McCone And Friends

“Who is he?”

“I don’t have to talk about-”

“Look, Pope, we know all about the Windsong and your trips to Baja. And about the dealers who come to the yawl in between. The rear cabin is littered with grass and coke; I can have the police there in -”

“Jesus! I thought you were working for Troy’s parents.”

“I am, but Troy’s dead, and they’re more interested in finding out who killed him than in covering up your illegal activities.”

“Oh, Jesus.” He took a big drink of whiskey.

I repeated, “Who’s Renny D?”

Silence.

“I’m not going to ask again.” I moved my hand toward a phone on the table beside me. John grinned evilly at Pope.

“Don’t! Don’t do that! Christ, I’ll…Renny Dominguez is the other big distributor around here. He didn’t want Troy and me cutting into his territory.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“No, it’s not.” I moved my hand again. John did a fair imitation of a villain’s leer. Maybe, I thought, he should have taken up acting.

“Okay, all right, it’s not. I’ll tell you, just leave the phone alone. At first, Troy and I tried to work something out with Renny D. Split the territory, cooperate, you know. He wasn’t having any of that. Things’ve been getting pretty intense over the last few months: there was a fire at my store; somebody shot at Troy in front of his house; we both had phone threats.”

“And then?”

“All of a sudden, Renny D decides he want to make nice with us. So we meet with him at this bar where he hangs out in National City, and he proposes we work together, kick the business into really high gear. But now it’s Troy who isn’t having any of that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Troy’s convinced himself that Renny D is small-time and kind of stupid. He thinks we should kick our business into high gear and take over Renny’s turf. I took him aside, tried to tell him that what he saw as small-time stupidity was only a matter of different styles. I mean just because Renny D doesn’t wear Reeboks or computerize his customer list doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. I tried to tell Troy that those people were dangerous, that you at least had to try to humor them. But did Troy listen? No way. He went back to the table and make Renny look back in front of his compadres, and that’s bad shit, man?”

“So then what happened?”

“More threats. Another drive-by. And that only made Troy more convinced that Renny and his pals were stupid, because they couldn’t pick him off at twenty feet. Well, this kind of stuff goes on until it’s getting ridiculous, and finally Renny issues a challenge: the two of them’ll meet down in TJ near the bullring and settle it one-on-one, like honorable men.”

“And Troy fell for that?”

“Sure. Like I said, he’d convinced himself Renny D was stupid, so he had me set it up with Renny’s number two man, Jimmy. It was supposed to be just the four of us, and only Renny and Troy would fight.”

“You didn’t try to talk him out of it?”

“All the way down there, I did. But Troy-stubborn should’ve been his middle name.”

“And what happened when you got there?”

“It was just the four of us, like Jimmy said. But what he didn’t say was that he and Renny would have knives. The two of them moved damn fast, and before I knew what was happening, they’d stabbed Troy.”

“What did you do?”

Pope looked away. Went to get himself another three fingers of scotch.

“What did you do, Daniel?”

“I froze. And then I ran. Left Troy’s damned car there, ran off, and spent half the night wandering, the other half hiding behind an auto body shop near the port of entry. The next morning, I walked back over the border like any innocent tourist.”

“And now you think Renny and his friends’ll come after you.”

“I was a witness, it’s only a matter of time.”

That was what Troy’s girlfriend had said, too. “Are you willing to tell your story to the police?”

Silence.

“Daniel?”

He ran his tongue over dry lips after a moment he said, “Shit, what’ve I got to lose? Look at me.” He held out a shaky hand. “I’m a wreck, and it’s all Troy’s fault. He had fair warning of what was gonna go down. When I think of the way he ignored it, I want to kill him all over again.”

“What fair warning?”

“Some message Renny D left on his answering machine. Troy thought it was funny. He said it was so melodramatic, it proved Renny was brain-damaged.”

“Did he tell you what the message was?”

Daniel Pope shook his head. “He was gonna play it for me when he got back from TJ. He said you had to hear it to believe it.”

The message was in a weird Spanish accented falsetto, accompanied by cackling laughter: “Knives at midnight, Winslip. Knives at midnight.”

I popped the tape from Troy’s answering machine and turned to John. ‘Why the hell would he go down to TJ after hearing that? Did he think Renny D was joking?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he took along his own knife, but Renny and Jimmy were quicker. Remember, he thought they were stupid.” He shook his head. “Troy was a dumb middle-class kid who got in over his head and let his own high opinion of himself warp his judgment. But he still sure as hell didn’t deserve to die in a parking lot of seventeen stab wounds.”

“No, he didn’t.” I turned the tape over in my hands. “Why do you suppose Renny D left the message? You’d think he’d have wanted the element of surprise on his side.”

John shrugged. “To throw Troy off balance, make him nervous? Some twisted code of drug dealers’ honor? Who knows?”

“This tape isn’t the best of evidence, you know. There’s no proof that it was Renny D who called.”

“Isn’t there?” he motioned at another machine that looked like a small video display terminal.

“What’s that?”

“A little piece of new technology that allows you to see what number an incoming call was dialed from. It has a memory, keeps a record,” he pressed a button, and a listing of numbers, dates, and times appeared. After scrolling through it, he pointed to one with a 295 prefix. “That matches the time and date stamp on the answering machine tape.”

I lifted the receiver and dialed the number. A machine picked up on the third ring: “This is Renny D. Speak.”

I hung up. “Now we’ve got proof.”

“So do we go see Gary Viner?”

“Not just yet. First I think we’d better report to Mari and Bryce, ask them if they really want all of this to come out.”

“I talked with them earlier; they were going to make the funeral arrangements and then have dinner with relatives. Maybe we shouldn’t intrude.”

“Probably no. Besides, there’s something I want to do first.”