Wrapping his fingers around the edge of the table in front of him, Danny leaned forward, putting his weight on the heels of his hands. An insincere smile spread across his face as he stared at Latimer Giovanni. He let go of his grip so he could reproachfully shake his finger at the felon handcuffed to the table in front of him. "No, no, no, no, you must have misunderstood." He turned away from the Halawa prisoner with his finger still in the air. Chin was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his body. "We are not here for your entertainment."
"You're wrong. I am thoroughly entertained watching two cops squirm. Gets pretty boring inside. This kicks things up a notch."
"Look, you said you had information about Gabriel Waincroft. Are we just wasting our time here or what?"
"What about what you promised me? Huh? Don't you have something like in writing or something?"
Chin pushed himself off the wall when he thought he saw smoke coming out of Danny's ears. He felt he needed to run interference so he swept his arm in front of Danny and stepped between him and the cocky prisoner seated before them.
"Go ahead." Danny held out his hand in acquiescence. "You try."
"Your little hot-headed buddy's sending in the big guns now?" Giovanni jabbed.
"Chin… I swear," Danny warned after pausing from his pacing in the small room.
Chin turned and locked his widened eyes with Danny, nonverbally asking for patience while he had a go at the guy. He turned his attention back to the less than cooperative inmate and spoke calmly and quietly, "Detective Williams," he exaggerated the respected title, "and I realize that you don't have any time constraints, but we, on the other hand, do. Now, I believe you were told that if you cooperate with this investigation, arrangements can be made to get you back to a facility in… Washington was it? Is that where you have family? And… that should be sufficiently far enough from anyone who may know you snitched. Is that right, Gio?"
The reminder seemed to work. Gio was listening intently. He dropped his head but had nothing to say in reply, so Chin continued, "We need you to help us first and I will personally accompany you and the Marshal to Walla Walla before I head home to California."
Chin didn't see Danny turn his mouth down in a whatta-you-know expression. Home? Danny understood the transformative power a family can have on the geographic location of home. The deflective thought succeeded in quelling his exasperation. He calmly stepped up beside Chin, "Where can we find Waincroft? Give us some names of those in his organization. Who is his main lieutenant?"
The last question seemed to get his attention. He lifted his gaze to Chin first then to Danny. "Lieu… his lieutenant? You… you think…?" He spit the words out between snickers and ended with an unrestrained laugh. Danny and Chin looked at each other in confusion. When Gio finally calmed down, he manipulated the handcuffs to beckon the two to come closer with one of his fingers. Neither man budged. They just waited him out.
"You got it all wrong. Gabriel ain't got no lieutenant." He visibly restrained himself from laughing again. "He is the lieutenant."
Silence filled the room.
Gio continued, "There's an army, all right, but he ain't the head of it."
Danny couldn't hold back any longer, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"When he got popped, he had nothin'. He'd lost it all. He'd be dead right now if he hadn't got scooped up and set up in a primo position. Some of us held it against his ass, new guy steppin' in on the action, but his rep was all it took. Boss was dead set on it."
"All right. Okay. Let's back the cart up," Danny was incredulous. "What are you saying? There's someone behind all this? Someone that is not Gabriel Waincroft?"
"Look, I'm working on limited info here. I don't know what all you're talking about… what you say he did. I just know how he made it back… and it wasn't on his own. He had help. It took a lot of money and a lot of influence to kill him off to the likes of you and then resurrect him all over again and that's exactly what he got."
Chin's mind was reeling with the implications. Everything up until now had been personal. The note, the photo, the phone call had all been personal. He didn't know how to process this bit of information.
Danny began to pace again, back and forth in front of the table. Gio's head followed him as if he were watching a tennis match. At one point, Danny paused and stared at the wall before once again resuming his cathartic motion.
Gio got impatient. "Are we done? You're making me dizzy. When do I get off this God forsaken island?"
Something in his statements made Danny stop in his tracks. Once again, he leaned on the table, coming nose to nose with the man before him. "Who?"
"What?"
"Who?! Who is it?!" Danny raised his voice, exasperated with the dunce seated before him.
"The boss?"
"No, the number one NBA pick. Yes! 'The boss'! Who is he?"
"I don't know."
"You don't… This is fantastic. Chin, can you believe this?" He turned to see Chin wasn't even engaged in the interrogation. His full attention was on his phone. Not the one in the white case; it wasn't Tani's. Nevertheless, Danny lingered a few seconds on the implication. He didn't try to draw him back in. He simply rolled his eyes to something that caught his attention up on the ceiling, then turned back to Gio and continued.
"Okay. One more time, and I'll make it real clear for you, who… is… the man… in charge?"
"Like I said, I don't know. He was big enough to keep it a secret. No one knows, except those that are closest to him. Your boy Waincroft would know. Ask him?"
"They broke the stupid mold when they made you, didn't they? That's what we're trying to accomplish here. So, assuming you 'don't know'," Danny did air quotes, "who the boss man is, tell us where we can find Waincroft."
"I've been in inside for months now. There's no way they would still be working out of the same place."
"Well now we're finally getting around to something. Let us worry about that. Just give us a location and we'll take it from here."
~to be continued~
\,,,/BronsonL