doors.
He looked Linc up and down, then turned to me. “This was the kid you couldn’t find?”
“Sneaky. Kids are sneaky.”
Linc stared at his shoes.
Wellton waved an officer over. He nodded at Linc and the officer moved Linc’s hands behind him and cuffed him.
“Can you just put him in holding for now?” I said.
Wellton lifted his chin at the cop and he escorted Linc down the hallway.
I followed Wellton up to his office.
“This is the kid with the guns, right?” Wellton asked, sliding into the chair behind his desk.
“The guns belonged to his father,” I said, sitting down in the metal chair opposite the desk, trying to buy Linc a little leeway. “Maybe he didn’t know they were there.”
“They were where his underwear should’ve been.”
“He’s had a rough time of it. He’d be a huge sympathy case if you charged him.”
Wellton shook his head. “Fine. Wanna tell me why I’m holding this kid, then?”
I explained about Dana finding the house in OB, my conversation with Linc, and our surprise visitors.
“You’re telling me Wizard Matellion saved your ass?” Wellton said when I’d finished.
“Not on the record, I’m not. Off the record, yeah, I guess he did.”
“We go on the record, I’d have something solid on Matellion,” Wellton said quietly. “Finally.”
“Matellion didn’t pull the trigger and I’ll never repeat what I just told you.”
The room went quiet. Wellton couldn’t make me talk, but he could make my life difficult. But I wasn’t sure he could make it more difficult than Wizard Matellion if I went back on my word.
“Just because he didn’t let Moreno kill you doesn’t make him a good guy,” Wellton said.
“I know that.”
Wellton stared hard at me for a while. It didn’t change my mind.
“What do you want me to do with this kid?” he finally asked.
“Can you hold him for a little bit?” I asked. “Let me see if I can fix the rest of this.”
“What does
I shrugged.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Wellton said. “I don’t understand white-guy nonchalance.”
“There are still some loose ends,” I said. “He’s safer here for a little while.”
“What loose ends?”
“Just a few things, couple of people I need to talk to.”
We stared at each other, him trying to read me, me attempting to keep him from seeing anything.
“What about our skinhead friends?” Wellton asked.
“That’s why I want Linc here. They still want him.”
“You gonna go talk to them, too?” he asked, a tiny smile mocking me.
“Something like that.”
The smile disintegrated and he pointed a stubby finger at me. “As soon as we-and by we, I mean those of us that are cops-find them, we’ve got them on assault for you and two murders. That’s enough to make me forget about the weapons charge against Pluto. And that’s plenty enough reason for them to stay alive.”
“If you find them.”
“We will find them,” he growled.
I sat motionless. I thought back to my first conversation with Professor Famazio, when he indicated that sometimes the skinheads benefited from friends in higher places. Sometimes even the law wasn’t enough.
“Neither of them is worth it,” Wellton said quietly, his eyes staring intently at me over the desk. “Neither of them.”
“I know that.”
“I know that you
The silence sat heavy in the room between us for a few minutes.
“What happened to you sucked,” he finally said. “No doubt about it. But if you take them out, if you do exactly what you say you’re trying to prevent from happening to the Pluto kid, then you haven’t helped anyone and you’ve completely fucked yourself up.”
I didn’t disagree with anything Wellton was saying. All of his words made sense. But there were other things that made sense to me, too, and I wasn’t sure which of them was more right.
“I’m talking to a brick wall,” Wellton said, disgusted at my refusal to engage in the conversation. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t even try.” He paused. “I’ll hold the kid for forty-eight hours.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“That’s it,” Wellton said. “Do whatever you’re gonna do. Make it right.” His eyes narrowed. “For Pluto. Not for you.”
I was pretty sure he knew his words were going to be in vain. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his tone.
Or maybe he just knew I didn’t care what he said.
Forty-four
I drove back to Mission Beach and found Carter and Dana sitting in my living room, a plate of enchiladas on the coffee table as they watched the Padres game.
“We’re up five-zip,” he said, pointing at the television. “Bottom of the eighth.”
“Good.”
Dana twisted in my direction. “Where’s Linc?”
I nodded at Carter. “You tell him what happened?”
“Yeah, right up to the point where you kicked me out of the house,” she said, still annoyed. “I was so pissed, I just got in the car and left. He finally returned my message from this morning and told me to come over here.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for that. Because if you’d stuck around you might’ve been able to warn me that Deacon fuckin’ Moreno found Linc, too.”
Her eyes widened.
Carter picked up the plate of enchiladas and stuck a fork in one of them. “Tell us.”
I told them about all the fun in OB.
“Wesley said that?” Carter said when I was done, placing the now-empty plate on the table. “That he really wanted another shot at me?”
“Yep.”
Carter chuckled. “I’ll remember that. So now Pluto’s in jail?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you take him to jail?” Dana asked. “Won’t they arrest him because of the guns?”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, trusting Wellton.
“As much as I hate anything to do with the law, jail for him is probably the safest place at the moment,” Carter said.
“Also keeps him out of the way.”
Carter raised an eyebrow. “You make it sound like we’re about to do some exciting things.”
Dana slid closer to him on the sofa. “Hey. You told me we were going to be the ones doing the exciting things later.”
“And I always keep my promises,” he said, flashing a grin at her.
“You better.”
“Christ,” I said. “Keep your clothes on. I’m still here.”
