Lisa Unger - Smoke

“What?” said Mount.

“The second van, the shooter that got me in the shoulder. There was a couple… a gorgeous woman with long blonde hair and a young guy. He shot me.” She let her sentence trail off, shook her head, and they all looked at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve only had this really vague memory of that night. And this picture-it’s shaken something loose.”

Lydia felt her heart thump. “That man is Mickey Samuels,” said Lydia. “He’s dead, Detective Breslow.”

Jesamyn nodded slowly. “I know,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “But I’d almost swear to it. These are the people in the second van.”

“Is it possible?” said Matt.

Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged a look, both afraid that it was entirely possible… and that they’d been wrong about everything all along.

Where are we going?” asked Jeff, gripping the dashboard as Lydia quickly wove the Kompressor through the thick street traffic. She saw him pump his right leg, instinctively reaching for the breaks. He didn’t like the way she drove. He said she was an “offensive” driver rather than a “defensive” driver. But Lydia believed that, even in driving, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

“To Riverdale. To talk to Dax.”

“Why? What does he have to do with this?”

She glanced at him and then put her eyes back on the road. “Think about it.”

He stared ahead for a moment and then lifted his hands. “You lost me.”

“Something Lily said in the motel. When I asked her what secrets her stepfather could be keeping that were bad enough to sacrifice his children. Something her mother would go along with.”

“She said she didn’t know. She said something possibly to do with Body Armor or with his military career before he met her mother.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You think Dax might know something about that?” he said.

She cut across two lanes, leaving an angry cabby leaning on his horn. “Remember what Grimm said about Sandline?”

“What about it?”

“How you don’t get fired from a company like that; you get eliminated.”

“So?”

“Okay, so what if Samuels worked for Sandline, too? What if he and Rhames knew each other from way back then? And what if that’s the reason he couldn’t say anything to help himself. All the mistakes he supposedly made, like his wife and Lily said, this dark past. He was willing to sacrifice Lily and Mickey. Maybe he didn’t reveal it because he couldn’t , not because he just didn’t want to.”

“Out of some kind of loyalty to Sandline?”

“Or fear of what they would do to him.”

“But his life was already in shambles. The New Day killed his stepson-or so he believed-took his daughter, his wife had left him. He stood to lose all his money. What else could they take from him?”

“His life; until he took it himself.”

Jeffrey tapped his finger on the door handle, was silent for a moment. “Maybe Dax was right after all; suicide as the ultimate act of control.”

“Or surrender.”

“Okay, say any of this is true. What does Dax have to do with it?”

“I just think he knows more than he’s saying.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “If he knew something that would help us, he would have told us.”

“Not if he thought he was endangering us by doing so.”

More silence. Then, “Where does Mickey fall into this?” asked Jeffrey.

“If Detective Breslow truly did see him that night and he’s still alive, then we have to assume that he’s in partnership with The New Day and not a victim,” said Lydia.

Jeffrey shook his head. “Since Florida we’ve been thinking that he infiltrated The New Day to help Tim Samuels and either they fucked him up so badly that he killed himself, or he got too close and they took care of the job for him.”

“But maybe Mickey was working with them,” said Lydia, thinking aloud.

“But why? And how would they even have come in contact with one another?”

“Maybe Rhames sought him out. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Did Mickey really consider Tim Samuels his enemy?”

“I guess it depends on what those dark secrets are, on what Trevor Rhames may have told Mickey about his stepfather’s past.”

When they got to Dax’s house, the windows were dark and the gate was locked. Lydia rolled down the car window and pressed the buzzer near the gate but the box was silent. She stared at it worriedly, as if doing so would cause him to answer. But it didn’t work. She felt a rise of dread in her chest.

“He’s not here,” she said pointlessly. She turned anxious eyes on him.

He released a breath. “Oh no,” he said raising his hand. “You don’t want to break in.”

She looked at him.

“Bad idea,” he said. “Very bad idea.”

She had to agree with him. She took her cell phone from the center console and dialed Dax’s number. The voicemail picked up before the first ring.

“Leave a message. No names, no numbers. If I don’t know who you are, you shouldn’t be calling.” A long tone.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s urgent. Seriously.”

She ended the call and looked with dark frustration at the windows of his house. She fought the urge to pound the dashboard with her fist.

“What now?” she asked, as much of herself as of Jeffrey.

He was quiet a second. Then, “I think I know where we can get some information.”

He got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side. “I’m driving.”

She rolled her eyes and slid over to the passenger seat.

“Control freak,” she said.

Manny Underwood looked as if he’d been on the losing end of an argument with a jackhammer. He lay on a thin cot in the center of a stone room beneath the streets of the diamond district. He turned swollen eyes on them when they entered the room.

“You can’t keep him here forever,” Jeffrey said to Chiam Bechim.

“We’re very patient people. But, no,” the old man said solemnly, “we can’t.”

“So what are you going to do with him?”

“All we want to know is where the rest of the stones are,” he said vaguely.

“And who he was working for.”

Chiam shifted on his feet, his eyes on Lydia. He leaned into Jeffrey and whispered, “This is not a place to bring a woman, Mr. Mark.”

“She’s no ordinary woman,” said Jeffrey with a smile. “She’s my wife.”

Chiam made some kind of uncomfortable throat-clearing noise and looked over at Underwood. “He has been wholly uncooperative. But I have the sense that under the right circumstances, he might begin to loosen up.”

Jeffrey looked at him.

“We’re employing a program of gradual escalation,” Chiam said softly, as if he were a doctor discussing the treatment of a terminally ill patient.

The man on the cot released a low groan. He didn’t sound healthy and Jeffrey felt a wash of compassion for him.

“Don’t feel too badly for him, Mr. Mark,” said Bechim, reading his expression. “This is a very bad man, guilty of some heinous acts. When we enter this business and conduct ourselves poorly, we all know where we might wind up.”

The old man’s words were a warning and Jeffrey felt them in his bones. He felt Lydia stiffen at his side. He turned a cold stare on Chiam.

“All I’m saying is that you might just ‘escalate’ yourself out of what you want to know.”

“If you think you can do better, be my guest,” he said. He turned and left, leaving Lydia and Jeffrey alone in the cellar with Underwood. Jeffrey didn’t hear the door at the top of the staircase open or close so he knew Chiam was nearby, listening.

“Mr. Underwood,” Jeffrey said softly. “If you talk to us, we might be able to help you out of this mess.”