“After that, all we could do was wait. She wouldn’t contact us often, just every few years. But it was often enough to know she was still keeping watch on us. She’d dress it all up in polite speech and thank-yous, and there was nothing ever threatening outright. But you couldn’t help but feel threatened.”
“Why did she want to keep tabs on you?” I asked.
“Because my team couldn’t be bought,” he said. “Charlie and I hand selected the cops we trusted to work the case. And the FBI and DEA guys were getting bought off left and right. And the ones who didn’t get bought were turning up dead.”
“Did it have to do with the drugs that were taking over de Salva’s territory?” I asked. “Angelica explained about the competition moving in. She said that’s why she sent them to prison. She said whoever was running the drugs would’ve killed all of them if they’d stayed around much longer.”
Vince snorted. “Yeah, well, we were pretty sure at the time that the drugs were being run by a guy named Rudy Guzman. Very slick. Very polished. Carmen de Salva was rough. He was old school, and he worked the system the old-fashioned way—through hard work and intimidation. But Rudy was a politician. Came out of nowhere. No one knew anything about him—where he was from, what his real name was. All we knew was it wasn’t long after he moved to town that the drug problem in Savannah skyrocketed. We felt like idiots chasing our tails. We knew he probably had help from someone high up in the city. But even with the help of someone high up in the city, that didn’t explain how he was getting around de Salva.”
A little lightbulb was starting to flicker in my brain. “Valentina de Salva,” I said.
Vince nodded. “We knew it was her. That’s why it made us sick when the Feds agreed to the immunity deal in exchange for her husband and everyone in his organization. She was eliminating the competition. But they just wanted to close a big case and say they brought down the de Salvas. It looked great in the press.”
“It’s been twenty years,” I said. “Why is this all coming back to light now? Angelica is down in Miami. Carmen is dead. Her sons will be in prison for the rest of their lives. What’s changed?”
“Carmen was murdered,” he said.
“What?” I asked. “How? He was an eighty-year-old man who’s been in prison for twenty years.”
“Because I was in contact with him before he died,” Vince said. “And I’m telling you, he wasn’t your ordinary eighty-year-old man. He was tough and strong and in good health. He ran that prison yard like he was the warden.”
“You were the one who’s been visiting Carmen in prison?” I asked.
He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. “Why would you say that?”
“Because Savage checked to see if he’d had any visitors,” I said. “And the warden told him he’d only had one visitor, but the logs had disappeared.”
Vince blew out a sigh. “Yeah, that cost a pretty penny. I figured it’d buy me a little time before they checked the cameras. There’s no way to make those disappear.”
“Why were you visiting de Salva?” I asked.
“Because Valentina had help, and it wasn’t Rudy Guzman. Guzman was a politician, but he had no brains. There was no way he was smart enough to coordinate drug shipments in and out of different waterways, while avoiding everyone who had them all under surveillance.”
“So she had help from cops,” I said.
“The guy running the federal task force was a good guy. Agent Simmons. But he must’ve hit a nerve because he ended up dead, along with the DA and another couple of local cops. They were wiping out anyone who was clean. I think the only reason my team stayed intact was because we were just workhorses. We didn’t have any power, and it was never our decision what plan was implemented.
“Your dad was never settled with this case,” Vince said. “He was obsessed. But he was like that with cases, so I didn’t think anything of it. He and your mom even split up once because he couldn’t be anything but a cop.”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“You were really young,” Vince said softly. “I just hadn’t realized that he’d kept digging into it all the years before he died.”
“Why did you visit Carmen?” I asked.
“Because I found the file in your dad’s shed last October,” he said. “That’s when I decided to go pay a visit to Carmen. I wanted to see what he knew, what he thought.” Vince shrugged and brought me a mug of coffee, though I noticed he didn’t make one for himself. He was nervous, though he was trying not to let it show.
“What did Carmen say?” I asked, wrapping my cold hands around the mug. I almost moaned at the warmth.
“He was skeptical at first,” Vince said. “He remembered me, but he was cool as a cucumber. We didn’t talk about much at first, but then I asked him how he felt about what Valentina did to him and his sons and he just smiled. He didn’t answer. Just told me he enjoyed our talk and to come back and see him again.
