Silence had to clear his mind, make sense of the competing pieces of information.
He pulled the microphone away from the glass, wound the wires, and put the listening device in his pocket. He went around the banana plant and crouched among a patch of flowering bushes, took the PenPal from his pocket, looked over the mind map he’d created back at the restaurant.
There was the bubble he needed to focus on, the one written to the side, isolated, not connected to any others: CONNECTION?
He slashed the pencil beneath it, hard, over and over, a violent spring of markings, wound tight, ready to explode.
This investigation was so similar to the New Orleans case from his detective days that it was damn near an echo. And there was something about the old case that would help him figure out what the hell was going on in the present.
But what was it?
What’s the connection, C.C.?
His mind returned to the memory that had resurfaced earlier. The sand. The hot sun.
Distant whispers. That’s all Jake heard of the waves now. Far off, somewhere unimportant. His skin wasn’t burning in the sun; it only existed. He sensed no one, not even C.C., just the presence of her, her being, somewhere before him.
His head tilted back. Slowly. A change in the glow of what was, something that in another reality could be sunlight seeping through his eyelids.
She’d done it. She knew how to mollify the torrent, to coax lucidity, to fortify disorder into an asset.
Echoes of waves, gulls, laughter.
Her voice.
“Well? Have you found your answer?”
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
Silence looked at his notepad again, the violent scribbling under the CONNECTION? bubble.
He knew what he had to do, what C.C. would tell him to do.
She would tell him the same thing that she had on the beach.
She would tell him to meditate.
He frequently meditated during his assignments, when he needed an extra boost of clarity, when mind mapping wasn’t cutting it.
Mind maps typically did the trick, but they were kerosene—fuel for the slow burn of problem-solving. Meditating was more like gasoline—something to power an explosion of insight like the one he needed now.
Also frequently, however, Silence found himself in situations where meditating was less than ideal.
Like being concealed in the landscaping of a city commissioner’s mansion after spying on an impromptu meeting said commissioner had held with the city’s most notorious criminal leader and the woman who had been the intended target of the latest arson attack earlier that evening.
Silence looked at the Beretta in his hand. Took a deep breath, held it, sighed it out.
And then put the gun in its shoulder holster and the notebook in his pocket.
He crossed his legs before him, yoga style, the easy pose, sukhasana.
Put his hands on his knees.
Closed his eyes.
Drifted away.
To another state of being, another time and place.
He was back in New Orleans. He was Jake Rowe again, about to face a stunning series of revelations.
Chapter Sixteen
“Glover?” Jake said, staring slack-jawed at the man below him.
Glover grimaced as he pulled himself from the mangled table.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Jake said.
With his eyes on Jake, Glover brushed safety glass from his shirt. It clattered on the floor. His chest heaved, eyes narrowed.
“I told you, Hudson,” he said, grimacing again, eyes squinting, as he arched his shoulders back, realigning himself. He took the baseball cap from his head, tossed it away. It landed with a soft thud somewhere in the debris. “Burton’s making moves. This job with the Bowmans was a chance for him to make an impression on Moretti.”
“But you purposefully sabotaged the job. You pissed Moretti off.”
The faintest suggestion of a smirk materialized on Glover’s sweaty face. “Burton proudly played up to Moretti the fact that his right-hand man was heading the trio sent to help him. I could have gotten here with you and Charlie and immediately shaken the money out of the Bowmans. Or … I could face more resistance from the Bowmans, and eventually get an even bigger payment from them, multiple rounds of twenty percent interest, giving Moretti a hint of the strength of Burton’s contingent.”
Jake narrowed his eyes. “No. No, that can’t be it. Burton’s up to something.”
Glover stepped closer. “Of course he’s up to something. Think about it, Hudson. The money. We’ve intercepted three of the Bowmans’ payments, one with interest, thirty-two grand already plus another fourteen tomorrow. And Burton’s had Hodges and McBride here for two weeks before we even got here, and they’ve been picking up some cash where they could.”
Jake pictured Hodges and McBride, two of the thugs in the Farone organization, two who had been siding with Burton, real scumbags, one of them a mouse-faced, smirking twit and the other a tattooed, red-bearded slob.
“Burton and Hodges were the other two who were with you in the panel vans,” Jake said. “Intercepting the Bowmans every time they withdrew a payment for Moretti. You always knew exactly where to find the Bowmans after you fooled their son into thinking he was going to be a made man in a local gang.”
“That’s right. And in their free time Hodges and McBride have been doing some petty shit, hitting ATMs, rigging some races. Another fifty thou. With all the cash from the Bowmans, that’s about a hundred grand, a nice little nest egg, some extra startup capital.”
“Startup?”
“Don’t you get it, man? Burton’s not just getting people on his side of the divide within the Farone family. He’s taking the family over.”
The revelation struck Jake so hard it came through physically. One foot staggered back. His lips parted. And his mind immediately launched the missiles of a hundred thoughts, all of them colliding in his headspace, an eruption of chaotic
