“Is that why you walked in seven years ago? You were trying to square your accounts?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I mean, my doc first diagnosed me eight years ago. Put me through surgery, chemo, radiation. It was hell, but when I came out the other side, I thought I’d beat this thing. So it’s not like I thought I had to prepare my soul for the great beyond or anything. It was more that I felt like I’d been given a second chance. Like the cancer was a shot across the bow. After, I was changed. And the business changed too. I found I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.”
Hendricks nodded. He could relate. The moment that had changed him was a brush with mortality as well. Not his own, but a young soldier’s whose throat he’d slit, a man scarcely more than a boy who’d died, terrified, in his arms, his blood flowing between Hendricks’s fingers.
He shuddered. Pushed the memory away. Blamed the goose bumps on his fever. “What do you mean, the business changed?”
“Look, I’m not one to make excuses for what I’ve done. I was a criminal. A murderer. And I enjoyed it. Not the killing, you understand. That was just the cost of doing business. Every made guy on the planet knows going in they’re playing for keeps. Knows if they’re not sharp enough, careful enough, good enough, they’ll get got. But the lifestyle…the lifestyle’s fucking glorious. And we did enough good, I could get to sleep at night.”
Hendricks was incredulous. “You did good?”
“Damn right we did. The fact is, much as the white hats wanna pretend like organized crime is a scourge on society, we serve a fucking purpose. Some places, the family-or gang, or whatever-is all a community’s got. We clean up neighborhoods the police won’t touch. Make it safe to walk the streets.”
“Yeah, you’re fucking saints.”
“I ain’t claiming we are. We took our piece. We got rich. We lived the life. But the family I came up through had rules: No dope, no girls, and no tolerance for anyone who moved ’em on our territory. Did we charge local businesses protection? You’re goddamn right we did. But you wanna know something? We fucking earned that money. In twenty years, there was maybe five holdups in my neighborhood. Probably twice as many rapes and muggings. Know how many the cops solved? Not a goddamn one. But thanks to me and mine, every one a them fuckers paid.”
“So what happened? How’d you get from there to talking to the FBI?”
“Used to be, our business was about community. We provided what the cops and straight businesses wouldn’t, or couldn’t. But then we got greedy. We formed ourselves a council. Stopped thinking like a bunch of family businesses and started thinking like a global fucking corporation. Stopped taking care of our own. We’d deal in anything that paid. It began in the seventies, with dope. Smack, coke, and crack. Then came guns-to gangbangers, militants, whack-job cult leaders, whoever had the cash. Ain’t like we asked ’em their intentions. Then came girls. Most of ’em unwilling. Brought into the country and kept like fucking pets, only we don’t force-feed our pets junk to keep ’em docile. Next thing you know, our communities are rotting from the inside, but we don’t care, because we’ve never been richer. And then the Council decided to aim higher.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning some Council members realized we could lower our overhead if we took the operation international. Next thing I knew, we were buying off lawmakers and bureaucrats in Sarajevo, Amsterdam, Johannesburg. Making deals with fucking warlords to trade girls for guns. Watching the evening news and seeing the weapons we’d sold turned on the poor and helpless. I couldn’t stomach it. Then I got sick-which was a blessing, in a way, because it removed me from the day-to-day. But the young punk who covered for me while I was undergoing treatment had designs to make his new position permanent, and he had some shady partner he said could take us legit and make us rich beyond our wildest dreams-if we made the partner chairman, that is.”
“Who?”
“Hell if I know. But he must’ve had enough clout that the Council thought he could deliver, because next thing I know, I’m on a one-way ticket to the desert. I barely escaped with my life, and when I did, I went straight to the fucking Feds. You know how that turned out.”
“Yeah. What I don’t know is how you survived the blast at the safe house.”
“Somebody with a cleaner conscience than mine might say it was divine providence. I think it was dumb fucking luck. I was in the basement when the bomb went off-doing laundry, if you can believe it. Half the house came down around me, but somehow, I walked away.”
“But I understand they found your DNA.”
“When the Feds heard I’d been sick, they brought in a doctor on the quiet to check me out. He drew some samples and packed ’em up to send ’em to the lab. They were sitting on the counter when the bomb went off. Seemed like a goddamn gift to me when I found out. I thought about hunting down the bastards who tried to kill me. I thought about making them pay. Then I figured, fuck it-maybe being dead’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe it means I can start fresh. Live out whatever days I’ve got left in peace. I’d always said that when I retired, I was gonna move to San Francisco-so that’s exactly what I did.”
Hendricks was envious of Segreti’s fresh start. He wished he could have allowed himself to walk away. But then, Segreti hadn’t gotten as far away as he’d thought. “What was your role with the Council, exactly?”
“There ain’t really a name for what I did, but I used to say I was the Devil’s Red Right Hand. I made sure the Council’s word became deed.”
“So if, for example, the Council were to hire a hitter to take care of a problem…”
“I’d be the guy to hire him, yeah.”
“The guy who pushed you out-what was his name?” Hendricks asked casually, but Segreti was too smart to fall for it.
“I’ll tell you what. First you deliver me safely to this Agent Thompson. Then I’ll give you his name.”
“Deal,” Hendricks said. “Just do me a favor and don’t go dying in the meantime.”
36.
CAMERON CAME TO in a dingy room no more than four feet across. A bare lightbulb was screwed into the fixture above her. The floor on which she sat sloped toward a drain at its center. The wall they’d left her propped against was water-stained and smelled of cleaning products. A utility sink jutted from the wall.
A janitor’s closet, she realized.
Apart from Cameron, it was empty. No mops, no tools, no cleaning products-nothing she could use as a weapon. Not that she was in any shape to fight. Her head pounded. Her limbs ached. Her thoughts were slippery, and she had difficulty holding on to them.
She rattled the door. Locked. She banged on it awhile and shouted herself hoarse, but no one came.
An hour or so later, the door opened. The hallway’s fluorescent light was an assault. A wild-eyed man in filthy clothes and cowboy boots stood just outside, conferring with the head of hospital security. The latter’s nose was packed with cotton, and when he looked at her, his features warped with rage.
“She’s all yours, Mr. Yancey-but be warned, she’s scrappier than she looks. “
They yanked her to her feet and zip-tied her hands behind her back. Then Yancey dragged her out a service entrance, identifying himself as law enforcement to everyone they passed so they’d ignore her cries for help.
As they crossed the lot to Yancey’s rental car, the fog enveloped them. Cameron managed to writhe free of his grasp when he took a hand off her to open the back door, but Yancey grabbed her by the collar and punched her in the face. His ring split her cheek open like an overripe tomato. She crumpled, dazed, to the concrete. He kicked her until she blacked out, and possibly a while longer.