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Chapter Twelve
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Change of plans, cursed Miguel, gripping his palms roughly around the coarse rope railing in front of him and shaking it. As though he'd really expected this to go right. As if anything could go right with any of this.
Crouched in the shadows above the harbor moorings, he forced himself silent, and forced himself still. A skill long acquired—the skill to watch when he wanted to scream, and stay motionless when he wanted to beat his fists. There were five men on the dock. All with weapons. Standing in quiet argument over Grady's boneless sprawl.
He knew Grady was alive because he'd seen him struggle up onto his elbows before a man he assumed to be Trang had toed him over onto his stomach and used his gun to direct one of the two guys who'd taser'd him to wrap a blindfold three times around his head. But there'd been a moment, when he'd seen Grady go down…
The two other men who'd gone out on the dock after that—two men who'd driven up in black town cars—looked Slavic enough to fit Miguel's theories about Petrov being Russian mob, but it was all guesswork. He'd also heard rumors that Old Kim was pulling new strings from his prison cell and that maybe these men worked for him. Perhaps Petrov was an independent operator. He certainly seemed skilled enough to be one.
All he really knew was they were with Trang, and Grady with them.
Hitching his elbows farther over his knees he scuffed his shoes to the edge of the base plank. He was too far away to hear what was being said, and too near to peel his eyes away. Locking his arms over the rope, he tucked his shoulder into the wood posting, watching as Trang waved Scolari's guys into the car ahead of him. Watching as Trang forsook his gun and used quick hands to deflect an attack and then whack one of Scolari's guys across the temple when he made an attempt to turn the tables.
The brutal way Grady was dragged upright and dumped into the back of the other vehicle shortly after set Miguel's muscles on fire but he kept watching and waited.
When the engine rumbled and the men moved out, so did Miguel, making his way along the fencing away from the dock as a foghorn blew in the distance. He stayed low until he hit the stretch of parking spaces by the burnt-out wharf pole lights, then took off, looking for the payphone in the darkness.
When he clocked it, he dropped three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel into the slot at the top with deliberately steady fingers and made four phone calls.
The first was to the number given him for Patrick Mahoney. As Rafferty's right hand, Mahoney wasn't much of a talker, but he had the same skills in diplomacy Rafferty himself embodied. Being direct without belying intent. Innocent in appearance. And good with deflection.
"They started at Dock 13," Miguel said shortly when the call was picked up. "Scolari's guys were already there. Looks like they're being taken on a little trip."
"Noted," said Mahoney, a brutish undertow to his thick accent that was subtle in the bleed of just one word, but strong and dangerous all the same. "And I wouldn't worry about the Shadow Dragons getting in the way—they were busted this morning on the south side pier. Unless of course that means you've lost one of your chess pieces."
Miguel bent his head and rapped the phone once against his skull, silently. "You're getting information from the task force?"
"Don't sound so surprised, lad. General information is easy. It's the right kind of information that's difficult."
"Right," Miguel said, breathing to bring his mind steady. "On that subject—I gave you the right kind of information. Now I need you to give me the right kind of information. If you have the primary location, I need the address."
"That wasn't part of the deal."
"It wasn't not part of the deal either. You wouldn't have it if it weren't for me. In fact, I didn't have to come to you at all."
"And yet you did. With good reason. Didn't you, boyo?"
Silence. Miguel swallowed, then crushed his voice into something solid and calm. "The clock is running down. With Scolari's guys showing up here, now, things have changed. I need to try to get my friend out."
"That's not likely to be an easy task."
"Which isn't your concern. But the point of the exercise is to calm the heat in the city and get back to business as usual, which is your concern. I don't get my friend out before he ends up as body on the floor and I guarantee you that won't happen."
Mahoney cleared his throat in a way that sounded like a chuckle. "I didn't say it when you came to us before, but your name's not unfamiliar to us. Our Mr. Rafferty does his best to keep track of the factions in the neighborhoods and I'm starting to agree with him on one small point—your talents are wasted on a street gang."
Miguel bit his teeth together. He forced himself silent and forced himself still. "I pull for a different gang now—ése."
"So I've heard." Mahoney paused. "I know what you're doing. Don't imagine I don't. We'll play our part. Just remember what happens to those who make deals with the devil and don't keep them, Mr. Mendez."
"I'll remember," Miguel responded, making the syllables come out staccato slow. Then he scrambled through his pockets for a piece of paper to get down the information Mahoney was giving him without making it sound like he was scrambling. When he had it, he hung up the phone and closed his eyes against the plastic casing.
Honor and promises aside, Grady had come into K-Street territory to keep Miguel alive when he'd been smacked back onto the G-Rock's hit list. Now that it was his turn, Miguel couldn't picture himself hiding in a hole to wait this out, then going back to Beaudreaux, or Malloy—or to looking himself in the mirror—just to say he'd waited it all out back at Luis's or the rec center.
Pulling the phone off its cradle, he ran his fingers over the stiff metal coil below the handset, then dialed three more times.
The piñata was out of prizes.
The city behind him was stacked with dynamite and he was starting to think the only chance Grady had—the only flare he could send to Beaudreaux—might be to light the fuse.
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Sometime between the scattered offerings of vending machine snacks early that morning and the hotdogs Adam and Kelsey had brought back for lunch, Rothman had fallen asleep at his desk and gotten a paper clip stuck to his forehead. Adam hadn't had the energy to tell him about it, and four hours later it was still there, plastered over the frown in his eyebrow as he flipped through the notes and papers at his desk.
Adam stared at it as he hung up his phone and made another notation of his own—crossing off one more clinic he believed hadn't seen Grady, or Miguel.
Capping the pen in his hands, he tapped it against his desktop, then rocked back in his chair and shoved the map of the city he had spread out before him towards Willis. Across the surface, there were blue lines marking the movements of Rafferty's key associates, and green marks highlighting all the areas Miguel and Grady hadn't turned up in since they'd gone missing. During his shove, they bunched together, creating scattered blotches of nothing, and nothing, and more nothing.
That's for leaving me in Da Lat!
He rubbed his jaw, feeling it ache. Feeling the adrenaline surge below his sternum.
I checked every orphanage in Da Lat!
(Every orphanage. Every hospital. Every graveyard.)
Help me, Beaudreaux. Help me!
Bending his neck, Adam gave a sharp shake of his head and rapped his knuckles into the top of his desk, breaking the echoing voice between his ears into a thousand whispering shards.
Willis glanced sideways, but didn't say anything. Instead, he folded the map over gently, pushed it out of his space, and resumed searching through his own stack of information.
With a jump in his jaw muscle, Adam stood, sighing. "Hey," he said after a moment, trying to infuse the sound of apology in the word. "I think I'm going to go stretch my legs. You want a coffee?"
Willis eyed him. "Sure," he agreed.
Adam turned, shoes heavy on the linoleum floor. "Hey, Rothman—coffee?"
"Yeah, okay," Rothman answered absently, flipping another page on the documents in front of him, shirtsleeves rolled at the elbows, wrinkled beyond all recovery.
Shaking his head, Adam rounded his desk just as Malloy stepped through the bullpen doors. Their eyes met and she stopped, adjusting the bag in her hand and the purse strap on her shoulder. Adam frowned, closing the gap between them and taking her by the arms. "Malloy, what are you doing here? Have you heard from Grady?"
She jerked her chin in the negative, leaning into his hands before straightening wearily. "No. No, sorry. I just couldn't stay at the bar any longer." Diverting her gaze towards the officers walking through the hallway behind her she lowered her voice and asked, "What about you? Should you really be working here?"
"We're managing." He sighed. "Pine's had most of the duty roster posted out while we've been here. The Shadow Dragons were busted this morning, and with the processing needs, they're shorthanded across the city anyway. We're staying away from computers where we think it matters, limiting physical reports…"
"Still not sure where the leaks are coming from?"
"Or where they're going," he confirmed. "Beyond that…" He rubbed his neck. "Let's just say I'm trying to take your advice and trust Grady on this one."
Her eyebrows wrinkled. She started to open her mouth.
Adam put his hands back on her shoulders preemptively, not wanting to get into it.
Behind her, an officer's radio squawked gratingly, followed by a mumble of hollow laughter down by the booking desk. All of it a cacophony of tension pushing in on his bones. He was standing in a glass box, powerless to help Grady and bracing for the worst. He didn't want Malloy in there with him. "Malloy, if you couldn't stay at the bar, then you should have gone home. You look like you haven't slept a wink."
"Ha, you're one to talk," she shot back. It lacked her usual playfulness, carrying instead a sort of dead, monotone quality, clipped with sarcasm. She dropped the bag she was carrying on the empty desk next to her. "Sandwiches," she explained. "I figured if nothing else, I could make sure you guys ate."
Adam exhaled, pushing fingers into his eyelids.
"Don't start, Adam. I can't go home. I can't sleep. And I can't run the bar. Not tonight. Not when…"
He followed her momentum and re-gripped her shoulders, drawing her farther away from the noise in the hallway. "I know," he said. "I know."
She slumped. "No sign of Grady at all?"
He shook his head.
"Well, what have you found?" she asked, glancing over his shoulder. "And what's Willis doing here?"
"He wanted to help."
"Then let me help too. Come on, Adam. There's got to be something. Tell me what I can do."
Sighing heavily, he led her towards his desk, rolling out a chair for her to sit in while he made eye contact with Willis.
"Hey there, Malloy," Willis greeted, in the way he had of being serious and wry at the same time. "Welcome to the madhouse."
"Ah ha!" Rothman suddenly bolted upright, smiling, the paperclip toppling from his eyebrow with the change in his expression. He blinked at it for a moment in confusion, but shook it off, rounding his desk with a pad a paper in his fist and a pencil stuck behind his ear.
"Got something?" asked Adam.
"Maybe," answered Rothman. "Still nothing on the financials, and nothing new from Kelsey—Rafferty is still holed up in his warehouse." He leaned in as the group clustered close. "But, I might have figured out what Miguel was hoping we would catch onto." He set his notes on Adam's desk then shuffled half a step over to yank the city map from where Willis had left it folded, and spread it out next to his pad.
"Miguel?" Malloy looked at Adam. "What's he talking about?"
"I'll explain in a minute. Go on," said Adam, nodding at Rothman.
Rothman took the pencil from his ear and tapped the map, drawing a thin line around the fingers of water that pushed in on the north side of the city. "Very abruptly this morning, Rafferty began making inquiries up and down the city coastline looking for any significant waterfront properties bought, sold, or rented since just before the Foley shooting."
Adam straightened, feeling a sharpening in his spine. He glanced at the doorway to make sure it was empty. "Rafferty has a lead," he concluded.
"Wait a minute," said Malloy. "Lead on what?"
"If there is a new player in town and Rafferty is looking for him," Rothman continued to explain, "somehow—and I'm not going to speculate on how—he has enough information to know that this new player has set up shop using waterfront property, and enough specifics on that property to narrow it down to factory and warehouse structures. As much as that may seem like a needle in a haystack around here, he may have hit pay dirt. We know Rafferty's man Mahoney visited three different city registrars this afternoon. Near as I can tell from the information they sent over, he was checking land access and property rights for the old fish canneries on the north inland sound."
"Those haven't been in operation for years," said Willis.
"They haven't," agreed Adam. "Which means that whole area is probably one of the few places a new group could set up operations without immediately tipping off any of the established crime factions."
"Aren't they trying to be unobtrusive?" Willis asked. "Why not just set up in a house, or a nice, nondescript restaurant like Chen Dao or Old Kim?"
"Best guess?" Rothman interjected. "They're either genuinely trying to put whatever warehouse or factory they're in into legitimate use—doubtful. Or, they want enough space and to be out of the way enough for no one to notice whatever else they're doing there."
Malloy leaned forward. "Well, that's comforting."
Adam watched her, thinking the same thing. Looking away, he scratched at a pulsing spot behind his ear, trying to nudge his thoughts into a straight line. "Any sign of movement on those properties? Can you trace a buyer?"
"No. And, Sarge," Rothman hesitated, tweaking the corner of the paper under his hand as he glanced up from the low angle of his head, "I'm not sure that we should."
Adam frowned.
"Hear me out," said Rothman. "I've been thinking about this. We've had eyes on Rafferty all day, all night. If Grady is involved in the break-ins, it's not through Rafferty. He's not the one putting him up to it. But Miguel, and presumably Grady, put you on this path for a reason."
The metal in Willis's chair creaked. He leaned forward, giving Adam a look.
"Well, why not give us a more direct rout?" continued Rothman rhetorically. He seemed to realize his voice had been building and curbed it quickly after darting a look around the station, dropping it low again. "The day Grady came here to talk to you, he had something specific to tell you, I'm sure of it. And he was scared, I'm sure of that too. Then, as we all know, he stopped talking, we started working the case, and eventually we found out…"
"That our investigation was being compromised," finished Adam. "You think Grady knew about the leak."
"Maybe. More than that, Sarge. When we consider everything else—his behavior with you, his behavior at the bar. Any way you look at it there's got to be more to his silence than meets the eye. It stands to reason that if he's at all mixed up in this mess, and we're being watched…"
"Then so is he." Adam bowed his head into his fist and gave his forehead a small knock. Lifting it, he shoved the map on his desk aside again, unearthing the photos of Grady at the dock. Spreading them flat on the hard surface, he shuffled them around, zeroing in on the one in the middle—Grady's sideways stare at a man facing away from the camera.
Depicted in black and white, Grady looked like a memory. Standing right there in Adam's own city, yet somehow a million miles away.
"He's not just being watched, he's being threatened," Adam mumbled.
Suddenly, pale fingers settled next to his and slid the photo away from him. "I've seen this jacket before," said Malloy. She pointed to the hood on the person Grady was looking at. "That man was at the bar, yesterday. He came in just before Grady went on shift. He was in the back booth drinking wine. He was there until Grady left the bar."
Adam stared at her, a prickling sensation tickling at his neck as he thought back, trying to bring the man into memory. "Are you sure?" he asked. He'd been so focused on Grady, had he even paid attention to the patrons?
Malloy opened her mouth and gave a helpless shrug. "Well, no actually. This isn't the greatest photo, but that looks like the same jacket—long, with a hood, same markings down the arm. I remembered them because of how unique they were. It reminded me of something Grady would wear." She closed her eyes for a moment, then sought Adam's face. "Grady was being watched?"
Palms braced on the desktop, Adam glanced from Rothman to Willis and back again, nodding slowly. "It makes sense. As much as any of this makes sense," he muttered. "I can't believe he…" He bowed his head and shook it, not even sure what he was going to say. Can't believe they didn't notice? Can't believe Grady played them all so well? Can't believe he didn't protect him better?
"Whatever got us here," Rothman said softly, bringing Adam's attention back to him, "I think Miguel and Grady gave us Rafferty because they knew it would get us in the right direction without tipping off the wrong people. Which makes me think we should avoid tipping off the wrong people too, until we know what we're dealing with."
"Maybe, but we can't just do nothing."
"I know, but—"
"Adam," said Malloy. She folded her elbows onto the desk. "There's one more thing. Someone kept calling the bar last night. All night. At first, I thought it was Grady, but…"
Adam straightened up. "What do you mean? Someone threatened you?"
"No. No, it wasn't like that. No heavy breathing. Nothing. The caller never even said anything. If it wasn't Grady, I thought it was just a prank call, or the wrong number. It still might have been just that, but now with this…" She waved a hand at the mess on his desk and back at Rothman.
"Malloy, why didn't you tell me about this when it happened?"
"I wanted you to focus on Grady. I didn't think it would help anything to tell you about it and I didn't think anything could really be done about it if I did."
Lacing his fingers, Adam locked them on the back of his neck, breathing out slowly to curb the well of frustration. Was it so much to ask that the people he cared about actually stop being so damn silent and stoic about every damn thing?
"You said you thought Grady might be trying to protect someone," interjected Willis, briefly setting a hand on Malloy's arm. "I hate to say it, but at this point, isn't it safest to assume there's a threat?"
"What do you want to do here, Sarge?"
Unlocking his fingers and dropping them back to brace his arms against the desk, Adam ignored the question, trying to just process. Back in his room, Grady had told him that this was not about trust. And before he'd bolted, he'd told him that if he'd wanted his help, he would have asked for it.
Anchoring himself with a steadying breath, Adam was starting to think maybe this was about trust after all, and maybe Grady was asking for his help the only way he could.
"Sarge?" Rothman prompted.
"We play along," said Adam. He looked at Malloy. "You were right. For whatever reason, Grady believes he can't come to me on this. If I'm understanding anything here, at the very least he thinks by staying away he might be protecting us. Frustrated as I am by that, I have to… I have to trust that he has a good reason. And I can't ask him to trust me if I don't trust him." He switched focus to Rothman. "If he wants us on Rafferty, we play this hand out. And we play it his way." Subconsciously, he reached for the weapon in his shoulder holster, rechecking the clip as he nodded at the map and the circle Rothman had drawn. "They pointed us to Rafferty, which pointed us to there."
"So how do we work it?" asked Rothman. "If we try to move in now, we still don't know where we're leaking. Not to mention, there's more than one old factory on the sound."
Sitting, Adam rolled his chair in closer, keeping his voice low as he prompted the others to follow suit. "We start tactics and mobilization procedures, but we keep up the ruse. We know there's another player, but as far as anyone outside this circle knows, it's Rafferty we're pursuing and just Rafferty. Beyond that, I'm open to suggestion."
"Kelsey's out there," said Rothman. "She's got officer's Alvarez and Reese with her. We're as certain as we can be that we can trust them. Let them stay on Mahoney and Rafferty. If they move in on the sound, which seems likely, so do we. But we roll no squad cars. No lights, no sirens. Or better yet, we pull in some forestry maintenance vehicles—they roll by those factories all the time because of the parklands nearby."
Adam gave him a steady look, warning but appreciative. "We'll be going in blind. We have no idea what we're facing… who we're facing, or what we're even walking into. It could be a trap. It could be anything."
"Job's always been a risk, Sarge. We didn't expect that murdered family last week either. That's the job. Right?"
Suddenly there was a light knocking on the entryway. They turned their heads as Lieutenant Pine stepped in. "Do I get to be in on this, Sergeant?"
Sweeping his glance into the hallway beyond to see whom else might be around, Adam stood again. He left his fingers pressed on the map's surface as he nodded for his captain to come closer and spoke. "It's a gamble right now, Charlie."
"What do you need, Adam?"
Adam breathed. "A safe location for Malloy to stay and your best guess on who can be trusted right now in the department and the task force. We need them ready to mobilize. Location doesn't go out until the last possible second."
"You have enough information to make it credible?"
Adam glanced at Rothman who nodded his head. "We're just waiting for the call from Kelsey."
"Okay, suit up," said Pine. "We'll make it happen. Adam. It's not a long list I'm afraid."
"At this point, Charlie, we'll take what we can get." He looked from Malloy to Willis, then back to Rothman and Pine. "Let's go."
/
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Standing in the hollow spot near his dented locker, Adam absently smoothed on his bulletproof vest, reworking the seams on the straps until the fit was right—comfortable and smooth as he prepared to move in on a location Grady may or may not even be. Pulling his shirt over the top, he paused and rubbed his face. A dull halogenic glow diffused under his closed eyelids. An eerie blank canvas for him to rub his thumbs against.
"Something tells me it's not just last night that you didn't get a lot of sleep."
Adam opened his eyes to find Willis was leaning a shoulder to the corner of the locker row. "You always were intuitive," he replied.
Willis came closer. "You have been having that dream again haven't you? Same as before? Grady in the jungle and you can't get to him?"
"Almost." He shifted, sitting on the bench and pulling his shoulder holster back on. He rubbed at his jaw. "I just… I can't shake this feeling, Teddy."
"What feeling is that?"
"That this may be it. I've lost him again and I'm not going to find him in time."
/
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tbc