He found Russell in his office BSing with the guy who knew how to take apart Audis. Bax told the Audi guy to get gone with a chin twitch, then kicked Russell’s feet off his coffee table. “Thought I told you not to say nothin’.”
“I weren’t saying nothin’.”
“Russell, you want to get out of this alive, you need to understand that don’t say nothin’ mean don’t say nothin’. To nobody.”
Russell turned this over in his mind for a few moments. “Even you, that means.”
Bax felt the growl in his throat. “You know what, Russell? That’s the best idea you’ve had in a long time.” He played out the strategy a few moves, imagined all the ways Russell could fuck it up. “Here’s your rule: unless you’re answering a question I ask you, you don’t say nothin’ to nobody.”
“Even Reamer?”
Bax shook his head. “That man’s always Mr. Kline to you. And if he say something to you, the only options you got to reply are yes, sir and no, sir.”
“What if—”
“Yes, sir or no, sir. Or answering my questions.” Bax paused at the door to the bathroom. “You keep your mouth shut, maybe I can keep you breathing.”
In the bathroom, Bax checked his burner.
Brooklyn. 1415 the park.
The park was Berberian’s code for the commercial laundry where Bax took the salvage yard’s floor mats.
Brooklyn, he tapped back to Berberian. OK.
Bax ordered Russell to collect anything going to the laundry and load it in the salvage yard’s F-150. He went out to get chop suey for his crew and get rid of his most recent burner.
After lunch Bax stuck Russell’s phone and his desk phone in a metal locker behind a padlock, then locked Russell in his office and told the Audi guy to make sure no one went in or out.
“This is Parker,” Berberian said. “FBI.”
Parker was a tiny thing, wiry and coiled. She looked like a kid sitting at the Ikea table in the laundry’s back room. She wore a wedding ring with a diamond that looked the size of a bottle-cap.
“I’m Bax.” Her handshake told him she punched above her weight. “Randall Baxter.”
“Berberian tells me that you’re his meal ticket,” she said.
Bax didn’t tell her that he couldn’t care less whether it was Berberian’s ticket he punched or hers. He knew only that if ratting on someone guaranteed that he’d never go back inside, he’d rat on anyone with a pulse. “I try to take very good care of Detective Berberian,” Bax said.
“And why is that?” Parker said.
Bax felt her grip again, but more like it was around his neck. He glanced at Berberian.
“Bax is a man with a—” Berberian said.
“My brother — his name’s Russell, and Russell’s my only family — my brother made some mistakes when I was in prison,” Bax said. “He screwed up a fentanyl deal for one of Reamer Kline’s lieutenants. Cost Mr. Kline a lot of money. When I got out, Mr. Kline told me I could make up that money for him or watch his man Owsley kill my brother.”
“So you’re out to get Reamer Kline,” Parker said.
“No, ma’am. I got no particular interest in Mr. Kline. But he’s got a very particular interest in me. And I got no interest in going back to prison for whatever he’s up to. But a lot of interest in keeping my brother alive.”
Parker checked Berberian. “What’s Reamer Kline’s interest in you, Mr. Baxter?”
“Bax did a—”
“I did a bit for my brother. I stood up. Kept my own counsel. Mr. Kline, he likes people who know how to stay loyal. And I ain’t had much school, but I’m pretty good at making sure things run smooth.”
“You’re just a good citizen.”
“No, ma’am.” Bax forced the gentle smile he’d perfected to soothe the warden’s mind when it was troubled by uppity Negroes. “But I didn’t much enjoy my time in prison, and I planned to go straight after I got out. Mr. Kline, he gave me no chance to go straight. What I do for Detective Berberian, it’s about the only thing I can do to bend the curve back.”
“And you obviously know how this game is played.”
“I’m always trying to learn.” Bax maintained his smile. “Ma’am.”
That seemed to chill her out a bit, and she was silent.
Berberian couldn’t abide silence. He said to Bax, “Why’d you ask me to call in the feds?”
Bax locked eyes with Parker. “You’re aware of a shipping container from FN Herstal that the police in Los Angeles didn’t get?”
The silence flattened and got heavy. Parker rapped her knuckles on the table twice. “Excuse me.” A third time. Then she left.
Berberian took her chair. “Bax, what the — I mean, chop shops and drugs, right, but — shit. How did Reamer Kline get hold of — I don’t even know what FN Herstal is.”
“It’s Belgian. I can’t pronounce it — it’s French, like, Fabric National. They make guns for the army, but also for cops.”
“LAPD?”
“Crazy full-auto shit. Looks like the goddamn Terminator. One a those half-sized containers packed high and tight—”
Parker returned. She leaned against the door she’d just closed, tapping her phone against her chin. “Can you describe the contents of this shipping container you claim to know something about?”
“That, and more.” Bax had grown used to people taking his word since he started fixing for Mr. Kline, and he forced himself to swallow his frustration. “I can give you the numbers off the side of the container, plus who wants to buy it.”
Parker’s phone made a Charlie Brown teacher noise. She held the phone to her ear, then said, “Hang on.” She tapped the screen and put the phone in the middle of the table. “Mr. Baxter, could you—”
“Bax, please, ma’am.”
“Sure. Bax, could you tell us the numbers on the container?”
Bax recited the digits he’d memorized, and then described the shipping seal his Jaguar guy had cracked. “It’s a twenty-foot container. I ain’t taken everything out of it to know the complete inventory, and Mr. Kline, he ain’t showed me the manifest. But the one crate I did take out had four rifles, and there’s a hella lotta crates in that container.”
“How did Reamer Kline come into possession of this container?”
“The driver traded it. To buy his daughter out of Mr. Kline’s stable in Memphis.”
A voice came out of the phone: “You know where it is?”
“And who’s bidding on it.”
Parker said, “Bidding?” at the same time her phone flashed a text message.
Bax pretended he hadn’t seen the message — MAKE THE DEAL — and said, “But I need something.”
Bax returned with the three dozen Krispy Kremes that Berberian brought to the meeting to cover for why he’d been gone so long. His crew tore through the doughnuts so fast that only one was left by the time he unlocked Russell from his office.
When Russell started to whine, Bax said, “I ain’t ask you no question.”
Russell stuffed the entire doughnut into his sneer.
Bax pushed him into his office. “I got to go back out again tonight.”
“You ain’t locking me up—”
“The hell I ain’t. The only question is, you want it to be here, or you want me to put a man on you at your room.”
“Man, what you got to—”