Maybe you came here to rob me.”
“Maybe I came here to kill you,” Jace said. “That woman you murdered at Speed Couriers? She was a good person.”
“So?” Davis shrugged. “I just do my job. It’s nothing personal.”
Jace wanted to shoot him then, just
“I hope my brother doesn’t get killed.” Tyler tried to sound matter-of-fact about it. The truth was, he was so scared, he thought he might throw up.
“Kev won’t let that happen.”
They sat hunched down in the front seat of Parker’s car. Well, Andi was hunched more than he was. It didn’t take that much hunching for Tyler to be pretty much out of sight.
“Are you his girlfriend?” he asked.
“Naw . . . Kev’s a loner. Until this week, I hadn’t seen him in a long time,” she said. “He’s a good guy. He didn’t used to be, but he is now. He used to be a jerk.”
“And then what?”
“And then he took a long look at himself and he didn’t like what he saw. I’m pretty sure he’s the first man in recorded history to make the decision to grow and change, and actually pull it off.”
“He seems pretty cool—for a cop.”
“You don’t like cops?”
Tyler shook his head.
“Why is that?”
He shrugged with one shoulder. “’Cause that’s how it is.”
He turned away to avoid her trying to figure him out. Headlights flashed as a car turned toward them.
Tyler jumped in his seat, fumbled for the walkie-talkie, pressed the call button.
“Scout to Leader, Scout to Leader! Bogie! Bogie!”
If there was one thing Parker hated, it was a wild card, unless the wild card was himself. Davis had called in a ringer, and what the hell was that about? He didn’t need help getting a pack of negatives from one kid, and there was no way he was actually going to pay for them.
He touched the button on his mike. “Roger that. We’ve got a bogie coming in.”
Countdown to showtime.
“You’re a real piece of shit,” Jace said.
Davis didn’t react. “Yeah, people tell me that all the time.” He went to reach inside his coat. “I want a smoke.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Jace ordered.
Davis gave a big sigh. “Amateurs.”
“Yeah,” Jace said. “Amateurs make mistakes. Get jumpy. Pull the trigger when they don’t mean to.”
That smile crawled across Davis’s wide face again. “You want to kill me so bad, you can taste it. Maybe you’ve got a future in my business.”
Jace said nothing. The creep was trying to yank his chain, distract him. His arms were getting tired holding the gun out in front of him. Where the hell was the guy with the money?
Headlights bobbed nearby. He almost made the mistake of turning to look.
The air around them seemed as thick as the ocean. Hard to breathe. The only sound he could hear was the black guy snoring on the park bench.
“Here comes the money, honey,” Davis said.
Parker waited for the new member of the troupe to appear. At Tyler’s alert, his sensitivity to every stimulus heightened to an almost unbearable level. Every sound seemed louder. The touch of the night air on his skin was too much. He was more aware of his breathing, of his heart tripping faster.
His money was on Phillip Crowne.
The daughter, Caroline, may have had motive, but he couldn’t see a girl that age being able to pull it off— having her mother killed, setting up her lover to take the fall, and keeping it all quiet. No. Young women in love were all about passion and drama and over-the-top demonstrations of both.
Nor would Rob Cole have taken the fall for her. Guys like Cole didn’t take responsibility for their own actions, let alone someone else’s. If Rob Cole had thought that Caroline had murdered Tricia, he would have been singing that song at the top of his lungs.
Parker liked the brother for it. Andi Kelly had told him Phillip Crowne had been seen having dinner with his sister the night she was killed. The dinner conversation had been serious. Phillip claimed Tricia had talked about divorcing Cole, but the discussion could just as easily have been about Tricia wanting to blow the whistle on her brother’s siphoning of funds from the charitable trust.
No one had ever been able to prove Phillip had been helping himself—but then, everyone had been focused on stringing up Rob Cole. A celebrity scandal was so much more interesting than plain old vanilla embezzling. There was nothing sexy or exciting about Phillip Crowne, while going after Rob Cole had all the ingredients of America’s favorite pastime: tearing down the idol.
Besides, Rob Cole had motive, means, and opportunity. He’d been right there at the scene of the crime when it had happened. He had no viable alibi for the time of the murder. Parker was willing to bet Phillip Crowne hadn’t gotten more than a perfunctory look from RHD, if that. And it hadn’t hurt him to be the son of one of the most influential men in the city either. Norman Crowne backed the DA. Phillip Crowne and Tony Giradello had known each other since law school.
If Eddie Davis and Lenny Lowell had been blackmailing Phillip, was it such a stretch to imagine Phillip Crowne going to his old buddy Giradello for a favor? It wasn’t that difficult for Parker to imagine Giradello selling justice to Crowne. There wasn’t a man on the planet hungrier or more ambitious than Anthony Giradello.
All of it fell into place like the heavy, glossy pieces of an expensive puzzle. Giradello couldn’t let a couple of mutts like Davis and Lowell bring down his well-heeled pal, or ruin the trial that would make his own name a household word. If he sent in Bradley Kyle and Moose Roddick, who also stood to benefit from convicting Rob Cole, he could manipulate the situation, make it go away.
Parker’s blood went cold at the idea that maybe Kyle hadn’t meant to miss anybody he’d been shooting at in Pershing Square. Davis was a big loose end. Jace Damon had the negatives. Abby Lowell was a wild card.
He had wished for a case to make a comeback. This one was an embarrassment of scandalous riches and human tragedy. He thought of Eta Fitzgerald and her four motherless children, and wished he could trade the case to give her back her life. But the best he could do was nail her killer and the people whose actions had ultimately been the catalyst for her murder.
A figure was walking toward the plaza, toward Davis and Damon. The moment of truth was at hand.
Parker raised his glasses and focused in . . . and the world dropped from under him.
49
Jace didn’t recognize the person coming toward them, coming from behind Eddie. From a distance, the light was too poor. And as the person drew nearer, Jace caught only an on-again, off-again glimpse over Davis’s shoulder.
“This guy had better have the money,” he said.
Davis glanced over his shoulder. Jace kept the .22 trained on him, but pulled it back and held it in front of himself at waist height.
Davis opened his stance, turning a half step so he could see his benefactor and still see Jace from the corner of his eye.
The other person spoke. “Where are the negatives?”
“Where’s the money?” Jace asked, allowing himself only a second to register the fact that the third person in their group turned out to be a woman.
She looked at Davis. “Who’s he?”
“Middleman,” Davis said.
