I went first, opening the door and stepping into a small office, the main room of the warehouse empty and dark behind it. Jimmy Cancerno sat in the office, his feet propped up on a steel desk, watching a flat-screen television that hung on the wall. He turned as we entered, then scowled when he saw the gun in Ramone’s hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
“You said make sure they come,” Ramone replied. “You said don’t give them an option about it.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to act like a damn fool,” Cancerno snapped. He was wearing glasses today, and his gray hair was slightly tousled, not the perfect comb off the forehead I’d seen before.
Ramone just shrugged, not looking particularly chagrined, then led the other two past us and into the warehouse. Cancerno let them go without a word. He motioned at a set of chairs in front of his desk.
“Sit down.”
We sat. He took his feet off the desk, turned off the television, and swung around to face us.
“Look, I didn’t tell that idiot to bring you in here at gunpoint. I just told him to make sure he got you here.”
“Well, he got us here,” Joe said. “Efficient, if nothing else.”
Cancerno took his glasses off, folded them, and set them on the desk. There was none of the irritable quality to him today, just calm and control.
“There are different sorts of problems,” he said. “You got minor nuisances—a flat tire, leak in the roof, maybe a splinter in your ass. They’re frustrating, you know? Annoying. But they aren’t big deals, either. None of them is a crisis. Demands some attention, sure, but nothing serious. You address the issue, you move on. You forget about it.”
Neither one of us responded.
“So you got your minor nuisances,” Cancerno said. “And then you got your crisis. The flat tire blows out, rolls the car over. The leak in the roof spreads, rots out the wood, the whole damn thing caves in on you. The splinter in your ass gets infected, you can’t even sit down, end up in the hospital.”
Cancerno spread his hands. “You’re wondering,” he said, “which one you are. Right? You’re thinking—just how much of a problem have I become? Am I the splinter in the ass, or am I the infection?”
Silence filled the room for a minute. Joe and I didn’t look at each other, just held Cancerno’s gaze, which alternated between us. His calm hadn’t been disrupted, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. He was a man who liked his temper. Liked knowing just how much damage would occur when it was tripped. Right now he was toying with the trigger like a man enjoying the feel of a big gun in his hand, savoring the moment before the shooting began. I didn’t enjoy feeling like the target at the other end of the range.
“You want us to guess?” I said. “And there’s not a C, none-of-the-above, category?”
Cancerno smiled. “Nah, you don’t need to guess. I’ll go ahead and tell you.” There was another pause before he said, “You’re the splinter. The flat tire, the leak. For now.”
He studied me. “You come off like a good guy. Working your ass off to help a dead guy out, I mean, shit, what better kind of friend is there than the one who looks after you when you’re dead? Don’t know that I got any of those kind, myself.”
He leaned forward in his chair. “You got somebody to look after you when you’re dead?”
I didn’t say anything. Beside me Joe was completely still. Out in the warehouse everything was quiet, but I knew there were men out there, and that they all had guns. My gun, too.
“I understand,” Cancerno said, “that you’re just doing what you do. You’re looking for answers. That’s fine. I’d prefer to stay the hell out of it, but I can’t anymore. Because the places you’re looking for answers are, well, a little sensitive to me.”
“We still need to go through them,” I said. “Sensitive or not.”
His eyes flashed at that, a brief, cold glimmer, but he nodded.
“Sure. That’s what I like about you. No back-down quality in you, right? None. Aren’t a lot of guys that I’ll say that about. I respect that. And that’s why I had my guys bring you down here. I’m going to give you all the answers you need. And they’re the ones you want, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll give you your answers, and then you get the hell out of here, stay gone. Because I simply cannot have you doing this anymore. Those fires, they don’t matter anymore. Terry Solich told you that, himself. No need to involve police or anybody else at this point.”
So Solich had made the call. It didn’t surprise me. By the time we’d left his house, I’d had the feeling he was worried, and pondering some damage control. Apparently, he’d decided reporting to Cancerno was the best option. Knowing Solich had made the call was good, though. It told me Cancerno was probably oblivious to my dialogue with Dean and Mason. The less he believed me to know, the better.
“You tell everyone all you’re interested in is Gradduk,” Cancerno said. “That’s good. That’s all you need to be interested in. You get too interested in me, it won’t be any good at all. And at the end of the day, it’s not about me.”
“Who’s it about?” Joe said.
“Mitch Corbett.”
“Explain.”
Cancerno braced his arms on the desk. “You said you want to know how it went down with Gradduk. I’m telling you it’s all about Corbett. Son of a bitch dragged me into it, but it’s not about me.”
“Corbett killed Sentalar?”
Cancerno nodded. “Would be my guess.”
“Why?”
“Because Gradduk was talking to her. Gradduk was trying to take Corbett apart.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me that. The night before he died.”
“I’d heard Ed and Corbett were friends,” I said.
“They were.”
“So what happened?”
Cancerno looked at the little window in the door, which was now covered with raindrops. “I told Gradduk about something that happened a long time ago. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t have told him, maybe.”
A man told me a story. What story? The one he didn’t want to tell.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I didn’t know Gradduk well, but I knew Scott Draper,” Cancerno said. “Draper recommended Gradduk to me, said he needed work. I gave him work. This isn’t unusual for me. Guys come to me needing a favor, I help them if I can.”
“Friend of the people,” I said.
Cancerno’s face went ugly, and any sense of ease that had seeped into my body as he’d begun to explain things to us leaked right back out.
“You don’t mock me, prick,” he said. “You don’t say a word. Not if you want to walk back out the door. That van outside doesn’t have to take you home.”
For a moment there was nothing but an electric silence. Then Joe broke it.
“I’m sure he’s sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it, did you, Lincoln?”
I shook my head slowly. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
Cancerno’s glare didn’t lessen, but after a moment he began to talk again.
“I hired Gradduk. A few weeks passed, and I ran into him down at the Hideaway. We all drank together, shot the shit. I liked the kid. Later on I found out he was hanging around with Corbett. That bothered me. It wasn’t right, not with Corbett’s history. The next time I drank with Gradduk . . .” Cancerno shrugged. “I told him some things he probably shouldn’t have ever heard.”
“What things?” I was leaning forward now, Cancerno’s last outburst all but forgotten. This is what I’d wanted to know days ago, what Ed might have said if he hadn’t been killed in the street before he’d had a chance to tell it to me.
“I knew a guy used to see Gradduk’s mother. It went on for a while, while she was married. Then she tried to end it. This guy, he’s not the most stable son of a bitch you ever saw. Violent. Mean-tempered. Holds a grudge. Anyhow, he promised the Gradduk woman he was going to take her life apart. She laughed at him, told him to get lost. But, this guy, he’s not the type that makes empty threats. The man settles his scores.”