Walk Away, page 25
“But he was still your brother.”
Lukas shot Konnor a look. “What are you, my mother? Yeah, he was my brother, and I don’t take it lying down when someone messes with my blood. But business is business, and I have to go on. One day I’ll nail that bitch when she doesn’t expect it.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know. She’s got skills, that much I can tell you. She’s no Marine, but she could really get into somebody’s ass if they aren’t careful.”
“You look a little banged up. Her?”
“Yeah, it was her. What of it? I put her down when it came to it. She was mine.”
Konnor shook his head slowly. “It’s a shame. Even if Jake was a screwup, he was all right sometimes.”
“He never would have made it in the Sandbox. You and me, we came out the other side. He would have bought it there. He wasn’t strong enough. He was never strong enough. But that’s what happens. I did my best with him.”
“We’ll pour one out for him.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that. Then we get down to making money. I might have a long vacation after this.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
HANNON ENTERED THE jail through a secure passageway bookended by heavy doors set with glass inches thick. Whenever she breathed, she felt a painful pressure in the center of her chest. At the hospital they had stripped off her body armor, jacket, and blouse to reveal the blackened cluster of a bruise directly over her sternum. The bruise had twin centers, one for each of the slugs that crashed into her vest.
She stopped by an island staffed by Sheriff’s Department deputies and showed her identification for the sixth time. “Deputy U.S. Marshal Hannon,” she said. “I’m looking for my partner, Deputy Way.”
“I think he’s in that office over there,” the deputy told her.
Hannon thanked him and followed his pointing finger to a small office set at the end of a line of cells. One wall was half reinforced glass. The door was shut. She saw Way sitting at the desk, his cell phone pressed to his ear, speaking intently. He glanced up, saw her, and beckoned her in.
The office was unlocked. Hannon stepped through the door and let it close behind her. Way continued his call. “So we can have the indictments put together by morning,” he said. “Yes, I understand. I’ll check into it. Sure. You can reach me at this number. I’ll be up all night. Thanks.”
He hung up and put his phone away. They looked at each other across the desk.
“Was that the U.S. Attorney’s office?” Hannon asked.
“Yes. What are you doing here? You should be resting.”
“I’m bruised up, I’m not dead. I want to stay on top of things.”
“I have it under control.”
“What’s happening?”
Way paused, as if considering not answering her. Then he said, “Espinoza’s been processed into holding. The old man’s out of the hospital, and he’s going through the system right now. We’re set to see the local judge tonight. We’re still going to let them file charges, but we have the priority. They’ll be transported to federal court in the morning, and at that point our people take over completely. The locals can get them when we’re finished with them.”
“Have you talked to either of them yet?”
“I talked to Espinoza.”
“What did she say?”
“What do you expect? Nothing. She thinks she’s bulletproof. But I have her dead to rights. We’re going to run right over her.”
Hannon sat down in the chair opposite the desk. “What about Yates? Have you questioned him?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“I’d like to be there.”
“You’re recovering.”
“The vest took the slugs, Keith. I’m fine to work.”
“You just got shot. Give it some goddamned time. You could have died.”
Hannon heard his voice falter at the last. “I didn’t die. I’m not dying.”
“Well, I’m not losing anybody else.”
“I want to talk to Espinoza,” Hannon said.
“Why?”
“She stopped for me, Keith. She could have gone after Lukas, but she stopped for me. I don’t know about you, but that means something to me.”
“Camaro Espinoza is a stone killer,” Way said. “You think she stopped for you? She was probably just trying to get hold of your weapon.”
“That’s not what happened, and you know it.”
“Yeah, well, the FBI will want another crack at her once I get a chance to talk with someone in charge over there. I’m convinced she was on the scene when Yates took down Vicki Nelson’s apartment. She’s a liability with a gun, and she’s not telling everything she knows.”
“What do you think she knows, Keith? What do you really think she’s going to tell us?”
Way’s eyes shone. “She was in contact with Lukas. She had his number. They talked. I’ve subpoenaed her phone records, and I’m willing to lay odds that when I get them, it’s going to show at least one phone conversation between the two of them. She’s hip deep in this somehow, and I’m going to use her to find Lukas.”
“Lukas is gone,” Hannon said. “It’s over.”
“No! He’s in the city somewhere. He has ties here going way back. We punch up his KAs from when he was last in California and we start running them down, one by one. Somebody’s gonna give, and then we’ll have his ass.”
Hannon shook her head. “This has to stop.”
Way’s mouth flattened. “I’m not having that conversation again. This is happening. We’re about two steps ahead of the Bureau right now, and I want to keep it that way. By the time they figure out what we’re doing, he’ll be taken care of and we walk away clean.”
She waited, and she thought. Way stared. “I want to work together with you on this, Keith. I want to be a part of it. I won’t let you go on alone.”
“Then you’d better get on board with what’s happening, because we are going full ahead on Espinoza and Yates.”
“When will you talk to Yates?”
“Soon. Everybody who’s anybody is off tonight, so I have to roust some people out of bed to get things moving. He can sit and stew for a while. Maybe if he gets enough time to think about what’s at stake, he’ll be more cooperative than Espinoza was. And I’m not letting any of that Taylor v. Taintor bullshit knock me off his ass this time. He’s stepped over the line, and he knows it. The minute he pulled Espinoza in on his fugitive recovery, he broke the law. The only thing that’s going to get him out of this mess is if we step in and put pressure on the right people, and that’s not gonna happen.”
Way stood and Hannon did, too. Hannon felt the air between them, thick and uneasy. “Do you mind if I talk to them before you do?”
“Yes, I mind.”
He went for the door, and Hannon stepped aside. She let him leave. He walked away, visible through the window until he passed down an adjoining hallway. The weight of his absence remained.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
AFTER WAY LEFT, Camaro sat in the stillness of the cell, listening to the burble of voices passing through the vents in the door. She stayed quiet and stared at the blank face of the wall for a long time until she heard keys in the lock.
“Stand up,” said a deputy with a crew cut. “Face the rear of the cell.”
She did as she was told. She was cuffed again and taken out through a side door. The deputy escorted her with a hand loosely on her elbow, guiding her through nondescript hallways and out through a secure exit into another building. She expected to find a courtroom at the other end, but she was brought to a darkened office. The deputy turned on the light to reveal a reception area with a small couch and chairs. Camaro was directed onto the couch. She sat facing a tiny coffee table strewn with magazines she could not pick up and read. The officer went outside.
The office had a clock on the wall. It was just past midnight. Camaro heard the click of hard soles on the tile floor outside, and the door opened. Yates entered first, handcuffed as she was. They put him in a chair. Hannon followed. “Thank you,” she told the deputies with him, and then they were left alone with the door closed.
Camaro looked at Yates. He nodded to her silently. She turned her attention to Hannon. “I thought I was due in court.”
“You both are. You’re supposed to be there now.”
“Then what’s happening?”
“What did you intend to do when you found Lukas Collier in that motel room?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Say it.”
“We were going to kill him.”
“Even though your sister’s going to make it and your niece is all right?”
Camaro indicated Yates with her head. “His son is still dead. And I can’t have him come back at Annabel again.”
Hannon took one of the chairs and dragged it around to face them. Camaro saw her wince at the effort and touch her chest. When she sat, she was slightly pale. “If I take the two of you to that courtroom, it’s going to be over. You’ll both be remanded into custody pending a date in front of a federal judge.”
Camaro watched her carefully, Yates doing the same.
“Keith—my partner—is playing phone tag with all the people we need to have you charged by the U.S. Attorney’s office. I figure we have an hour, maybe a little bit more. Two if we’re lucky.”
“So what does that have to do with us?” Camaro asked. “You have us. We’re not going anywhere.”
“The District Attorney’s office is ready to file the paperwork that lets you walk on local charges. It doesn’t get a federal prosecutor off your backs, but it buys you some more time on the street.”
“Why would you do that?” Yates asked.
“I have my reasons. The question is, can you find Lukas again?”
Camaro glanced at Yates. He inclined his head just slightly. “Maybe not where he’s hiding, but where he’s going to be.”
“How do you mean?”
Yates spoke up. “Lukas’s brother put together a pot of money for a drug deal. Lukas had that money sent on to LA before he left Carmel. We have the address.”
“Let me have it.”
“Not until we get some assurances,” Camaro said.
Hannon shook her head. “I don’t think the two of you get it. You will go to prison if I don’t help you out of this jam. If you know something, you need to share it, because I already have one person in my life who’s shutting me out.”
“Right now that address is the only thing we have to go on,” Yates said. “You can keep us out of jail, but what can you do to help finish this?”
Hannon pursed her lips in thought, then spoke. “I have some room to maneuver. But whatever you do, do it fast. Because this won’t last. Once Keith knows you’re back on the street, he’s going to lose his shit, and I mean that.”
“What the hell is his problem, anyway?” Camaro asked.
“He lost a good friend. He hasn’t been the same since. Anyone he thinks will get between him and Lukas Collier, he’ll take apart. He doesn’t care anymore.”
“You care?” Camaro asked.
“I do. I understand the world’s a better place without Lukas in it, but there’s a line between good guys and bad guys. You don’t hurt good guys to stop the bad guys.”
“How do you know we’re good?”
“I don’t. Not for sure. But when you picked me over Lukas, I got a pretty solid idea.”
“If your partner’s going to go as crazy as you say, we’re going to have a whole new set of problems besides Lukas Collier,” Yates said. “Can you put a muzzle on your boy?”
“I wish. He got me turned around pretty badly. He got me thinking we were doing the right thing by putting Lukas in front of a gun. But that’s not going to bring Keith back from the edge. He needs somebody to save him from himself, otherwise he’s going to go somewhere he can’t get back from.”
“So it’s okay if we do it,” Camaro said, “just so long as he doesn’t.”
“I don’t expect you to get it.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“I’m not going to argue about whose honor is worth more,” Hannon said. “All I know is Keith can’t think straight, and he’s never going to think straight as long as Lukas is out there. I’m barely hanging on to him now. If he gets a whiff of Lukas again, I can’t control what happens next.”
“We’ll do it,” Yates said. “You don’t have to be a party to it.”
Hannon stood and went to the door. She cracked the door slightly and peered out, then pushed it shut again. She sat down with a sigh of pain and looked at them for a long time in silence. “All right,” she said finally. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Seventy
THEY CALLED A cab and quickly walked a few blocks away from the Los Angeles County Superior Court to wait for it. Yates made a series of phone calls while they waited. Camaro didn’t listen to his side of the conversation. Instead, she watched the empty street for any sign of Deputy Marshal Way. He did not appear.
The cab arrived, and they slipped into the back. “Santa Monica and Fairfax,” Yates told the driver.
“West Hollywood?” Camaro asked.
Yates looked at Camaro. “There’s an all-night coffee place there. My man will link up with us. He’s bringing us some wheels. No rental cars, no paperwork, nothing the marshals can use to track us. Which reminds me, it was nice of the deputy to give them back, but we need to get rid of our phones as soon as we can.”
“We can pick up a couple anywhere,” Camaro said. “They’re cheap. Hardware is going to be a bigger problem.”
“That’s been on my mind,” Yates said. “I’m still working on that part. I’m gonna miss that Hardballer. My wife gave it to me as a present.”
They rode. The driver seemed uninterested in making conversation. He glanced into his mirror occasionally and Camaro saw him looking at her, but he said nothing. There would be a record of their trip from the courthouse. It would not be difficult for Way to find it.
“What do you think?” Yates said when there had been enough quiet.
“About what?”
“This lady marshal. Do you think she meant a thing she said?”
“I do.”
“That partner of hers is going to eat her alive.”
“He’ll try.”
“The way I figure it, if we don’t get Lukas within the next twenty-four hours, we’re gonna be out of options. Way? He’ll have everybody but the National Guard out looking for us. Looking for you in particular. From what you tell me, he has the hots for you in a big way.”
The streets were washed in clean, white light. Los Angeles had done away with the old sodium-vapor streetlights years ago in favor of LEDs. The look of the city by night was wholly different from the city Camaro remembered from her youth.
“He’s not the first one to come gunning for me. He won’t be the last.”
“You run right up to a dangerous edge,” Yates said.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t you?”
Camaro shot him a look. “I don’t go looking for it.”
“That’s good, because if you did, then that would mean you have a problem. The kind of problem only dying seems to fix.”
“Lukas is the one who’s gonna die.”
“So you figure we still have a shot at him?”
“You don’t think so?”
“Let’s just say I want to believe,” Yates said. “In my time I’ve gone out on some shaky limbs, but I can’t recall a situation where the limb was quite so shaky as this one. We got two tries, and he slipped us both times. Are we third-time lucky? I can’t say for sure.”
“I’ll follow him alone. You don’t have to come,” Camaro said.
“You think I’m saying all of this because I want to cut you loose?”
“Aren’t you?”
“We’ve got too much invested to walk away now. I only want to make sure we keep our feet on the ground, that’s all. Too easy to get blown away otherwise.”
Camaro caught the driver looking at her again. She glared into his mirror until his eyes flicked away. “I’m sorry about your son,” she said. “I don’t think I ever told you that.”
“You didn’t have to. You never knew him.”
“I’m still sorry. My sister, she’s still alive. Your son…he’s never coming back. No matter what we do, he’s never coming back.”
Yates turned his gaze toward the window. “No, he isn’t.”
They let silence grow between them until they were off the freeway and into the streets of West Hollywood, weaving past the Dolby Theatre and finally at their destination, a coffeehouse planted directly on the corner of Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard. Yates moved to pay, but Camaro brushed his hand away and gave some bills to the driver. “Stay safe,” the driver told them.
The coffeehouse was surprisingly busy for the hour, mostly with young folks taking their caffeine in the middle of the night so they could talk until the break of dawn. Camaro scanned the tables and booths until she spotted the man they were looking for. She didn’t know him by sight, but he was the only person in the place over forty, and he was seated alone. Yates waved to him, and the man waved back to confirm it.
“Camaro Espinoza, this is Ronnie Curtis,” Yates said when they reached the man’s table. “Ronnie, this is Camaro.”
“Great name,” Ronnie said. “You two sit down for a minute. I have a slice of pie coming.”
Camaro sat angled toward the door. Yates settled in beside her. The table was small and round, designed to bring groups of people together in an intimate circle. Ronnie had a newspaper he set on an empty chair.
“You got a ride for us?” Yates asked.
“Right up the street. Red Mustang. You like ragtops?”
“In the winter?” Camaro asked.
“Hey, what do you want? It’s short notice, and it’s what I could spare. Picked it up at a police auction a couple of years ago. It runs okay, and it’ll get you where you need to go in a hurry if that’s what you’re after.”
