Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

And Sam had gone back to the Ace after our first meeting with Junior and managed to pick up the two missing fingers, too. Physical evidence is always a bonus.

“What’s our move?” Fiona asked.

“Our first one is to get Junior’s people positioned,” I said. I put my cell phone on speaker and called Junior at his office. Just like every other office drone, he answered on the third ring.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Is that how you greet a business partner?”

“We are not partners,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Killa’s son is, would you?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Because he and his mother disappeared on the same day you showed up,” he said.

“Let’s just say,” I said, “that maybe I’m more careful than you are.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, but I could tell that Junior was trying to contain his anger. He wasn’t the kind of guy prone to long, contemplative silences.

“What do you want?” he said again.

“I need your guys,” I said. “And your cop.”

“When?”

“Tonight,” I said. “There’s a shipment leaving Harding Pharmaceutical at six P.M. that I’d like to own.”

This got Junior’s attention. “What is it?”

I decided being honest was the best policy. “About a thousand stop-smoking patches.”

“There a market for that?”

“There is in Bolivia,” I said, thinking that a quarter century in prison might have made Junior a little dim on the black markets and geography. Or where people still smoked.

“What’s my cut?”

“You don’t get a cut,” I said. “It’s the price of doing business at Honrado. We discussed this right before my friend choked you out with her whip.”

“Change of rules,” Junior said.

“You don’t make the rules,” I said.

“You think I’m stupid? I spent some time looking into you, Mr. Solo,” he said. “You don’t exist.”

“And yet here I am, talking to you on the phone.”

“You think you’re the only person who can run a license plate?”

I looked at Sam. He was the man in charge of making sure I had plates on the Charger that couldn’t be traced back to anything prudent. It had been so long since we’d changed them that I had no idea whom or what they belonged to. I gave Sam a look that I hope conveyed this. He just shrugged.

“I trust that Officer Prieto can do all sorts of services for you,” I said. “But do you think I’m the type of person who just rolls up into the DMV and registers my ride? You better have your man dig deeper.”

Junior sighed. It was an odd sound. You never want to think of terribly menacing people feeling resigned. It ruins your idea of ultimate evil on all levels.

“We either start understanding each other on a better business level or one of us is going to die,” Junior said.

“Are you speaking euphemistically?”

“I’m speaking bullets to heads,” he said.

I laughed. It wasn’t a funny thing to be hearing, but it’s always nice to give psychopaths reason to believe you’re just as crazy as they are. “I like how you think, Junior,” I said. “Look, we can only both bleed this whale for so long and then we’ll have to fight for his oil and blubber once he’s dead; that’s what I’m hearing. So why don’t we do this. You send your guys and your cop over to Harding Pharmaceutical this evening, grab the truck, don’t kill anyone in the process, and in good faith, I’ll give you forty percent of my take.”

“Fifty percent.”

“What are you willing to give me to get fifty percent of a score you wouldn’t even know about without me?”

“You can keep the girl. What’s her name? Leticia. She’s yours. But my man wants his kid. That’s Latin Emperor property.”

Fiona was already angry, but this last demand got her ready to blow. So I did the only thing I could do. “Deal,” I said. “Why don’t you and me go to the job tonight, too. Make it a real gentlemen’s agreement, and that way I can make sure none of your boys goes crazy and caps someone and then we both lose.”

“When do we get the kid?”

“Sunday morning,” I said. “I’ve got buyers ready tonight. They’ll inspect the truck, see if it’s all kosher, we’ll get paid and we’ll make the trade in the morning at Honrado-that way no one goes gun crazy. No one gets cut. Father and son are together. We all go get some Jesus together, maybe. Make it real easy. And I’ve got one less crying kid to worry about. You ever listen to a kid cry for an entire night? And then there was the food he ate. You can have him, Junior. You can have him.”

Junior considered all of this. “Where do we meet tonight?”

I told him to meet me a few blocks from Harding at four forty-five. “The truck is scheduled to leave at six,” I said. “I want you to send Officer Prieto there to clear out the building well before then. Tell them there’s a bomb threat.”

“I don’t tell him what to do,” Junior said.

“You won’t. I will. He can tell them whatever he wants. Just get the people out. I don’t trust that your boys won’t stomp the shit out of someone just for kicks.”

“Then what?”

“You just make sure everyone’s out of the facility, and then have your boys take the truck from the loading dock. Your boys know how to steal cars, right?”

“I’ll find someone,” he said.

“Be good if they knew how to drive a truck,” I said. “You got any kind of program in the Latin Emperors that teaches manual-transmission driving?”

“Why don’t you just do this yourself?”

“Because I don’t trust that you wouldn’t have your officer Prieto arrest me. Or shoot me. And we’re a team, Junior. Remember?”

“Where do I tell them to take the truck?”

“Bring it to the back of Honrado,” I said. “Park it next to loading bay by the press. One of my people will be waiting. The truck doesn’t show up, you don’t get your money plate.”

“How much is this job worth to you?”

This I had no idea about, so I came up with a number that would make Junior interested. “Fifty g’s, easy. Maybe more. And this is real money. Not your photocopies.”

“Four forty-five,” he said and hung up.

Leaving the planning and execution of the job to Junior meant that I could keep my hands clean. But it also meant that there was a better chance Officer Prieto wouldn’t let anything go wrong.

Dealing with Fiona would be enough for me to handle.

“Michael,” Fiona said, “what are you thinking? You can’t give them Leticia’s son!”

“I’m not going to,” I said. “But we just got him on tape agreeing to buy a child. Well, actually, he’s trading a child. Either way, it’s a crime.”

“Oh,” Sam said, “you’re a fast one, Mr. Westen.”

“I’m trying my best,” I said. “You want to tell me where they traced my license plate to?”

“Well, if my memory serves me correctly here, he just traced your existence back to a wrecked Dodge Charger I saw out at the dump a few months back.”

“No idea who owned the car?”

“I ran the plates, and they came back as being owned by a gentleman named Cy Rosencrantz, who currently resides in the Shayna Grove Assisted Living Facility in Ventura, California. I think you’re safe.”

“That’s fine work there, Sam.”

“There’s only one of me,” he said.

Father Eduardo came back inside the loft then and handed Fiona back her phone.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“She’s got a homegirl lives near Coral Springs. So she’s there for right now.”

“She going to stay there?”

“You can’t tell with these girls,” he said. “All she knows is the streets. I’ve tried to help get them a new life, but when things get tough, they slip back into what they know. She’s scared, but she understands the situation now. And she’s been forgiven for what she’s done. That helps.”