Joel Goldman - No way out

And for all of them, it was Frank’s gun that pulled loose the final fatal thread, unraveling Braylon Jennings’s investigation of Cesar Mendez. Brett Staley was Jennings’s confidential informant, making him the nexus between his father’s operation and Mendez. If Mendez found it necessary to have Frank Crenshaw killed to protect his gun trafficking, he’d likely have felt the same about Crenshaw’s partners, forcing Brett to act as his proxy.

I liked that mosaic until I tried to fit in the piece with Eberto Garza’s name on it. If Brett Staley had killed his father, why would he wait in the store all night only to kill Eberto? It made more sense that Brett hadn’t killed his father, that instead the killer was waiting for him to close the circle. Perhaps Mendez had sent Eberto to check on things at the grocery, and in the dark, the killer, exhausted and stressed from killing one man and waiting for another, had shot Eberto by mistake.

It was a way to make the piece about Eberto Garza fit, but it felt like I was squaring a round edge. That was a lot of killing to hide the origin of a single gun. It was like shooting your dick off because you had an itch in your crotch.

There was another problem. Jimmy had to have taken his orders from someone. If it was Nick, he had no reason to lie about it since Nick was dead. Conclusion: Nick was taking orders from someone higher up in the chain of command, and Jimmy didn’t know whom that was.

Isolating Jimmy from that information was insurance against him giving it up, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to figure it out. If Ricky Suarez frightened him enough to stage an escape, he must have suspected that Cesar Mendez was on top of the totem pole.

I was migrating north and west, aiming for the Transit Plaza at Tenth amp; Main with no more of a plan than to take the Number 24 out Independence Avenue, get off, and keep walking until I found Cesar Mendez or he found me. As plans went, it was a lousy one, but it was the best I could do.

I reached Main and turned north, passing a parking garage, feeling more than seeing someone behind me, his footsteps matching mine, keeping a distance I guessed at ten feet for half a block. I stopped at the traffic light at Twelfth and Main, not turning to see what he would do. There were three other people on my corner and more crossing toward me, plus traffic moving in all four directions, making a daylight attack unlikely.

“I hear you’re looking for Cesar Mendez,” a voice said from behind me.

I turned around. It was the hostage negotiator, Jeremiah Quinn.

The thing that most struck me about Quinn when I met him at the Municipal Farm was his nonchalance, his water-off-a-duck’s-back reaction to a man holding a woman hostage, a homemade knife at her throat. I’d known guys like him on the bomb squad, guys who looked at a bundle of wires wrapped around a package of explosives and shrapnel the way the people who do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink look at the Sunday edition, an interesting problem to be solved but not one they hadn’t seen before.

They lived for the competition, the higher the stakes the better. And like a center fielder that drifts back, loping to the warning track, glove extended at the last second, making a snow-cone catch and bouncing off the wall with a smile before trotting to the dugout, they made it look easy.

I wasn’t one of those guys. I sweated a case from start to finish, second-guessing, starting over, feeling a piece of me die if it went bad, thanking a god I wasn’t certain I believed in when it went right. In the years since I began shaking I sometimes wondered if going all in all the time hadn’t taken a toll on my brain, stressing a neural connection until it short-circuited. The doctors told me no, but what did they know? They couldn’t even come up with a better name for my movement disorder than “tics.”

The light changed, people sliding past us, scattered wind whipping raindrops splattering at our feet. I flashed on images of Quinn talking to Kate in the ambulance, handing her a card, and of Kate walking out of Simon’s office saying she had to make a call and staying in the car when we got to Roni Chase’s house to make another.

“Kate Scranton called you,” I said.

“She’s persistent.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That you’re proud, stubborn, and resistant to reason.”

“That’s it?”

“And she said you need a minder.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I don’t babysit.”

“What do you do?”

“I help people make peace or make war.”

“I thought you were a hostage negotiator,” I said.

“That’s the peace part. Not every conflict can be resolved. People need help with the fight too.”

“How do you do that?”

He shrugged. “Make sure they know what they’re fighting for and why and that they understand what they have to do to win. If they can’t do it or aren’t willing to do it, then it’s time to make peace.”

“And if they are willing to do it?”

“I show them how.”

“Ever do it for them?”

“If they can’t and if they pay me enough.”

“What if they can’t pay you?”

“Maybe. If I care enough about who wins.”

“Is Kate paying you?”

“We’ll see.”

He was shorter than me and younger by at least ten years. He also carried less weight, but more of it was wiry muscle. His leather jacket hung loose, a slight bulge on his right hip I took for a holstered gun. He was willing, that much was for certain, and he was for hire, my gut telling me it didn’t matter for which side as long as the money made it into his account. Not my type.

“I’ll pass,” I said, turning my back and stepping off the curb.

“I found Mendez. He wants to talk to you.”

The light turned red again. I came back to the sidewalk. “Why would he talk to you, and why does he want to talk to me?”

Quinn smiled. “Two questions, same answer. He realized it’s in his best interests.”

I didn’t like Quinn, and I liked it less that Kate had gone behind my back telling him enough to get Mendez’s attention, information that could give Mendez more of an edge than he already had.

“How do I know you didn’t tell Mendez too much and that we aren’t walking into a trap?”

“This isn’t my first dance. Besides, I’m guessing you were about to go hunting him. What were you going to do? Set a trap and use yourself as bait?”

The really annoying thing about guys like Quinn was that they were too often right and they knew it.

“How’d you find Mendez?”

“I’ve done some work with gang task forces. I knew who to ask and where to look.”

“What did you do? Invite him to meet you at Starbucks so you could buy him a latte?”

He shook his head, letting out a long breath. “Kate was right. She said you’d make this difficult, so I’m going to make it easy. I’ve been following you since you left the jail. You’re shaking and wobbling, just like Kate told me you would. She said that you wouldn’t listen, that you’d turn me down, and that when you did I should tell you that the moon is pink, whatever the hell that means.”

I chuckled. “She said that?”

“She did. And she said to tell you that if you try to do this on your own and get yourself killed, Joy will never forgive you, and she won’t either.”

“And how are you going to keep me from getting killed?”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an orange. “With this.”

“A piece of fruit?”

He opened his coat, showing me the butt of his gun. “In case the orange doesn’t do the trick.”