Robert Crais - Free Fall

We trotted across Hoover, then around the side of the warehouse and up a little flight of stairs onto the loading platform. Freestanding metal industrial shelves towered maybe fifteen feet high, jammed with crates of shock absorbers and air filters and transmission fluid. Guys with loaded hand trucks were coming in through a big door on the side and working their way down the long aisles between the shelves. Once they got inside, everybody seemed to be going in different directions, but I guess they knew what they were doing. The crates already stacked on the shelves looked neat and orderly.

A bald guy maybe in his late fifties was sitting at a little desk, digging through receiving forms with a rat-tail file, and shouting at the men with the hand trucks. He looked over when he saw us and said, “I got all the muscle I need. Come back tomorrow.”

Ray said, “Myron Diggs is expecting us.”

Pike said, “Myron.”

Ray looked at Joe. “You think Cool T is his Christian name?”

The guy at the desk said, “Oh. Well, if Myron is expecting guests, who am I to object?” Everybody’s a comedian. Everybody’s got an act they want to sell. “I hire a guy to do a full day’s work. He don’t want to work, he can find himself another goddamn job. That’s all I got to say about it.” A peach, this guy.

Ray said, “It won’t take long.”

The bald guy didn’t look satisfied. “Yeah, right. It never takes long.” He made a gesture toward the back quarter of the warehouse. “Try over around E-16. He’s doin’ auto parts.”

We moved past the bald guy and into the aisles and back toward E-16. The warehouse covered maybe twelve thousand square feet, and most of it was mazed with shelves and aisles that had little letters and numbers on them just like the sections in a parking garage. When we found the Es, Pike said, “Better if we split up.”

“Okay.”

Ray and Joe Pike turned off at the first intersection, and I continued back to the third. I had gone maybe six aisles when I found Cool T wrestling the eight cases of power steering fluid off of his hand truck. I said, “Hey, Cool T. Let’s take a walk.”

Cool T made a noise when he saw me, and then he looked nervous and pulled off the headset. “What you doin’ here?” He began backing away. “I don’t wanna be seen with you, man. Lot of these guys are gangbangers.”

Joe and Ray came into the aisle behind him, cutting him off. When he saw Ray he frowned. “Ray, what you doin’ here?” He looked back at me. “What the fuck goin’ on?”

Ray said, “We’ve got to talk, Cool.”

Cool T was waving us away. “You tryin’ to get my ass killed? This muthuhfuckuh after the Eight-Deuce. They see I with him, they’ll be treatin’ me to Mr. Drive-By.” He was looking down the other aisles, seeing who was there. “You know better’n this, Ray. James Edward know better than this.” He tried to push past me.

I grabbed his arm. “James Edward died yesterday.”

It stopped him the way a heavy caliber rifle bullet will stop you. It brought him up short and his breath caught and his eyelids fluttered and he sort of blinked at me. “Fuck you sayin’?”

“We went over to the park, like you said. We saw the ice cream guy selling dope, and then the cops came, but the Eight-Deuce came, too. They knew we were there, Cool. They were gunning for us.”

“Bullshit.”

“They took us to a little place by the railroad tracks. Akeem D’Muere put a Dan Wesson thirty-eight-caliber revolver to James Edward’s temple and blew his brains out.”

Cool T’s mouth opened and closed and his eyes made little jerky moves. “That’s a fuckin’ lie.”

I said, “You fed us a bullshit story to get us there so they could set us up for a phony dope bust. It was a setup.”

“You a muthuhfuckin’ liar.” Cool T lunged at me and threw a straight right hand. I stepped to the outside and hooked a left up and inside under his ribs. He stumbled sideways and when he tried to come back at me Ray Depente tied him up and twisted his arms behind his back. “That’s enough, boy.”

Cool T’s eyes were red and he struggled against Ray, but a Sherman tank could probably struggle against Ray and it wouldn’t do any good. Cool T said, “He fuckin’ lyin’. I didn’t set’m up. I love James Edward like a goddamned brother.” The red eyes began to leak.

Ray Depente looked at me. “He didn’t know. He wasn’t part of it.”

“No. I guess he wasn’t.”

Ray Depente turned Cool T loose, and Cool T wiped at the wet around his eyes and smeared it over his cheeks. He shook his head. “James Edward dead because of me.”

“You didn’t know.”

“This shit ain’t happenin’.”

I said, “It’s happening.”

“They feedin’ me stuff to set you up, that means they know I with you. They know I was askin’ about them, and that means they’ll be comin’ for me. They’ll kill me just like they killed James Edward.”

There didn’t seem to be a whole lot to say to that.

He shook his head. “I can’t believe the goddamned bitch lied to me. I got all that stuff from a woman I diddle. She run around with some of those niggers in the Eight-Deuce. She get rock from some of those niggers.”

I said, “We need to talk to her, Cool T.”

Cool T looked at Joe. “Who this guy?”

“This is Joe Pike. He’s with me.”

Cool T nodded. “Then he gonna die, too.”

Pike’s mouth twitched.

I said, “Akeem wants to kill a woman named Jennifer Sheridan. I’ve got to find out what Akeem knows and doesn’t know, and if he has a line on the woman. Do you see?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe the girl who set us up, maybe she knows.”

Cool T put his hands together and pressed them against his mouth like he was praying. He looked tall and gaunt, and the sort of loose-jointed energy that he’d had only a few minutes ago seemed gone, as if he had pulled himself inward and, in the pulling, had made himself hard and fierce. He let his hands drop to his sides. “She a sister named Alma Reeves.”

“You know where to find her?”

“I know.” He turned back to the hand truck and wrestled it from under the stack of boxes and rolled it to the side of the aisle and left it neatly against the wall. “I take you over there.”

“What about your job?”

“Fuck the job. This for James Edward.”

Alma Reeves lived in a small stucco bungalow with a nice flagstone walk and a single car in the drive and a little picket fence that needed painting. We cruised the block once so that we could check out the house and the street. I said, “Does she live alone?”

Cool T was sitting behind me, next to Ray Depente. “She live with her mama and sister. The sister got a pretty good job with State Farm, so she won’t be around, but the mama be there. She old.”

“Okay.”

Across the street and two houses down, three teenaged guys in cutoff baggies and gold chains and backwards baseball caps sat on a low brick wall, laughing about something. Pike said, “What about the three guys on the wall?”

“The one in the middle Eight-Deuce. The other two are wanna-bes.”

Pike didn’t like it. “No good. They see us go in, it’ll be bad for the family.”

Cool T said, “Fuck’m.”

Pike looked at him.

Cool T said, “These niggers used to me. I here all the time.”

Ray said, “Don’t use that word again.”

Cool T gave hands. “What?”

Ray put hard eyes on him. “I’m looking where you’re looking, and I don’t see any. I’m looking in this car, and I don’t see any in here, either.”

The hard eyes got heavy and Cool T looked away.

Ray said, “I just want to get that straight.”