The two parkas advanced, but didn’t back up their targets for long, maybe a step or two.
Then they opened fire.
34
“I know you’re awake. Pick up.”
It was still dark out, 5:42 A.M., and Hardy was having his morning coffee and reading the front-page story in the paper about his day in court yesterday, when Jansey Ticknor had implicated his client in a long-standing and, he was sure, completely spurious affair with Dylan Vogler. For not the first time-and though he already had some marginally serviceable answers-he was asking himself why she had perjured herself so thoroughly and wondering if he had anything to gain by calling her back to the stand and taking her head off.
But at the sound of Glitsky’s voice, these cogitations fled and he leaned over and grabbed the receiver. “This isn’t what we call a reasonable time.”
“You’re in trial. I know you’re up.”
“Frannie’s not in trial.”
“I didn’t call that phone.”
“You’ve got all the answers.”
“Got to. I’m a cop. People depend on me.”
“Actually, I’m glad you called. I was going to check in with you today about Lori Bradford.”
“I figured you would someday, but that’s not what I called about. Do you know who Eugenio Ruiz is?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Diz. Don’t play games with me, please. Of course you know who he is, right?”
“BBW. The new manager.”
“Right. Except now he’s the new dead manager.”
“Oh, my God, poor Eugenio.”
“I don’t know, Maya. Maybe not so poor.”
“So what does this mean?” she asked him. They were next to one another at the table in the glass-block-enclosed attorney visiting room. It was still a few minutes short of eight A.M. “Besides that, after this, now we’re definitely closing the place down. We should have done it before, but Joel wanted to make a stand against Glass. So you’re telling me they were still selling dope out of there.”
“It looks like it. At least Eugenio was.” Hardy shrugged. This was by no means the most important issue of the day, nor the most unexpected. “Dylan had the whole system set up, everybody who worked there probably in on it. It makes sense somebody kept it going.”
“Do they have any suspects? I mean for who shot him.”
“No. It’s way too soon for that.”
“I hope Joel has an alibi. If he found out that Eugenio was dealing again after all we’ve been through, he would have killed him.”
“Let’s not mention that to anybody, okay? But it wasn’t Joel, even without an alibi. There were two different-caliber bullets, so it looks like two shooters. What it looks like, classically in fact, is a dope rip. Somebody followed somebody to where the money and the dope changed hands and just started blasting away.”
“That happens over marijuana?”
“Every day, Maya. Every day.”
“It seems so strange. Remember when we were younger?”
“I wasn’t young when you were, but I know what you mean.”
“It’s so hard to imagine. I mean, a little grass was like nothing, no big deal at all, and now these people are dying over it.”
“It’s illegal. So it’s prohibition all over again.”
“They ought to just legalize it.”
“That’s a different discussion which I’d love to have with you someday. But let’s not make the argument when you get on the stand. How’s that?”
The comment clearly offended her. “I’m not stupid, Diz.”
“Not even close, Maya.” He pushed his chair back a little from the table, crossed one leg over the other. “But you asked me what the killing of Ruiz meant for us. I’d like to pretend that Braun or maybe Stier will see this as the next step in a turf war that began with Dylan and Levon, and one that you couldn’t have been involved in, so they’ll just decide this whole prosecution and trial is a mistake and let you go. But unfortunately, that is not happening, not in a million years.”
“So. What’s left?”
“What’s left is a guy named Paco, who Eugenio maybe could have identified, and now definitely can’t.”
“Paco?”
“Ring a bell?”
“Well, actually, yes.”
Hardy sat back with a little thrill of surprise and pleasure. “Tell me you know him and where he lives and you could pick him out of a lineup.”
She bit her lip. “None of the above, I’m afraid. But I do know that name. He was a friend of Dylan’s. And Levon’s, too, for that matter.”
“All dead guys now, you notice. When did Paco know them? Back in college?”
She nodded. “Sometime back there. Evidently they were all kind of the in crowd before I became part of it. You know, Dylan and his pals always doing this crazy, dangerous stuff. And this kind of legendary guy named Paco.”
“So what happened to him? You never met him?”
“No. He was supposedly gone by the time I showed up.”
“Dropped out, transferred, what?”
“No idea, really. Maybe he wasn’t even in school with us, was just kind of a hanger-on. Except, you know, I’m pretty sure Paco wasn’t his real name. It was more like a nom de guerre. Sometimes I got the feeling it was somebody we all actually knew. I mean still knew, and still hung out with. It was just like Dylan to wrap it all up in a mystery and be the one keeping the big secret. Sound familiar?”
“You think Dylan might have been blackmailing him too?”
“I don’t know. I kind of doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Well, I think first, he didn’t need to. He had me. And second, if you don’t have a weak and guilt-ridden person like me you’re dealing with, blackmail can be a little dangerous. I mean, you’d better know your mark. You threaten to expose the wrong thing about the wrong guy, and the guy goes, ‘Uh, no. I think I’ll kill you instead.’ You know what I’m saying?”
“I do. And Paco wasn’t weak or guilt-ridden?”
“Evidently not. His toughness was why he was legendary. He was a real player. He used to go out with Dylan and Levon, like I did later, but was… well, he wasn’t just a tagalong. They supposedly hit this liquor store once and the clerk pulled a gun and Paco shot him dead.”
“This was a different robbery than the one Dylan and Levon went down for?”
“Yeah. Before I’d even met them. But when Dylan told me about it, I thought he was just bragging, making it sound like they were such romantic studs, sticking up places, these fearless kind of Robin Hood guys, getting money from these liquor stores and buying our dope with it, which they shared with everybody. How did I ever get involved with people like that? I just don’t know how that happened.”
“Maybe by doing robberies with them?”
“You make it sound way worse than it was. It wasn’t anything strong arm. It was more just intimidation to get stuff we wanted. Three or four of us putting the press on somebody, that’s all. It was mostly just other kids and their dope.”
“You just took it from them?”
She didn’t answer, looked down at the floor.
“At gunpoint?”
“No! Never with a gun. Dylan wouldn’t use a gun after Paco. Said you couldn’t predict what would happen and didn’t want another mistake.”
“Dylan thought it was a mistake, then? Using a gun.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely. He saw it as the reason Paco stopped hanging with them. And that really bummed him out. One less guy he had power over.”
“So Paco checked out because…?”
“Maybe he grew a conscience about the guy he shot. The way I heard it was Paco hadn’t planned to kill anybody. It was all kind of a lark that suddenly went bad.” She looked askance at Hardy. “That’s the way it happened with Dylan. You started messing around with him and doing crazier and crazier things until you did something awful that you didn’t mean to do at all. Just one moment of frailty falling in with these guys, and then somehow later you are in just completely the wrong place you never really meant to be. Me and what happened with Tess. Levon. Maybe this guy Paco, I don’t know.”