Josh Stallings - Beautiful, Naked and Dead

“Let him walk,” Leo said to the panicked mobsters in the shattered living room. From the porch I could see a Lexus was on fire. The sky was pale blue as dawn broke soft and gentle over the violent scene. Three black Suburbans full of Feds in SWAT gear swarmed over the lawns and into the house. A baby faced officer pointed an assault rifle in my face demanding I get face down. I just kept walking, luckily Sanders arrived before I was shot.

“Jeffery Sabatini just admitted to the murder of Gino,” I said and handed him the digital recorder from my pocket.

He took the recorder and looked at Cass. “Will she make it?”

“She better.”

“Medivac is five minutes out. Your big guy was hit bad.” I turned away, holding Cass to me, her breathing was shallow against my neck. I looked down over the pond, its water mirror still. I didn’t feel flushed with victory, I felt small and helpless against a world that let its most amazing flowers get trampled. A world that ate the young and spit out the bones and left the children of the battle zone to stumble blindly on searching for answers. Answers that never came, or came too late.

Over the hills I could hear the familiar thump thump of a chopper. They set down flattening the grass around them. I ran with Cass to them, lifting her into the waiting arms of the paramedics. She didn’t want to let go of my neck, I had to pull her arms free. I wanted to kiss her goodbye but was pushed aside by a woman bent on saving her life. Two paramedics ran up with Gregor on a stretcher, his chest and left leg were tore up and bled wildly. He looked up as he passed and grinned. “Hell of a party boss, hell of a party,” he said and then closed his eyes. I stood, staring until the chopper was over the hill.

“You were the one who turned Cass onto Sabatini,” I said. Sanders looked past me and didn’t deny it. “Your computer pimp told you about her and you saw an opening.”

“I may have opened the door, but she walked through it willingly.” He still wasn’t meeting my eyes. “And an innocent girl died so you could make a collar. You sleeping well at night?”

“Like a baby. There are no innocents in this game, only differing degrees of guilty.”

“Bullshit, and you know it. So what now, are you going to keep your word and let us fade?”

“Your tape may be enough to get Sabatini to plea out, but if it goes to trail the D.A. will want you and Bette to testify.” His face was still and emotionless, just giving me the facts.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“So sue me.”

“I don’t think so. Here’s how it’s going down, if any of my people hear from you again, the LA Times gets a package, the recording of you allowing a known felon to plant drugs and kill gangsters. I’ll give them the porno boy you let operate and tell them how you sold out a government witness you were sworn to protect.” I was guessing he had tipped Cass to Gino’s identity, hoping she would witness Gino’s death. Then to keep from being killed herself she would have to turn Sabatini in. Only she had outsmarted them all and run. The twitch developing in the corner of Sanders’ eye told me I had hit the mark. “The marshals aren’t going to be too happy that you screwed up the witness protection plan.”

“You’ll never make it stick.” He wasn’t sounding too sure.

“I don’t have to, the suspicion will be enough to derail any career plans you have.” I had his balls in the ringer. He could either kill me or let us walk clean. He shook his head slowly and walked past me, I followed him down to the house.

The party was over. Sabatini was being loaded into the back of an ambulance, his face covered by an oxygen mask and his hands cuffed. His eyes locked on me for a moment and seemed to say I’ll get you yet. I just shot him the smile of a man who just didn’t give a rat’s ass. The goons not being treated were sitting down in handcuffs.

Bob brought Leo over to Sanders, shoving him forward with a pistol in between his shoulder blades. Leo took it calmly as if it was only a speeding ticket he was facing.

“Says he needs to speak to you,” Bob said.

“He’s one of mine,” I told Sanders, “My inside man.” Sanders looked Leo over with undisguised disgust.

“Fine, take the cuffs off him Bob.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” Bob told Sanders about the accountant they found in the bathtub who was pleading to sing his heart out. That put the first smile I had seen on Sanders’ face.

“This is turning out to be a banner day,” he said as he and Bob went off to talk to the accountant.

Pulling out onto Skyline the Crown Vic rattled like a mother and the wind whistled through the broken windows, but it ran. God bless Detroit iron.

“Where can I drop you?” I asked Leo as we rumbled along.

“The airport, I think I would like to go home and take a very long bath.”

“You weren’t part of that crew, so what’s the deal.”

“No, I wasn’t part of that mess. My employers sent me out to sweep up, after those idiots bungled a very simple job.”

“When you get home, tell your bosses I’m through. If they want to come after me or mine, then buckle your seat belts, I will not go down lightly.”

“No, that is clear as crystal. From my perspective the less mentioned about you the better. I plan to forget your name the minute I leave this car. As for Mr. Sabatini, after this and what he lost in tech stocks, I suspect he is due for an unfortunate accident while in custody.”

I dropped him at the airport and drove down to Palo Alto. Cass and Gregor were taken to Stanford Emergency. I was told the Justice Department was picking up the tab for the hospital, so maybe Sanders wasn’t a total waste of DNA. Around eleven a young doctor came into the waiting room and told me Cass had lost a lot of blood, the bullet entered above her right breast, but missed the lung. She might lose some strength in her arm but she was going to pull through. Gregor was still in surgery when I finally passed out.

The sun shot golden rays out across the bay, white caps danced on waves below as we stood on the Golden Gate Bridge. Cass was in the hospital for eight days, I stayed with her, sleeping on a cot at her side. She woke crying at night and I would hush her back to sleep. Gregor did three days in the I.C.U. and was still laid up with tubes running in and out of him, but he was recovering quicker than any of his doctors expected.

Cass lifted the Marilyn Monroe cookie jar onto the railing, tears filling her eyes. “She always loved this city,” she said.

“It was you Cass, the whole time, Kelly didn’t do any of those things,” I said in a soft voice.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about baby, Kelly…” she drifted off looking out to sea.

“Hell Cass, Kell didn’t even like stripping. You talked her into it. You slept with Gino and then Sabatini. You saw the murder go down. You, not Kelly. She was the soft one, in LA she chose to be a waitress instead of stripping. You chose hooking. She wasn’t hard like you. The girl in the porn, the girl with the fairy tattoo, that wasn’t Kelly, was it?”

“Fuck you Moses. How dare you, here, now? You choose now to pull this?”

“Has to be now, Kelly deserves the truth.” She slapped my face hard, but it didn’t hurt, nothing hurt anymore. I had been through hell and I had finally found Kelly. I couldn’t bring her back, but I had found her. She was the girl I had known, our friendship wasn’t an act or a manipulation. She hadn’t played me, but I had been played. “You ready for the funny part Cass? Your big dark secret is out, and I don’t care.”

“But it’s not true, Mo,” she pleaded.