Джеймс Паттерсон - 14th Deadly Sin:

Tony Willis, aka Li’l Tony, had been a suspect in the jailhouse murder of Aaron-Rey Kordell. He’d denied that he’d been the doer, but when she’d talked to him last, he’d given her a sense that he knew who had killed Aaron-Rey.

Maybe he would tell her now.

If he lived.

The traffic was thick, and Yuki was determined not to have an accident or even a fit of temper. Leaving the parking garage, she took a left on Polk and crossed through the Mission. It took close to half an hour to drive two and a half miles to reach Twenty-Third Street and another twenty minutes to park the car and gain access to the hospital.

When she arrived at ward 7D, the surgical unit, Tony Willis was alive and breathing oxygen through a cannula. Leads came off his chest, and fluids were dripping through tubes to his veins.

The doctor told Yuki, “That young man lost a lot of blood. He has several puncture wounds in major organs. He’s on pain medication. I can’t promise he’ll know who you are.”

“He asked for me.”

“I understand. Keep it to five minutes, OK?”

Yuki walked down the aisle running the length of the ward. All of the eleven beds were occupied. Willis was at the far end on the left. She reached the bed, pulled the stall curtain around it, and moved a chair up to the bed.

Five-foot-tall Tony Willis had looked young before. Now he looked smaller and younger, with his defiant little hair twists and his thin cotton blanket pulled up to his underarms, monitors reporting on his vital signs.

“Tony? It’s me. Ms. Castellano.”

Tony Willis cracked open his eyes, winced, and put a bandaged hand on his blanketed chest. “Yo,” he said. “You came.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like a lotta white dudes beat the crap out of me and then stuck me with shanks everywhere.”

“That’s what I heard. You stay strong, OK?”

“Right,” he said. “I have something to say.”

“OK.”

“I need you to be my lawyer so I got confidentiality.”

“You want me to represent you, Tony? There’s more to it than that. I have to look at your case. I don’t know what charges there are against you. And it’s not my decision. I don’t work for myself.”

“Mrs. Cassielandro, you got to listen. I need lawyer-patient confidentiality. Right now. You hear me?”

He was wheezing. He was clearly in pain. He could die.

“OK. OK, Tony. I’ll be your lawyer. What do you have to tell me?”

“Officially?”

She picked up his bandaged hand and shook it gently.

“It’s official,” she said.

“OK. I got a confession. I killed A-Rey.”

Yuki gasped. “ You killed him?”

“I was told ‘Put Kordell down quick.’ After that, I was supposed get a transfer to Corcoran, and you can see, that didn’t happen.”

“I’m not getting this,” Yuki said.

She was trying to get it, but the pieces had very weird shapes and didn’t totally fit. Whoever got Li’l Tony to kill Aaron-Rey had also promised him protection. Who the hell would do that? Furthermore, as he said, they clearly hadn’t delivered it.

“Who told you to do this, Tony?” Yuki asked him.

“Listen to me, lady, before I fuckin’ die. It was a cop who told me to whack A-Rey.”

“What cop? Give me a name .”

“On the street, he called One. Like Numero Uno.”

“Tony. That’s not a name. What else can you give me? I can’t make a deal for you if all you’ve got to bargain with is that you killed Aaron-Rey. No one is looking for his killer anymore.”

Tony was straining to breathe. Any second now a nurse was going to chase her out. She touched his hand.

“You’ve got to give me something I can run with, Tony. You understand. Numero Uno isn’t going to cut it.”

“You don’t look it, but you are a tough lady.” He swallowed hard. Then he said, “Arturo. Mendez. Find him. He’s A-Rey’s fren’. He saw who shot those pushers.”

“How do I find him?”

Tony closed his eyes. His breathing was ragged.

“F-u-u-u-u-u-ck,” he said. “I got to do everything? Ask A-Rey’s mom.”

“Hang in,” Yuki said. “I’ll do what I can.”

CHAPTER 75

YUKI CALLED AARON-REY’S mother, Bea Kordell, who had her son’s phone, which showed a contact listing for “Arturo.” Yuki sent Arturo a text, replied to his response, then sent another.

An hour later, at nearly 8 p.m., she parked on Turk near Dodge, the bad-news block directly across the street from the peeling three-story crack house on the corner.

She didn’t have to wait long.

A kid came out of the Chinese restaurant next door to the crack house. He looked about five eight, one forty. He was wearing jeans hanging below his hip bones, striped boxer shorts, and a dark hoodie, and had iPod cords dangling from his ears.

He stood on the corner for a while, looking every which way, his eyes resting for a moment every time he swept his gaze across her bronze-colored Acura two-door sedan.

When the traffic thinned, the kid ambled across the street, nodding his head in time to music. Then he walked over to her window.

“Yuki?”

“Arturo. Get in the car,” she said.

Yuki thought if Brady could see her inviting a crack dealer into her car, he would go bug-nuts.

Arturo got in and pulled the door closed, saying, “I got one minute.”

“Mrs. Kordell told you? I need to know what happened that day in the crack house.”

“And what I get?”

“A chance to do the right thing.”

“And a free lawyer if I ever need one?”

“Yes. Free lawyer. Deal.”

They shook on that. She fished a card out of her bag and handed it to Arturo. Christ. She’d tripled her client base today. Meanwhile, Arturo’s eyes were working the streets from under his hood. The sidewalks were empty. He started talking.

“Aaron didn’t shoot no one. It was three men that did that. They looked like cops. They wore police jackets. They showed up on the second floor and everyone scattered—but I was coming out the bathroom and I saw it going down.”

Yuki was startled. More than that. She was shocked.

“The men who shot those dealers—were cops?”

“I don’t know if they were cops. They were wearing cop jackets. They had guns. They said ‘SFPD.’ But they were wearing plastic masks. They pushed Duane, A. Biggy, and Dubble D up against the wall. They kicked their legs apart, patted them down. They took they money, they drugs, they guns, they phones, naked pictures of they girlfriends for all I know.

“Then A. Biggy and his crew turns around and A. Biggy says, ‘You done?’”

“And one of them cops, seemed like the head dude, said, ‘I’m sorry. Put yourself in my shoes,’ something like that, and he just blew them away.”

Arturo’s expression drooped, like he was seeing it all over again. He shook his head like he couldn’t stop the images.

Yuki said, “Arturo. Why haven’t I heard this before?”

“’Cause I was the only living one that saw it go down. And then I see the three of them men go down the stairs like nothing happened.”

“Then what?” Yuki asked.

“I wait a couple of minutes, make sure the coast is clear, and then I’m ready to run out and A-Rey comes charging upstairs. He missed the shooting and he’s looking for his homies like always. They treat him OK. He doesn’t see anything yet. He says to me, ‘Lookit what I found on the stairs, ’Turo.’

“He had a thirty-eight in his hand that belong to the shooter.

“And I say, ‘A-Rey, get out of here, man.’ He sees the dead guys and he starts to go over to them. He loves them, man, and he’s crying and I just yell, ‘Let’s go!’