The longer I listened to her cry, felt her skeletal body heave beneath my arms, the more I began to wonder if I even really wanted to know.
Back to the office, under a pewter sky that darkened as I drove, heavy with the promise of rain. It was hardly past eight, but the humidity was already noticeable. The windows were down, and the air that rushed in through them was thick, seeming to pass over me like a soft fabric. At every stoplight sweat sprang from my pores. The digital thermometer in the corner of my rearview mirror gave the temperature at eighty degrees, but the still, muggy quality made it seem hotter. This in the early morning. I left the air-conditioning off, though, preferring to feel the wind hard against my face, forcing my eyes half-shut as I accelerated.
“You backed off pretty quickly,” Joe said after we’d been on the road for several minutes. “Quickly for you, at least.”
“She was my friend’s mother, Joe,” I said, and then regretted it. I’d just confirmed exactly what he was so worried about, telling him I’d changed my normal approach because of my personal connection to the case. He didn’t say anything, though. Just drummed his fingers on the door panel and stared out the window.
“It was Gajovich,” I said. “We got that much, and that matters. He went in there with his stories about television interviews and courtroom appearances and he scared her into silence. To protect Jack Padgett. And his brother’s running the show in that district.”
“We need to talk to someone,” Joe said. “This morning. Cal Richards, maybe.”
“Or Dean and Mason. Neither of them gives a shit about Ed, but they’re on the corruption task force. If one Gajovich is involved, let alone two, they need to know about it.”
“I want to start with Richards,” Joe said. “He’s the only guy in the mix that I really trust.”
“Call him, then.” I wanted Richards involved, too. The names we were connecting to this went too high now. We stood on the edge of an investigation that was going to rock the city’s law enforcement community and horrify the public. I didn’t want any part of it. All I wanted to do was pull Ed Gradduk’s legacy away from the fallout zone.
We were on the interstate now, doing seventy-five, and the wind was too loud for conversation. Joe rolled up his window, and I followed suit, then turned the air-conditioning on. Once the cab was quiet, Joe took out his cell phone and made the call into police dispatch. He was told Richards wasn’t available, so he asked the dispatcher to get Cal a message as soon as possible. It was urgent, Joe said.
The sky was still darkening—pale clouds skimming quickly across the horizon, heavier, purplish clouds trudging somberly behind. I’d had all of four hours of sleep—after surviving a fire and nearly splitting my skull open on a brick wall—and the fatigue hung heavy with me, tightening the big muscles in my back and shoulders and creeping into the small muscles with little bursts of pain. I rolled my neck and winced.
The thermometer in the mirror said eighty-two. Climbing. We didn’t talk much until I was back off the interstate, on Lorain. Traffic was thin, and I caught green lights heading back to the office. As I drove, a few fat drops of rain broke free from the clouds and splattered the windshield. There was thunder, but it was faint, the heart of the storm still miles away.
I turned onto Rocky River, then made another immediate turn into the narrow parking lot behind our building. A few more unusually heavy raindrops fell, plunking off the hood of my truck like golf balls as I pulled into a parking space beside a green van. I shut the engine off, and the van’s side door slid open. A short, muscular Hispanic man stepped out, holding a handgun down against his thigh. Ramone, the guy from Jimmy Cancerno’s construction crew. He didn’t look any friendlier today than he had in the picture Dean and Mason had shown me the night before. He tapped on my window with the gun, then nodded his head at the backseat of the van. Whoever was driving it started the motor.
“Richards may have to wait,” I said to Joe. “I think we’re on our way to see Jimmy Cancerno.”
CHAPTER 24
Ramone didn’t turn out to be the talkative sort. I was wearing a gun, and he took that, then waved me into the van without a word while he checked Joe for a weapon. He moved smoothly and professionally, not like a construction worker who had no experience at this sort of thing. That wasn’t exactly comforting.
“You taking us to see somebody, or to kill us?” Joe asked while Ramone ran a hand over Joe’s ankles, making sure there wasn’t a gun holstered down there. It seemed like a fair enough question, and I was hoping for an answer myself.
“Get in,” was all Ramone said.
I was already in the van, and Ramone had his back to me. It would have been the perfect opportunity to jump him, had there not been another guy in the passenger seat, pointing a SIG-Sauer automatic at my chest. This guy looked like he went about 250 pounds. Just in the shoulders.
Joe got into the van, and I slid down the seat to make room for him. Ramone climbed in behind him, then slammed the door shut and sat on the floor with his back against the door, the gun trained on Joe.
“Classy van,” Joe said, gazing around with all the trepidation of a man settling onto a familiar barstool and scanning the room for friends. “Is this the one with stow-’n’-go seating? That always sounded like a hell of a feature. Don’t know exactly what it means, but it sounds good.”
“Shut up,” Ramone said.
Joe frowned at him, then gave me a sidelong glance. “Not real friendly,” he said.
“No.”
I didn’t recognize the lumberjack in the passenger seat, who had turned around once Ramone was inside, or the driver. I could see him only through the mirror, but that was enough to show that he was older, with gray hair and wrinkles across his forehead. He took us out of the parking lot and back onto Rocky River. From there we pulled onto I-90 and headed east. The van rode smooth. So smooth that Ramone’s gun never wavered.
We were on the highway for a while before the driver slowed and pulled into the exit lane. We got off on West Forty-fourth, then turned onto Train Avenue, back in my old neighborhood—Jimmy Cancerno’s empire.
The van driver pulled off the street at a place called Pinnacle Pawn Plus. Judging from the sign in the window, the “plus” referred to cash loans, tobacco products, and lottery tickets. Something for everyone.
Behind the store was an old warehouse. A pickup truck and a green Mercedes sedan were parked in front of it. When the van came to a stop, Ramone rose to a crouch and slid the door open. Then he waved at us with the gun.
“Out.”
We climbed out and stood in front of the warehouse while the three of them gathered around us. Thunder rumbled overhead, closer now than before. A fat raindrop hit the back of my neck, slid down my spine with a chill that continued even after the water was gone.
“Inside,” Ramone said.