No way out

Chapter Fifty-four

My head snapped, but the rest of me held steady. “Let’s talk about Cesar Mendez.”

He nodded, his eyes narrow and wary. “Nuestra Familia.”

“They’ve got the concession on drugs in Northeast Kansas City and, unless you’ve been drunk on the job, you know that and you know that guns are a growth industry for Mexican gangs.”

“None of which is news,” he said. “Drug cartels are turning parts of Mexico into feudal states. They need guns, and they’re getting a lot of them from this country. They’ve got affiliates in all our major cities. Mendez has ties to NF in Mexico.”

“Which means he’s your number-one suspect in the gun robbery.”

“And I wasn’t drunk on the job.”

“Then you must have been totally in the bag when you came up with that crazy-assed story about me obstructing your investigation. So let’s talk about Brett Staley.”

“You talk. You’re the man with all the answers.”

“Brett’s father, Nick Staley, told me that Mendez was a regular at his grocery, that Brett bought drugs from him. Brett had to know that Mendez was the man to see if you wanted to buy a gun without all the paperwork. Frank Crenshaw was Brett’s cousin. He wanted a gun, but he had a record, which meant that he couldn’t fill out the paperwork, so Brett hooked him up with Mendez. When Crenshaw killed his wife, Mendez got worried that he would cut a deal with the prosecutor, so he gave Brett a choice. Pop his cousin or get popped. Brett asked Mendez for a gun, but Mendez wasn’t that stupid, so Brett stole the only gun he knew about, which happened to be Roni’s gun. How am I doing so far?”

“You’ve got my interest.”

“Here’s where it gets real interesting. Brett shows up at the hospital right after Crenshaw is killed. He says he’s there to meet with Roni, which Roni corroborates. Quincy Carter takes a natural interest in that coincidence, but he loses interest when you show up. Everybody goes home, and Brett drops off the radar. Now I’m just a disabled FBI agent who shakes when he should shoot, but even I can put that together.”

Lucy said to Jennings, “Me too. Brett Staley was your informant. You couldn’t let him be questioned in Crenshaw’s murder without exposing him and losing the chance to take Mendez down.”

“Head of the class, Luce,” I said. “It’s an old problem with no good way out. Your informant commits a crime. Arrest him, and your case falls apart. Cover for him, and your ass belongs to him as long as he lives; he needs money, dope, a woman, or a new address, you can’t turn him down. It’s worse than having a kid that stays in school forever or a wife that thinks shopping is an Olympic sport.”

Jennings’s nostrils flared, and Lucy pricked him with another needle.

“That’s no way to go through life.”

“No, it isn’t. Spend your career going after the bad guys, and some punk tries to take it all away from you. But, if the punk goes away, so does the problem.”

“Enter Mendez,” Kate said. “That’s why he was looking for Brett.”

Jennings swiveled toward Kate, giving her a hard look.

“Sorry, that’s one of those things I probably should have mentioned,” I said to him. “Kate and I stopped by Staley’s grocery yesterday, but it was closed. Mendez dropped by too, and he was looking for Brett. What did you do? Let Mendez know that Brett was working both sides of the street so he’d clean up your mess?”

“You’re full of shit,” Jennings said.

“You don’t believe that,” Kate said. “Your pupils are dilating, and the muscles around your mouth are turned down and are doing rapid-fire twitches. You’re frightened. The truth does that to people with something to hide.”

“And, that’s not the scariest part,” I said. “Turns out you and Mendez can’t find Brett, so you use Roni to draw him out. Get the charges against her dropped, so that he’ll think she made a deal to testify against him.”

“Assuming she’s guilty of anything, which is doubtful,” Lucy said.

“And,” I said to Jennings, “if Brett was willing to kill his cousin, you figure he won’t hesitate to take out his girlfriend, especially after he stole her gun, used it to commit murder, threw it away, and left it where the cops could find it so they’d go after her. Not a bad plan, especially since he figures that he can blackmail his godfather, the ATF agent, into a free pass if the cops get too close to him.”

“Except,” Lucy said, “Brett didn’t count on his godfather going rogue on him. So Jennings makes sure that Mendez keeps an eye on Roni until Brett comes after her, and, when he does, Mendez puts him away. If Roni goes down too, that’s a bonus because she’s the last of the loose ends. Jennings loses this round to Mendez, but at least no one is going to make him turn in his badge. Besides, going after gangs is nothing but a game of Whac-A-Mole. Put Mendez away today, and there’ll be another one just like him running the street corners tomorrow.”

“Okay, Miss Da Vinci Code, I get all that,” Simon said. “But where do you fit in, Jack?”

“I’m Jennings’s insurance policy, another set of eyes and ears looking for Brett Staley. If I find him and tell Jennings, it greases the skids for Mendez.”

Jennings fought his control, jittering like me on a good day. “Are you through?”

“Yeah, except for one question. Why did Mendez put one of his boys in the city jail to go after Jimmy Martin?”

Jennings eyebrows jumped, and his jaw dropped. “Who the hell is Jimmy Martin?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve got no fucking clue. Who is he?”

“A friend of Nick Staley’s. They grew up together and served in Iraq together.”

“Why is he at the Farm?”

“Theft of construction materials.”

“Since when is that a municipal offense?”

“It isn’t. The county didn’t have room for him, so they sent him there. He has two kids that are missing, and the judge held him in contempt without bail when he wouldn’t cooperate in the investigation of their disappearance, which makes him a kidnapping suspect and, if the worst happens, a murderer.”

“How does that get him crosswise with Mendez?”

“I was hoping you’d know the answer to that question. A Mexican kid named Ricky Suarez got ten days at the Farm for drunk and disorderly. He started his sentence two days ago. Yesterday, Jimmy carved the handle of a toilet bowl brush into a shiv and tried to escape. I think he was running from Suarez.”

“I talked to Ethan Bonner this morning,” Kate said. “He said that Jimmy has been transferred to the county jail. Adrienne Nardelli briefed Ethan after she questioned Suarez. The kid isn’t in the gang.”

“So that’s a dead end,” Jennings said. “This guy Martin, he must have been trying to escape because he doesn’t want to stand trial for killing his kids.”

“Nardelli isn’t so certain. She says Mendez could have sent Suarez after Jimmy Martin as an initiation into the gang. Kill someone and you’re a member for life. The jail superintendent said that Jimmy and Suarez got into it the day Suarez got to the Farm, but the guards pulled them apart before it got physical.”

“That shit happens every day in every jail in the country. It’s how the pecking order works. Bottom line,” Jennings said, “you don’t know anything that ties Martin to Mendez.”

“I know you’re in a world of hurt if we don’t find Brett Staley before he kills Roni Chase.”

“You think you can make that work, have at it. But I’m going to be on your ass every step of the way.”