Tim nodded, and the officer pulled back the steel door. Through the mesh gate, Tim could see Babe sitting on the molded plastic bench, her legs spread in a slightly masculine manner. He entered and stood opposite her.
Her feathered hair, seventies sexy, stood up in the back from her leaning against the wall. She had a big-perhaps enhanced-chest but a petite frame, so the orange jumpsuit bagged around her like a clown costume. A band of sunburn saddled her pug nose. Her surprising cobalt eyes remained impenetrable, but her face had loosened with fear or dread, her jaw held slightly forward as if to control her breathing. For the first time, Tim saw her as a kid, not far removed from college girls or the daughters of his older colleagues. Her file showed she was from a middle-class family. She'd taken a wrong turn and wound up on the back of a Harley and now here. It was almost hard to believe the role she'd willingly played in Den Laurey's assault on Greater Los Angeles.
"Hello, Ms. Donovan. I'm Tim Rackley."
She pulled her head back, regarding him over her nose. "You got a smoke?"
"Not on me, no." He crouched, bringing himself eye level. "There's no way around you doing some time, but I can help you."
"If I sell out my man? You gotta be joking."
"You're looking at a lot of time, Babe. Maybe life."
"So what? You can live on the inside. You can have a life on the inside."
"Who told you that? Den?"
"No, it wasn't him. We've had plenty of family go down."
"Being inside is hell, Babe. A year feels like a lifetime. After a few you won't remember who you are now. It's not a life."
"Neither's being a traitor. You citizens don't understand that."
"You don't think taking marching orders from bin Laden is being a traitor?"
"Sinners don't take orders from no one. Least of all a bunch of ragheads."
"So think for yourself now, Babe. This is the end of the road for you. It's the end of the road for Den, too. Help us close this thing out without anyone else getting killed."
She made a derisive noise deep in her throat. "Man, you're clueless. Even if I didn't love the Man-which I fucking do more than anything-selling out a Sinner is the lowest thing a member of the family can do. The lowest. There's a code, and you don't break it. No matter what."
"But you're not a Sinner." He watched the rage flare in her shiny eyes; his remark had cut her deep. He continued, more placatingly, "If you help us find him, we'll have a better shot at taking him alive. We can plan the takedown better. Control the situation. Make sure he doesn't end up coming in in a body bag."
"Why? So he can get the lethal injection or the chair or whatever you fuckers use nowadays? No way. We both know why you're here. You don't know where he is. And when the Man doesn't want to be found, he doesn't get found. You don't stand a chance."
"You gotta admit, we've done pretty well so far."
She broke eye contact, slumping back on the bench and blowing her bangs out of her eyes. The stretched collar of the jumpsuit dwarfed her delicate neck. "Sure, you got your news headlines. But a month from now, he'll just be another bad guy on another list. You'll forget all about him. He can live how he wants, even." Her eyes held a hope that was at once naive and affecting.
"He shot my wife," Tim said. "I'm not gonna forget about him."
She jerked her head back. Her voice came high with her surprise. "Who's your wife?"
"The sheriff's deputy."
"Right." She bit her lips. "Right. So, like, I'd believe you that you'd try to take him alive."
"You're the only one who can help us arrange a lower-risk take-down."
"And if I don't?"
"I don't want to kill him. But if I have to…"
"You will." She read his face. Her eyes teared up, and she lifted them to the ceiling. For the first time, her voice trembled. "He'll never come in alive. Never."
"You don't know that. I've seen things play out in ways I never would've predicted. You help us, we can work something out with the prosecutor. You don't want to be in a penitentiary for the rest of your life."
"You don't get it, asshole." Her sudden anger caught him off guard. She shoved back into the corner of the bench, hugging her knees to her chest. "I'm fucking done. That's the deal. And I honor my deals."
"What do you mean, you're done?"
"You think the Man's gonna talk to me now? Pop by for conjugal visits? You think he hasn't already changed all his numbers, ditched all his hideouts? Our hideouts. I'm in here-that means he's closed the book on me." Tears clung to her dark lashes. "If he walked by me on the street now, he'd keep walking. And I'm glad. Because that's what he needs to do to keep alive." She let the tears run, not bothering to wipe her cheeks. They slid down her neck and darkened the seam of her jump-suit. "Even if I wanted to help myself, I couldn't. He's too smart to trust me anymore."
Her face twisted, and she lowered her head into her arms and wept. Her cries were resonant and mournful, seeming to rise from deep within her. He could hear them even after he closed the steel door behind him, even after he reached the end of the cell-block corridor.
Already the other prisoners were screaming for her to shut the fuck up.
Chapter 60
Thomas was cocked back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. Jim and Maybeck cleared the conference table, tossing crumpled papers at the corner trash can and mostly missing. Miller hauled out chairs, returning them to the surrounding offices. Bear and Guerrera pulled down the pictures from the wall, taking with them Scotch-tape patches of paint or leaving tacks behind. Bear had brought in his dogs, Boston, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Precious, the medically discharged star of the Explosive Detection Canine Team, named for Jame Gumb's companion in The Silence of the Lambs. Precious, whose nose had saved the life of virtually every deputy in the room, was greeted like the prodigal daughter, pulled from colleague to colleague to be scratched.
Tannino had dissolved the command post, which Tim grudgingly recognized was the right thing to do. It didn't take a command post to track a single fugitive. With the other nomads dead or in custody, the mother chapter crippled, the AT seized, and the distribution network disabled, the threat Den Laurey posed had been diminished, if not eliminated. The Escape Team could pursue him from the squad room, a priority among others, under Tim and Bear's direction. But Tim knew that the imperative dulled once the deputies went back to business and spread out among desks rather than gathering around a single table with a single objective.
He watched quietly from his chair as the post continued to be dismantled, trying to construct a strategy for the next phase and failing miserably. At this point Den was a cutout operative. The last series of arrests had severed all connective tissue; there were no links to trace back to girlfriends, fellow Sinners, or the mother chapter. Even the incipient drug operation had been rolled up. Den was accustomed to living in the shadows-it would take either a huge break or dumb luck to flush him out.
The others, heady from the series of busts, didn't seem to share Tim's despondency. Miller gestured at him apologetically, and Tim rose reluctantly so he could carry away his chair.
"Hey, girl," Jim said, guiding Precious to the end of the table. "Go on and eat a piece of Mrs. Tannino's fruitcake for us."
Precious sniffed the hardened crust, then backed up and sneezed violently.
The room erupted in laughter.
The scene triggered Tim's memory of the kitchen during Dana Lake's and the Prophet's arrests. A sudden uneasiness made itself known, a splinter working its way to the surface.