Shakedown

Chapter Thirty-two

Ammara Iverson gave me a lift back to my car.

“That was slick,” I said, as she drove away from the rail yard.

“You mean the Mutt and Jeff routine Troy and Ziegler did back there?”

“They were smooth, I’ll give them that. You think Ziegler had really talked to the D.A.?”

“Ziegler never bluffs. Troy reached out to Ziegler as soon as we found out about Javy Ordonez. I was on the call with him.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Doesn’t matter. Troy would have done the same thing. Ziegler, too. They’re all in favor of cooperating with the local cops as long as they get to run the show.”

“I get that. I don’t care about the turf battle. I’m more interested in whether the cases are connected.”

“Too soon to tell, but that gun the tech found makes things more interesting.”

“How so?” I asked.

Ammara took a breath. “Remember, I didn’t tell you any of this. Ballistics says that a.45 caliber was used in the drug house murders. If this gun is a match, we may have our first real break.”

“The.45 was standard military issue, marines mostly,” I said.

“They aren’t just for the military,” she said. “Glock and Ruger both make.45s. So do some other manufacturers. They’re great for self-protection. Lots of stopping power.”

“If the gun they found was military issue, that could give us an angle to look at.”

“Us,” she said. “Not you.”

I ignored her comment. “How about our squad? Anybody like the.45?”

Ammara turned toward me, smiling. “Nope. Everybody likes the.40 caliber, Glocks mostly, same as you.”

“I’m not just talking about service weapons. What about personal guns?”

She bit her lower lip, shaking her head. “Troy asked all of us. No one said they had a.45, but I guess that doesn’t prove anything, does it.”

“Not much.”

Ammara didn’t argue, changing subjects instead. “You should let go of this case, Jack. Take care of yourself.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I’m serious, Jack. You keep showing up like this, Troy will change the locks.”

“How badly does Troy want to keep me out of the way?”

“Bad enough. You saw him today.”

“Doesn’t answer my question. I don’t think it has anything to do with my health. I think that’s a convenient excuse. He wants my squad on a permanent basis. Always has.”

“I don’t know. Troy has his way of seeing the world. It’s not mine, but he’s running the squad.”

“Anything else new from your end besides the ballistics?” I asked.

“A few more dead ends. That kid, Luis Alvarez, the one who supposedly shot Tony Phillips and who the Winston brothers put in intensive care, he didn’t make it. Never woke up.”

“It’s like they all decided to kill each other. Kind of like a suicide pact.”

“Only difference,” Ammara said, “people who make a suicide pact kill themselves, not one another.”

“Has to be a last man standing. Anything else?”

She shrugged. “We talked to Jalise Williams’s family and friends. No indication she was stepping out on Marcellus or doing anything else to make her a target.”

“Well, that’s not all bad. We keep eliminating enough possibilities, we’ll be left with the answer, even if it doesn’t make sense now.”

“Maybe, but this thing with Javy Ordonez has Troy’s balls in a bundle,” Ammara said.

“Why? Because it doesn’t fit with his theory that we’ve got a bad agent on our squad? The ballistics report doesn’t, either.”

“He’s not telling us what he thinks.”

“First rule-trust no one,” I said.

“Second rule-eventually you have to trust someone. He can’t do this on his own,” she said.

“What about the polygraphs? Still on for tomorrow?”

“Yeah, except he’s not going to ask you to take one.”

“Why not?”

“The examiner told him that the results would be meaningless if you start shaking during the test.”

“Lucky me. So how do you know what the examiner told Troy if Troy isn’t talking to the squad?”

Ammara smiled, not taking her eyes from the road. “I don’t like being shut out so I pay real close attention to my surroundings. Did you get anything else from Marty Grisnik?”

“He’s going to call you for the ballistics on the gun used to kill Marcellus and company. He wants to compare it to the ballistics from the Tony Phillips shooting.”

“They recover the gun in that shooting?”

“Grisnik didn’t say, but they’ve got the rounds that killed the kid. They can compare those to the rounds we found at Marcellus’s house.”

“If the same gun was used in all three cases, that would be nice,” Ammara said.

“Be more than nice. It would be sweet,” I said. “But it wouldn’t make any sense. Why throw the gun away where it was likely to be found after using it to pop Javy? Pretty sloppy.”

“Wouldn’t have been found if Javy’s body hadn’t jammed up the garbage truck. The gun would have ended up in the landfill along with Javy. More unlucky than sloppy.”

“There’s another angle. Latrell Kelly,” I said.

“Mr. Cream Puff?”

“Yeah. He lived behind Marcellus and he works at the rail yard. See if you can find a connection between him and Javy. You ever been to a joint on Fifth Street in Kansas City, Kansas, called Pete’s Other Place?”

“You mean that sausage place Colby’s always talking about? He dragged me there once. Not my kind of food. I like to see dogs walking around, not on my plate stuffed inside an intestine.”

I laughed. “Grisnik took me there for lunch today. I liked the sausage.”

“You see any dogs?”

“Not a one. I did run into Colby. He was sitting at the bar,” I said, my voice trailing off.

“And?” asked Ammara.

“And what?”

“And when someone’s voice trails off, Special Agent Davis, it implies they want to tell you something else but they prefer to be asked. That’s and what.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Well, I don’t prefer to be asked, at least not at the moment.”

We didn’t say anything else until Ammara pulled alongside my car. I got out and then leaned back in the open window.

“You remember that case last spring, the one where the wife turned the ex-stockbroker husband in for dealing dope?”

Ammara laughed. “And for cheating on her. I think that’s what killed the deal for him. Man, she wanted his nuts slow roasted.”

“Guy’s name was Thomas Rice.”

“Right. The wife’s name was Jill. What about them?”

“You and Troy handled that case.”

“We did.”

“You ever hear from the wife afterward? She ever call?”

Ammara pursed her lips and squinted her eyes, thinking before she spoke. “Last time I talked to her was when the judge sentenced her husband. What’s this about, Jack?”

I smiled. “It’s probably nothing, but I’d like to get a look at the file.”

“Troy would kick your ass out the door.”

“He doesn’t have a boot big enough, but all the same, I’d rather no one know I was looking at it.”

She thought for a minute, chewing her lip. “How much of the file you need?”

“Names and addresses of Rice’s clients before he lost his license. Same for the people he gave up to the U.S. Attorney as part of his plea bargain. Plus any witness statements and all of Rice’s financials.”

“I can’t take the file out of the building,” Ammara said. “There would be a record of that and a lot of questions for me to answer if Troy finds out I gave it to you.”

“You could make copies. Bring them out to the house.”

She looked closely at me, narrowing her eyes, passing judgment. “If I had a dick, I’d say I was about to step on it,” she said.

“Don’t wear heels.”