let you get away with that crap in front of your ex-wife, but I’m not taking any more shit off of you unless you want Roni Chase auditioning for penitentiary girlfriend of the week.”
“How’d you know I’d be here?”
“You didn’t come out the front door, so I figured you went out the back. I knew you weren’t going to walk all day, which meant you’d take the bus, just like you did going downtown yesterday. I turned the corner onto Brookside when you were paying your fare. When I saw which bus you were on, I guessed you were coming here, and if you weren’t, I knew these good people would know how to reach you and that they would understand the importance of cooperating with federal law enforcement.”
“You aren’t that fast, and you aren’t that smart.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Did you get the text message I sent you this morning?” Simon asked.
“No,” I said, looking at the screen on my phone, Simon’s message telling me to come to his office first thing. “I was on the bus and didn’t hear my phone.”
Simon, his jaw clenched, pointed at Jennings. “That’s how he got here. He’s monitoring your phone. He strolled in here, flashed his ATF badge, and made himself at home. You care to tell us what he’s doing here and why this is the first we know about him?”
Simon was angry with both of us. He didn’t like Jennings barging in his office and telling him what to do, and he liked even less that I had left him out of the loop. That was Simon’s problem, but I decided to make it Jennings’s problem.
He had made me take a blood oath to keep our arrangement private. Yet, here he was putting it on the table in front of the people he wanted me to keep in the dark. His tactics of squeezing me, using Roni as bait, and grandstanding in my kitchen and Simon’s office were high-pressure moves, but they put as much pressure on him as on me, each escalation increasing the risks to him that the whole thing would come apart. That’s what happens when a case becomes too personal. The question was why he had crossed that line.
“You tell them, Jennings.”
He rose from the chair, standing behind it, putting distance between us, stalling, his lack of a ready answer more evidence that he was improvising, making it up as he went along.
“A gun dealer was robbed about a month ago. The thieves got away with sixty-three pieces. A man named Frank Crenshaw used one of those guns to kill his wife. Roni Chase shot Crenshaw but didn’t kill him. Someone else finished him off with a gun registered to Roni.”
He paused, took a deep breath, and looked at Simon and Lucy.
“We have reason to believe that Jack has been obstructing justice by interfering with ATF’s investigation of the robbery. Jack agreed to cooperate with ATF’s investigation in return for a favorable recommendation to the U.S. attorney, only he seems to have forgotten what it means to cooperate. I told him I’d keep our deal quiet, but he’s forced my hand.”
Lucy and Simon rolled their eyes. Kate cocked her head to one side, staring at Jennings. None of them said a word. Lucy broke the silence.
“Why bring it here?” she asked Jennings. “Why involve us?”
“Call it professional courtesy,” Jennings said. “No need for any of you to get painted with the same brush if you can persuade Jack to hold up his end of the deal.”
“Meaning,” Lucy said, “you want us to tell Jack we’ll cut him off unless he’s a good boy, and, if we don’t, you’ll gin up a special load of crap for us like the one you just dumped on him.”
“Like I said, call it professional courtesy.”
“So,” Simon said, “what about it, Jack? Are you going to tell the nice man what he wants to know or are you going to let him rain on us?”
“You guys have umbrellas?” I asked.
“Yep,” Lucy said.
“And hip waders if we need them,” Simon added.
“Keep them handy because right now, I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance of a shit storm.”
“Don’t push me,” Jennings said.
“Wouldn’t think of it. I’ll give you what I have, but I want something in return.”
Jennings took a step toward me. “You’re in no position to negotiate.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Your obstruction-of-justice fantasy won’t sell. I’m betting that you’re one bad break away from taking a long fall and I’m the only guy who can pull you back or push you off the ledge. So, what’s it going to be?”
The veins in his neck were popping, and the furies were gathering in my belly, both of us fighting to maintain control. He blinked first, letting out a breath and taking a step back.
“One shot. That’s all you get.”
Chapter Fifty-four
My head snapped, but the rest of me held steady. “Let’s talk about Cesar Mendez.”
He nodded, his eyes narrow and wary. “Nuestra Familia.”
“They’ve got the concession on drugs in Northeast Kansas City and, unless you’ve been drunk on the job, you know that and you know that guns are a growth industry for Mexican gangs.”
“None of which is news,” he said. “Drug cartels are turning parts of Mexico into feudal states. They need guns, and they’re getting a lot of them from this country. They’ve got affiliates in all our major cities. Mendez has ties to NF in Mexico.”
“Which means he’s your number-one suspect in the gun robbery.”
“And I wasn’t drunk on the job.”
“Then you must have been totally in the bag when you came up with that crazy-assed story about me obstructing your investigation. So let’s talk about Brett Staley.”
“You talk. You’re the man with all the answers.”
“Brett’s father, Nick Staley, told me that Mendez was a regular at his grocery, that Brett bought drugs from him. Brett had to know that Mendez was the man to see if you wanted to buy a gun without all the paperwork. Frank Crenshaw was Brett’s cousin. He wanted a gun, but he had a record, which meant that he couldn’t fill out the paperwork, so Brett hooked him up with Mendez. When Crenshaw killed his wife, Mendez got worried that he would cut a deal with the prosecutor, so he gave Brett a choice. Pop his cousin or get popped. Brett asked Mendez for a gun, but Mendez wasn’t that stupid, so Brett stole the only gun he knew about, which happened to be Roni’s gun. How am I doing so far?”
“You’ve got my interest.”
“Here’s where it gets real interesting. Brett shows up at the hospital right after Crenshaw is killed. He says he’s there to meet with Roni, which Roni corroborates. Quincy Carter takes a natural interest in that coincidence, but he loses interest when you show up. Everybody goes home, and Brett drops off the radar. Now I’m just a disabled FBI agent who shakes when he should shoot, but even I can put that together.”
Lucy said to Jennings, “Me too. Brett Staley was your informant. You couldn’t let him be questioned in Crenshaw’s murder without exposing him and losing the chance to take Mendez down.”
“Head of the class, Luce,” I said. “It’s an old problem with no good way out. Your informant commits a crime. Arrest him, and your case falls apart. Cover for him, and your ass belongs to him as long as he lives; he needs money, dope, a woman, or a new address, you can’t turn him down. It’s worse than having a kid that stays in school forever or a wife that thinks shopping is an Olympic sport.”
Jennings’s nostrils flared, and Lucy pricked him with another needle.
“That’s no way to go through life.”
“No, it isn’t. Spend your career going after the bad guys, and some punk tries to take it all away from you. But, if the punk goes away, so does the problem.”
“Enter Mendez,” Kate said. “That’s why he was looking for Brett.”
Jennings swiveled toward Kate, giving her a hard look.
