No way out

Chapter Fifty-three

Braylon Jennings was sitting in my kitchen when I wandered in the next morning, drinking my coffee, reading my newspaper. Joy was eying him with crossed arms, the dogs flanking her, tails down, casting their votes with soft growls. I was wearing the T-shirt and boxer shorts I’d slept in, scratching my crotch, tasting my morning breath.

“You look like hell,” Jennings said.

If he’d been a dog, he’d have peed on the floor, staking his claim to my territory, and if I’d been a dog, I’d have bit him in the ass.

“Get out.”

He folded the newspaper, sipped his coffee, and leaned back in his chair. “Your ex-wife invited me in. She’s got better manners than you do.”

“He said it couldn’t wait, Jack. I’m sorry.”

I picked up Jennings’s coffee cup, poured it out in the sink, and pointed to the front of the house. “Get out. You want to talk to me, make an appointment.”

“You got a short memory, Jack. Must be all that shaking. Tell you what, I’ll wait in my car while you get dressed.”

I followed him to the door. He glanced at his watch. “Hurry it up,” he said. “I’ve got a full day.”

There were two ways I could deal with Jennings: wait for him to tell me how high to jump, or push back, figuring he needed me enough to take a certain amount of flack until he got what he wanted. If I made it too easy for him, he’d use me till he used me up, and if I busted his chops too hard, he’d make good on his promise to throw Roni Chase back in the soup. It was that prospect that made me shave, dress, strap my gun on my hip, and sneak out the back door, climb over our fence, cut through our neighbor’s backyard, and get on a bus at Sixty-third and Brookside, Joy’s question from the night before rattling around in my head.

Frank Crenshaw and Nick Staley were first cousins. Jimmy Martin and Nick grew up together and were army buddies. Frank was in the scrap business, Nick sold bread and milk, and Jimmy worked construction. Their relationships were typical, friends and family, lifetimes spent in the daily struggle, grateful for the good times and sorry for the bad times, wondering whether they’d be missed or remembered when it was all over. Brett Staley tied his father and cousin to Cesar Mendez, but that left Jimmy Martin as the odd man out, his connection to Mendez the missing piece of the puzzle.

I would make good on my side of the deal with Jennings and give him what I had about the stolen guns, which was more guesswork than fact, but I wasn’t going to do that until I was satisfied that Roni was in the clear. If Frank Crenshaw, the Staleys, and Jimmy Martin were into something with Cesar Mendez, the blowback could easily drown her.

She kept the books for Crenshaw and Nick Staley, and she dated Brett. Those connections would deafen the feds to her denials that she had no idea what they were doing. And she was already working without a net, offering no explanation for how her gun had been used to kill Crenshaw and refusing to talk to me. The only way I could protect her from Jennings and whatever else was happening was to figure out where she fit in.

I got off the bus on Broadway at Thirty-eighth, taking the stairs two at a time to Simon’s office. I hadn’t spoken to him since Lucy gave him the files on the Martin and Montgomery cases. I needed to work the puzzle with him. I breezed through the door, stopping short when I saw Jennings sitting in my chair, Lucy and Simon standing behind Simon’s desk, glaring, Kate along another wall, taking X-rays of Jennings.

He pointed his finger at me. “You got more balls than sense. I give you that. And don’t tell me to get out. I let you get away with that crap in front of your ex-wife, but I’m not taking any more shit off of you unless you want Roni Chase auditioning for penitentiary girlfriend of the week.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“You didn’t come out the front door, so I figured you went out the back. I knew you weren’t going to walk all day, which meant you’d take the bus, just like you did going downtown yesterday. I turned the corner onto Brookside when you were paying your fare. When I saw which bus you were on, I guessed you were coming here, and if you weren’t, I knew these good people would know how to reach you and that they would understand the importance of cooperating with federal law enforcement.”

“You aren’t that fast, and you aren’t that smart.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Did you get the text message I sent you this morning?” Simon asked.

“No,” I said, looking at the screen on my phone, Simon’s message telling me to come to his office first thing. “I was on the bus and didn’t hear my phone.”

Simon, his jaw clenched, pointed at Jennings. “That’s how he got here. He’s monitoring your phone. He strolled in here, flashed his ATF badge, and made himself at home. You care to tell us what he’s doing here and why this is the first we know about him?”

Simon was angry with both of us. He didn’t like Jennings barging in his office and telling him what to do, and he liked even less that I had left him out of the loop. That was Simon’s problem, but I decided to make it Jennings’s problem.

He had made me take a blood oath to keep our arrangement private. Yet, here he was putting it on the table in front of the people he wanted me to keep in the dark. His tactics of squeezing me, using Roni as bait, and grandstanding in my kitchen and Simon’s office were high-pressure moves, but they put as much pressure on him as on me, each escalation increasing the risks to him that the whole thing would come apart. That’s what happens when a case becomes too personal. The question was why he had crossed that line.

“You tell them, Jennings.”

He rose from the chair, standing behind it, putting distance between us, stalling, his lack of a ready answer more evidence that he was improvising, making it up as he went along.

“A gun dealer was robbed about a month ago. The thieves got away with sixty-three pieces. A man named Frank Crenshaw used one of those guns to kill his wife. Roni Chase shot Crenshaw but didn’t kill him. Someone else finished him off with a gun registered to Roni.”

He paused, took a deep breath, and looked at Simon and Lucy.

“We have reason to believe that Jack has been obstructing justice by interfering with ATF’s investigation of the robbery. Jack agreed to cooperate with ATF’s investigation in return for a favorable recommendation to the U.S. attorney, only he seems to have forgotten what it means to cooperate. I told him I’d keep our deal quiet, but he’s forced my hand.”

Lucy and Simon rolled their eyes. Kate cocked her head to one side, staring at Jennings. None of them said a word. Lucy broke the silence.

“Why bring it here?” she asked Jennings. “Why involve us?”

“Call it professional courtesy,” Jennings said. “No need for any of you to get painted with the same brush if you can persuade Jack to hold up his end of the deal.”

“Meaning,” Lucy said, “you want us to tell Jack we’ll cut him off unless he’s a good boy, and, if we don’t, you’ll gin up a special load of crap for us like the one you just dumped on him.”

“Like I said, call it professional courtesy.”

“So,” Simon said, “what about it, Jack? Are you going to tell the nice man what he wants to know or are you going to let him rain on us?”

“You guys have umbrellas?” I asked.

“Yep,” Lucy said.

“And hip waders if we need them,” Simon added.

“Keep them handy because right now, I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance of a shit storm.”

“Don’t push me,” Jennings said.

“Wouldn’t think of it. I’ll give you what I have, but I want something in return.”

Jennings took a step toward me. “You’re in no position to negotiate.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Your obstruction-of-justice fantasy won’t sell. I’m betting that you’re one bad break away from taking a long fall and I’m the only guy who can pull you back or push you off the ledge. So, what’s it going to be?”

The veins in his neck were popping, and the furies were gathering in my belly, both of us fighting to maintain control. He blinked first, letting out a breath and taking a step back.

“One shot. That’s all you get.”