“I didn’t come up with it, Max. Booker did. He’s the one who threw the possibility out there. He says that the guys started moving away from him, finding different machines to work when he was in the gym, stopped inviting him along to Dolphins games, and didn’t have him over to their homes for parties like before.”
“And this was before the accident?”
“Yeah, and now they’ve shut him out completely.”
The waitress came and cleared the table and filled my cup.
“So let me guess which of these lifters was taking the orders and handling the money before it went over to Booker,” I finally said, already guessing at the answer.
“You got it,” Sherry shook her head. “McKenzie. Why is it that the mouthiest, yappiest dog in the kennel is the one they put in charge?”
“Every gang has its lead mutt,” I said. “The rest like to come in after it takes the first bite.”
I looked over the rim of my cup and noticed that Sherry was shifting in her seat, subtly rocking her weight from hip to hip. She was anxious and fidgety.
“Are you going to check McKenzie’s IA file?” I said, taking a stab at what she might be thinking.
“I could do that. But it would have to be handled carefully,” she said, catching me watching her. “For some reason, I don’t want to blow this guy’s trust.”
“Booker?”
“Yeah, he’s obviously coming out. Telling me all this is a big step for him, Max. If he thinks I’m just using him for some internal steroid investigation bullshit, he’ll shut down again, and never trust anyone.”
I just nodded, tried not to see the questions that started popping up in my head. Sherry was concerned about some stranger shutting down, when she herself had never completely opened up about her own feelings about her amputation. Maybe this guy Booker was the mirror she’d refused to look into. Maybe if I just let it go, she’d see her own reflection in there, and we could all move on.
Leaving a hefty tip and a wink to the waitress, we left for the parking lot. The old Gran Fury had a big enough trunk to easily fit Sherry’s wheelchair. I was just hitting the ignition when my cell rang.
“Max, I apologize for the lateness of the call,” Billy said.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been notified by a source in the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office that they have arrested the last of the gunmen who chased you and Andres Carmen. Deputies from Broward have been called to come and question them tomorrow.”
“That’s a good thing, Billy,” I said, reading the slight anxiety in his voice.
“True. But my information is that they belong to a well-documented gang up here, one that numbers some two dozen members.”
“Right,” I said. Sometimes Billy has the lawyer’s way of circumlocution.
“The newest arrestee already admitted that there was some kind of Wild West-style bounty out on Andres Carmen. I fear that just because they failed in their attempt doesn’t mean the next level in their gang won’t take the hit money offer.”
“You need me to go up and get Andres out of his girlfriend’s trailer?”
“I would be remiss if I didn’t at least try,” he said.
“I’m on my way.”
– 16 -
It was like being back walking a summer beat behind South Street in Philadelphia: middle of the night, sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades and settling in my waistband, eyes trying to adjust to the dark while searching every shadowed corner and parked vehicle with a clear shot at the trailer in which Andres Carmen was still staying.
It was like sniffing out the drug runners and their hidey holes in the city. As a foot patrolman, I’d known most of the dealers who fed the appetites of the South Street crowd in the 1990s. It was always a game to actually catch them with product in their possession. Sometimes I’d win; sometimes not. But back when I was creeping the alleys, I had a badge and a gun. Tonight, even though I might find some gangbangers waiting to hit our friend Andres, I was sneaking around with nothing but a PI business card in my pocket.
I’d parked the Gran Fury two blocks away and put on my old blue-black windbreaker just to give me some cover. The night was quiet and warm. And as I did a perimeter around the trailer, I tried not to underestimate the shooters who had fired first at me and Luz Carmen, and then had tried to chase down Andres. Yes, you could write them off as idiot street criminals hard up for money now that the drug trade had moved to a more businesslike, hand-to-hand market. But these guys had been armed with automatic weapons. And they were brazen enough to stage a wild-ass car chase in the middle of the day. So would they not just storm Andres’s girlfriend’s place if they knew he was there, and kill him the way same they tried to in the cul-de-sac?
Sure, that was an option. But I was hoping that wasn’t going to happen while I was inside talking Andres into leaving. Maybe my little surveillance here had more to do with self-preservation than trying to save the kid again.
As I tightened the circle around the trailer, I took in the sounds and smells of the beaten-down trailer park: the distinctive odor of overused kitty litter dumped behind one place; the leftovers from a recent fish-fry, stashed in an old-style metal garbage can, some procrastinating resident leaving it in the alley instead of at the pickup spot on the street. The overloud blabbing of a television sitcom spilled from a window screen along with canned laughter.
Closing in from the north, I spotted a misplaced light. Closer still, I finally made out some sort of battery- powered candle set on a picnic table. A young girl, middle-school age, was huddled over what looked like a fat textbook, with a pencil in hand, scratching at a notebook. From the trailer beside her came the noise of an argument between two adults. Something crashed inside, and the raw sound of flesh slapping flesh stung the air.
I watched the girl put her forehead down onto the open pages of the book. Though I tried to move away quietly, she looked up at the sound of my footfall, and we made eye contact. I raised my index finger to my lips. Shssss.
She rolled her eyes at me-whatever-and went back to her homework.
Finally, I stepped up to the door of Andres’s and looked first to the spot where Billy and I had seen the pit bull in the light of day. There appeared to be nothing there, though I was half-expecting a glowing pair of evil eyes. Taking one more glance behind me, I rapped on the door. It opened slowly, making that gum rubber sound of a seal being pried.
When I stepped into the light, I was greeted by the black-eyed barrel of an over-under shotgun. At the other end was the scrunched face of a blonde woman, her eyes narrowed to slits, her forehead furrowed beyond her age.
“Who the fuck are you?”
While my hands were shoulder-high, palms facing outward, I explained who I was, and that I did not deserve to die on the rusted iron steps of a faded Florida house trailer. The woman, small-boned and too defiant for her size, finally backed up, but did not put the shotgun down. When I stepped up into the entry, the smell of onion-fried liver hit my nose, which might have been pleasant under other circumstances, but in the claustrophobic space- already ripe with a scent of its own-I felt my stomach twinge.
The teenage kid was still on the couch as if he hadn’t moved since the last time I was here. He cut his eyes to me for only long enough to assure his boredom, and then went back to the television screen running the same Grand Theft Auto game he’d been on before. He was about the same age as the girl out in the dark working on her studies. The juxtaposition made me feel sorry for him.
“Andres,” the woman screeched down the hall. “Your boy is here.”
Your boy?
Andres came out wearing a strap T-shirt that used to pass as white and the floppy blue scrub pants I presumed he wore at work.
