Joel Goldman - No way out

“I’ll bet you are. Too bad someone killed him.”

He cocked his head, uncertain whether I was sympathizing with him or yanking his chain.

“What do you know about that, about Crenshaw getting popped in the hospital?”

I shook my head, stuttering as another round of shakes twisted my vocal cords. “Not much. The cop sitting on Crenshaw’s door left his post long enough for the shooter to get it done.”

“Roni Chase, what’s your relationship with her?”

I took a few breaths, enough to stabilize my voice. “I told you. I met her yesterday at LC’s. She’s in trouble, and I’m helping her out. What’s your interest in her?”

“I’m interested in those stolen guns. She did Crenshaw’s books. She was with him when he killed his wife. She shot him and then shows up at the hospital when Crenshaw gets popped. You was me, you’d be interested in her too.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean, what else? The stolen guns, that’s it.”

“Which means we’re back to bullshit. You haven’t asked me one thing you didn’t already know. I assume you were the ATF agent at the hospital last night. Quincy Carter was all over Roni until you showed up. Next thing I know, he’s gone, you’re gone, Brett Staley’s gone, and Roni gets to go home. If you’re so interested in her, how does that happen?”

Jennings shot a quick glance at Ammara when I mentioned Brett’s name.

“You want to help Roni, work with me and maybe I can help her and you.”

“Work with you, how?”

“Give me your cell phone.”

He added his name and number to my contacts and tossed the phone back to me.

“Anything you get on the stolen guns, I hear about it, including anything you get from Roni Chase. Doesn’t matter who it involves or what it is, it comes to me. I call you, you answer. You don’t put me on hold, you don’t promise to call me back. We tell you to wear a wire, you wear a wire.”

He was giving orders, not asking for suggestions, but he didn’t own me, at least not yet. Going along was a promise I’d decide later whether to keep.

“Understood. You think Roni knows something about the guns, or do you want to use me and her to get to Brett Staley?”

This time, he held his poker face, making me wish Kate were here to read it for me.

“I’m saying Roni Chase’s life can get real complicated. You want to help her, I’m telling you how.”

“And what do I get for being your butt boy?”

He looked at Ammara again, nodding.

“Copies of the files on the Martin and Montgomery missing children,” she said.

“I need those files, but that won’t help Roni.”

“Sorry, Jack, it’s the best deal I could get. Half a loaf, you know what I mean.”

“How does an ATF hump get copies of missing person files?”

“He didn’t get them. I did. KCPD asked for our help on both cases. Jennings made the deal with our new SAC, Debra Williams, and I’m stuck with it.”

I looked at Jennings. His face was flat, impassive, a brick wall shutting out further negotiations until I had something more to offer than cooperation. He and Adrienne Nardelli were dealing from the same deck. Knowledge was power. They had it, and I needed it.

“When do I get the files?”

“Right now,” Ammara said. “They’re in the car.”

“Who do I deal with? You or asshole?”

She shrugged. “Asshole.”

“Hey!” Jennings said. “I’m standing right here.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Give me the files.”

“One last thing,” he said. “You tell anyone about this, our deal is off and Roni Chase goes away.”

The lights were off when I walked in the house, lurching on uncertain legs, bracing myself against walls, countertops, and furniture. Roxy and Ruby were fast asleep, back-to-back, in their doggie bed on the kitchen floor. I left the files Ammara gave me on the kitchen table, my brain too fogged to make sense of them.

When Joy moved in, she took the bedroom that had been Lucy’s. We didn’t start sleeping together for a couple of months, and when we did, it was for comfort, sex one of the last things to come back into our relationship and then, only occasionally, given her condition. We were intimate in other ways, though, that held us together, knowing that we were sharing the last months of her life with one another.

Even then, we didn’t sleep together every night. It wasn’t something we discussed or negotiated. There were times one of us needed the other, and there were times we needed to be alone. We just let it happen as if that part of our life had an identity and will of its own, sometimes going a week or more together or alone as our uneven rhythms dictated, Joy keeping her clothes and toiletries in the other bedroom and bath.

Climbing the stairs, seeing the door to her room closed and mine open, I understood why she wanted it this way. She’d lost too much-our children, our marriage, and the certainty she’d be alive from one day to the next-to trust the future or me enough not to need a place of her own.

I don’t get misty-eyed when I walk into a courthouse, kvelling over the nobility of the law. I’ve learned that justice is more myopic than blind, judges working crossword puzzles at the bench while jurors sleep through trials and lawyers stumble over closing arguments buzzed from a three-martini lunch. I’ve seen suspects do the perp walk one day and the freedom walk the next, their fate a commodity traded among plea-bargaining prosecutors and defense counsel like baseball cards at an autograph show.

In spite of all that, I was knocked back when I stepped off the bus and saw Roni Chase standing on the steps of the Jackson County Courthouse flanked by Ethan Bonner and Kate Scranton, waving to me, her smile so wide I could count her molars. I looked around. Cars passed back and forth on Twelfth Street in front of the courthouse. People flowed around me on the sidewalk. A pushcart vendor was setting up shop offering bagels, pretzels, and brats. A northbound bus stopped at the intersection of Twelfth and Oak, people getting on and off, the bus pulling away in a sooty cloud of diesel exhaust. Braylon Jennings emerged from the fog, tipping his ball cap at me before turning and walking away, letting me know that he’d made good on his end of our deal and, PS, now he owned me. Roni skipped down the steps, threw her arms around me, and planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek.

“Oh my God, Jack! Can you believe it? They dropped the charges! I didn’t even have to go in front of the judge! I don’t know how to thank you for getting me such an awesome lawyer!”

Bonner took his time, ambling down the steps, not offering a high five. We exchanged looks, his full of questions, mine saying don’t ask me.

“Quincy Carter called me this morning,” Bonner said. “Told me they were dropping the charges.”

“Any explanation?” I asked.

“None, but Carter said not to get cocky because things could change. My guess is the prosecuting attorney didn’t want to get too far ahead of himself. If he moves on Roni before he’s ready to go after the shooter, he’s got to turn his evidence over to me in discovery. He might be afraid that could hamstring him.”

“You don’t buy that,” Kate said. “Your face is full of doubt. Your eyes are too narrow to see your shoes, and your brow is doing a Cro-Magnon crunch.”

He took a breath. “No, I don’t buy it. I didn’t let them interview Roni, so they haven’t even heard her explanation about how the killer could have ended up with her gun. Hell, Roni hasn’t told me either. Any other case, the cops would threaten her with spending the rest of her life doing remakes of Chained Heat to get her to confess and cooperate. I’m good, but this doesn’t make sense. If I didn’t know better, I’d say somebody fixed something.”