Robert Crais - Free Fall

I put the venison on the grill, then sat with Pike at the table and told him about Charles Lewis Washington and the Washington family and what I had learned from Ray Depente about Akeem D’Muere and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys.

Pike sipped his beer and listened. When I finished he said, “You think the family was telling the truth about Charles Lewis going straight?”

“They believed it.”

“Then where’d a guy like that get the cash to buy a solvent business?”

“There is that, yes.”

“Maybe he had a partner.”

I nodded. “D’Muere funds the pawnshop to front a fence operation, and Lewis’s working for D’Muere. I can see that, but why does D’Muere front off the Washington family from pressing their lawsuit? The pawnshop is shut down. The fence operation is history.”

“If there’s a suit, there’s an investigation. There was something else there that he wants to hide.”

“Something that Eric Dees knows?”

Pike shrugged.

“If Dees knows about it, it’s not hidden.”

Pike angled his head around and stared at me. “Unless it’s something Eric wants hidden, too.”

“Ah.” I turned the sausages. Fat was beginning to bubble out of the skin and they smelled wonderful. “Akeem D’Muere and Eric Dees are sharing a secret.”

Pike nodded.

“The question arises, how far will they go to protect it?”

Pike stared at me for a moment, then got up and went into the house. I heard the front door open, then I heard his Jeep’s door, and then he came back out onto the deck. When he came back, he was wearing his pistol. It’s a Colt Python .357 with a four-inch barrel. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. I said, “Guess that means they’ll go pretty far.”

Pike said, “If five cops are on you, then it’s important to them. If they’re with you, then they’re not doing the work they’re supposed to be doing, and that’s not easy to cover. Dees’s people can’t just go to the beach. He has to account for their time to his boss, and he has to produce results with whatever cases they’re working.”

“And all five guys have to be on board with it.”

Pike nodded. “Everybody has to be on board.”

I turned the sausages again. The skins were taking on a crunchy texture and the cat had hopped up on the rail that runs around the edge of the deck so he could be as close to the sausage as possible. Any closer and we could serve barbecued cat.

Pike said, “Eric was nervous. That’s not like him. Maybe even scared, and that’s not like him, either.”

“Okay.”

“Scared people do atypical things. He was thinking maybe that he could scare you off. Now that he knows that I’m in, it will change what he thinks. He knows that I won’t scare.”

“Great. That will make him all the more dangerous.”

“Yes,” Pike said. “It will.”

“Maybe Dees is telling the truth. Maybe we’re just stepping on a case and he’s pissed.”

Pike shook his head. “He wants you out, it’s easy. He tells his boss and his boss calls you in and you sit down together. You know that.” The sky darkened and the hillside below us grew speckled with lights. Pike adjusted his sunglasses, but did not remove them. He never removes them. Even at night. “If he’s not playing it straight, then he can’t play it straight. That’s the first rule every cop learns.”

I turned the sausage rings a last time, then took them off the grill and put them onto a maple cutting board. I sliced them at an angle, then put half the meat on my plate and a serious portion on a saucer for the cat. I blew on his to cool it. Pike went into the house and came out with two more Falstaffs and what was left of a loaf of rosemary bread. I took some of the salad and tasted it. Pike had made a dressing of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and minced garlic. I nodded. “Good.”

He nodded back.

We ate without speaking for several minutes, and Pike didn’t look happy. Of course, since Pike never smiles, it’s sometimes tough to tell when he is happy, but there are ways. I said, “What?”

Pike picked up a piece of tuna with his fingers, took a small bite, then held out the rest to the cat. The cat stepped forward and ate with enthusiasm. Pike said, “I haven’t seen Eric in many years.”

“Was he good?”

“Yes.”

“Was he honest?”

Pike turned his head and the dark lenses angled toward me. “If I saw it any other way, I wouldn’t have ridden with him.”

I nodded. “But people change.”

Pike wiped his fingers on his napkin, then turned back to his meal. “Yes. People change.”

We ate the rest of the meal in silence, and then we brought the dirty dishes into the kitchen and flipped a nickel to see who would wash. I lost. Midway through the load the phone rang and Joe Pike answered. He said, “Jennifer Sheridan.”

I took the phone and said, “Elvis Cole, Personal Detective to Jennifer Sheridan.”

Jennifer Sheridan said, “Floyd Riggens just left me. He was here with another officer. They said that I was going to get Mark killed. They said that if I didn’t make you stop, something bad would happen.” Her voice was tight and compressed and the words came quickly, as if she were keeping a close rein, but just.

“Are you all right?”

“I called Mark, but he’s not home.”

“What about you? Are you all right?”

I could hear her breathe. She didn’t say anything for a time, and then she said, “I’d like someone with me, I think. Would you mind?”

“I’m leaving now.”

I hung up. Pike was staring at me, his glasses reflecting the kitchen lights. “Riggens paid her a visit. I’d better go over there.”

Pike said, “This isn’t going to work out the way she wants it to.”

I spread my hands. “I don’t know. Maybe we can make it work out that way.”

“If Dees and Thurman and these guys are mixed up with Akeem D’Muere, it’ll be ugly. She may find out something about him that she wished she didn’t know.”

I spread my hands again. “Maybe that’s the price for being in love.”

Pike said, “I’ll finish the dishes.”

I told him thanks, then I put on the Dan Wesson and drove to see Jennifer Sheridan.

Twenty-six minutes later I parked on the street across from Jennifer Sheridan’s apartment building and buzzed her number on the security phone. The speaker came to life and Jennifer Sheridan said, “Who is it?”

“Elvis Cole.”

The door lock buzzed open and I went in and took the elevator to the third floor.

Jennifer Sheridan lived in one of those stucco ant farms just off the freeway in Woodland Hills that caters to attractive young singles, attractive young couples, and the not-so-young-but-almost-as-attractive newly divorced. There would be a lot of grabass around the pool and something called a “fitness room” where men and women would watch each other work out, but I guess it was a fair trade for a secure building at an affordable price in a low-crime area. Unless the cops were doing the crime.

Apartment 312 was down a long hall with a lot of shag carpeting and textured wallpaper and cottage-cheese ceilings. Jennifer Sheridan was peeking out of a two-inch crack in her door, waiting for me. When she saw me, she closed the door to unhook the chain, then opened it again. “I’m sorry for calling you like that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I feel so silly.”

I gave her the benevolent detective smile. “It’s no trouble and you did the right thing by calling me.” Maybe it was the six-pack-of-Falstaff smile.

She stepped out of the door and led me through an entry past her kitchen and into the living room. She was wearing an oversized white sweatshirt that hung low over black tights and white Keds tennis shoes. Comfortable. Just the kind of thing to be lounging around in in the apartment when Floyd Riggens came to call. She said, “I tried calling Mark again, but there’s still no answer. I left a message on his machine.”