lips closed. “No.”
“Then where did Crenshaw get the gun?”
“He stole it. Now where do I find Brett Staley?”
At first, I thought it was another non-answer, and then I realized he was telling me the truth, the whole truth. I ignored his question.
“Of course. You didn’t want to send your people to gun shows, especially in places where they’d stand out. That would’ve made it too easy for ATF to put you in the mix. Better to contract it out with guys who’d blend in, look like every other redneck with a confederate flag. But I’m guessing they didn’t deliver. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You don’t have the guns. What happened? Did they want more money or get a better offer?”
“Brett Staley, where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Mendez raised his gun an inch from my eye, preparing to squeeze the trigger. “Wrong answer.”
Chapter Seventy
Headlights appeared at the top of the hill, a car rolling our way, one of Mendez’s men trotting toward it, looking back at him.
“It’s Luis-he’s here.”
The car followed an arc, stopping when it was perpendicular to the driver’s side of Quinn’s SUV, engine off, high-beams washing over us. Luis stepped out, clinging to the frame of the open door.
“Kill the lights,” Mendez said.
Luis ignored him, stumbling toward us, cradling his left arm with his right, his head down.
Mendez lowered his gun, turning toward him, shouting. “What’s the matter? Are you deaf? I said kill the fucking lights!”
Luis didn’t answer, falling to his knees, then flattening out on the ground. Mendez and the two men who’d been holding me up rushed to his side, the driver of the Lexus hesitating, holding back, his gun aimed at me. The rear door on the driver’s side of Luis’s car opened. It was Quinn. The driver of the Lexus followed my eyes and saw him, ignoring me, yelling, and taking aim.
I hit the driver in the throat with my elbow, folding him in half, hitting him again, this time on the back of his neck, dropping him to the pavement, a kick to the head putting him out. I grabbed his gun as Quinn drew down on Mendez and the others.
“On the ground, on your face and spread out,” I said.
Quinn retrieved his canvas bag from the SUV, sifting through the contents for plastic handcuffs, binding each of them and emptying their pockets. He scooped up their guns, cell phones, and car keys, throwing them over the chain-link fence protecting the abandoned steel mill while I gathered our guns.
“What about the other two?” I asked Quinn, “the guy who was in the car with you and the one at the top of the hill.”
“They’re resting uncomfortably.”
I handed him the orange with the knife still embedded in it.
“Mendez didn’t want this after all.”
Lying on the pavement, Mendez shouted at us. “You’re dead men, both of you!”
Quinn walked over to him, pulled his hair, raising his head, and crammed the orange in his mouth. “Not today, amigo.”
“So all that win-win, expand-the-pie bullshit,” I asked Quinn as we left Mendez behind, “is that just bullshit?”
“The basic principles apply across the board, but the board is a big place. Works great with two neighbors fighting over whose dog barks louder, but not so well with gun-running drug dealers used to getting their way the hard way. Mendez didn’t give it a chance, so we had to use a zero-sum strategy he understands. I hope you got what you came for.”
“All that and more. Mendez didn’t steal the guns. That was Frank Crenshaw, Nick Staley, and Jimmy Martin. Brett Staley had to have been part of it. They were supposed to sell the guns to Mendez, but something went wrong, the deal didn’t go through.”
“Maybe they got greedy and wanted more money,” Quinn said.
“That, or maybe they found another customer and decided to let the market set the price. Nuestra Familia isn’t the only cartel buying guns north of the border.”
“So Mendez or his competition upped the ante, killing Crenshaw and Nick Staley and going after Jimmy Martin.”
“Probably to convince them to sell at the right price. And, right about now, I’d say that the best offer Brett Staley is going to get is his life for those guns.”
“That will be the last deal he makes,” Quinn said. “No way do they leave him alive after taking out the others. And that means Jimmy Martin is doing time on borrowed time. But why kill Eberto Garza?”
“Eberto Garza was an accident, a victim of friendly fire if it was Mendez or mistaken identity if it was someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. All I do know is that Brett Staley is the key now. He’s on the run, and I’m not the only one chasing him.”
Quinn nodded. “Where do you want me to drop you?”
“Had enough?”
“I told Kate Scranton I’d get you to a meeting with Mendez and bring you back in one piece. It wasn’t pretty, but I did my thing.”
“I envy you.”
“Why?”
“You know when to quit.”
“In my business, that’s the name of the game.”
“You ever look back, wonder if you should have stuck around or ask yourself if there was something else you could have done?”
Quinn shook his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. You’re a crusader, and I’m a mercenary. You have to feel that way, or you don’t have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But that’s a luxury I can’t afford.”
“Understood. You can drop me at Roni Chase’s house.”
“What are you going to do if she stiff-arms you again?”
“Offer her an orange.”
Quinn’s cell phone rang when we pulled up to Roni’s house. He answered and handed me the phone.
