14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 74

COURT HAD BEEN adjourned for the day when Yuki got a text from Brady saying, Tony Willis was beaten. He’s in the prison ward at SF Gen. Asked for you.

Yuki ran to her car, got into the crush of traffic, and headed toward San Francisco General, where inmates requiring hospitalization were housed.

Tony Willis, aka Li’l Tony, had been a suspect in the jailhouse murder of Aaron-Rey Kordell. He’d denied that he’d been the doer, but when she’d talked to him last, he’d given her a sense that he knew who had killed Aaron-Rey.

Maybe he would tell her now.

If he lived.

The traffic was thick, and Yuki was determined not to have an accident or even a fit of temper. Leaving the parking garage, she took a left on Polk and crossed through the Mission. It took close to half an hour to drive two and a half miles to reach Twenty-Third Street and another twenty minutes to park the car and gain access to the hospital.

When she arrived at ward 7D, the surgical unit, Tony Willis was alive and breathing oxygen through a cannula. Leads came off his chest, and fluids were dripping through tubes to his veins.

The doctor told Yuki, “That young man lost a lot of blood. He has several puncture wounds in major organs. He’s on pain medication. I can’t promise he’ll know who you are.”

“He asked for me.”

“I understand. Keep it to five minutes, OK?”

Yuki walked down the aisle running the length of the ward. All of the eleven beds were occupied. Willis was at the far end on the left. She reached the bed, pulled the stall curtain around it, and moved a chair up to the bed.

Five-foot-tall Tony Willis had looked young before. Now he looked smaller and younger, with his defiant little hair twists and his thin cotton blanket pulled up to his underarms, monitors reporting on his vital signs.

“Tony? It’s me. Ms. Castellano.”

Tony Willis cracked open his eyes, winced, and put a bandaged hand on his blanketed chest. “Yo,” he said. “You came.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like a lotta white dudes beat the crap out of me and then stuck me with shanks everywhere.”

“That’s what I heard. You stay strong, OK?”

“Right,” he said. “I have something to say.”

“OK.”

“I need you to be my lawyer so I got confidentiality.”

“You want me to represent you, Tony? There’s more to it than that. I have to look at your case. I don’t know what charges there are against you. And it’s not my decision. I don’t work for myself.”

“Mrs. Cassielandro, you got to listen. I need lawyer-patient confidentiality. Right now. You hear me?”

He was wheezing. He was clearly in pain. He could die.

“OK. OK, Tony. I’ll be your lawyer. What do you have to tell me?”

“Officially?”

She picked up his bandaged hand and shook it gently.

“It’s official,” she said.

“OK. I got a confession. I killed A-Rey.”

Yuki gasped. “You killed him?”

“I was told ‘Put Kordell down quick.’ After that, I was supposed get a transfer to Corcoran, and you can see, that didn’t happen.”

“I’m not getting this,” Yuki said.

She was trying to get it, but the pieces had very weird shapes and didn’t totally fit. Whoever got Li’l Tony to kill Aaron-Rey had also promised him protection. Who the hell would do that? Furthermore, as he said, they clearly hadn’t delivered it.

“Who told you to do this, Tony?” Yuki asked him.

“Listen to me, lady, before I fuckin’ die. It was a cop who told me to whack A-Rey.”

“What cop? Give me a name.”

“On the street, he called One. Like Numero Uno.”

“Tony. That’s not a name. What else can you give me? I can’t make a deal for you if all you’ve got to bargain with is that you killed Aaron-Rey. No one is looking for his killer anymore.”

Tony was straining to breathe. Any second now a nurse was going to chase her out. She touched his hand.

“You’ve got to give me something I can run with, Tony. You understand. Numero Uno isn’t going to cut it.”

“You don’t look it, but you are a tough lady.” He swallowed hard. Then he said, “Arturo. Mendez. Find him. He’s A-Rey’s fren’. He saw who shot those pushers.”

“How do I find him?”

Tony closed his eyes. His breathing was ragged.

“F-u-u-u-u-u-ck,” he said. “I got to do everything? Ask A-Rey’s mom.”

“Hang in,” Yuki said. “I’ll do what I can.”