Shakedown

Chapter Seventy

Grisnik took the lead. I put my light on him, and watched him descend, keeping a couple of body lengths between us. The ceiling light above the entry to the shaft faded quickly. Outside the beams of our?ashlights, the darkness was absolute. Anyone observing our descent would have thought they were witnessing an invasion of mutant glowworms.

The shaft was too deep to be part of the sewer system. It had to be a remnant of an underground mine. I hoped that it was at the top of the list Troy and Ammara were assembling, though it was far removed from Latrell Kelly’s stomping grounds.

The climbing bars were made of cold steel and ridged for traction. Each one was a foot apart. I counted them as I climbed down, keeping track of how deeply belowground we were going.

The air got cooler the farther we went. The sides of the shaft were dry at first but began to show traces of moisture that gradually increased until the round walls were slick and wet. My count reached 120 when Grisnik shined his?ashlight at me.

“I’m down,” he said. “There’s a ladder from the bottom of the shaft that ends about five feet above the?oor.”

They were the first words either of us had spoken since we began our descent. I kept my light aimed at him, the?oor quickly coming into view, looking like a?attened moonscape. Grisnik pivoted in a tight circle, pointing his?ashlight outward, then turned it off and vanished in the darkness.

I quickly covered the remaining ten feet inside the shaft, emerging into a large, rough-hewn, dome-shaped cavern. The ladder was anchored into the mouth of the shaft. The concrete securing the bolts had eroded and crumbled, causing the entire span to sway like a rope bridge.

“Marty! Where are you?”

He didn’t answer. I swept the cavern walls with my?ashlight until I found the outer perimeter, and took my bearings. It was a wide-open space, big enough to park half a dozen cars.

I shined my light at the base of the ladder, tracing lines in four directions and hitting the stack of boxes and trash bags I’d last seen being loaded into Nick Andrija’s pickup. I continued my survey until the beam spread out like a fan, re?ecting off a mirror made of water instead of glass. An in?ated raft with a small outboard motor was beached at the edge of an underground lake.

“Come on in, the water’s fine,” Colby Hudson said.

The echoes in the chamber made it impossible to pinpoint his location and I had no better luck chasing the sound with my?ashlight.

A red dot materialized on my shoulder, tracing a path to my heart, where it stopped.

“I’ve got a clear shot at you, Jack, so unload your gun and drop it. If I don’t like the way you do it, I’ll shoot you. And that would be a shame because there’s someone down here who’s dying to see you.”

Colby had used Grisnik to lure me into a trap. “Marty! Where are you?”

“Do as he says, Jack,” Grisnik answered. “He’s holding all the cards.”

“Wendy!” I shouted, “It’s okay, honey. I’m here!”

She didn’t answer. I was suspended in midair, too far from the shaft to climb back into it and too far above the ground to drop and roll. I emptied my Glock and let it go.

“Now,” Colby said, “throw the ammo into the water. It’s right in front of you, maybe ten feet from the ladder. Then turn off your?ashlight and slowly come down the rest of the way.”

He tracked me with the laser, using it to hold me in place when I stepped off onto the?oor.

“You don’t need Wendy,” I said. “You’ve got her computer. You’ve got Grisnik and me. You can let her go.”

“I wish I could,” Colby said.

Pale orange light from a lantern, the kind you’d hang in a tent, this one dangling from a hook buried in the cavern wall, spilled into the darkness. Marty Grisnik stood next to the lantern, a pair of night-vision goggles dangling from a strap around his neck. Colby was next to him on bended knees, Grisnik’s gun aimed at his head.

Grisnik said, “Now don’t get all crazy on me and start shaking like a mental patient. Come into the light, but take it real easy.” I closed to within five feet. “Hold it right there. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a ventriloquist. Looks like I finally got my wish. How’d you like my act?”

I thought of how I had been deceived by Frank Tyler’s act, silently apologizing to Kevin again. I heard Kate’s voice assuring me that I couldn’t have known, not believing her then or now, the props Grisnik had used suddenly becoming clear. He had hidden in plain sight, not disguising his feelings for Tanja, playing me to stay close to an investigation he’d been shut out of, taking advantage of every break I gave him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a good review.

“I’ve seen better.”

“Well, I admit that doing it in the dark with a gun pointed at this dummy’s head gives me an unfair advantage, but they don’t give style points in a game like this.”

“So you never got over Tanja, after all.”

“She does have a way about her, I’ll give you that.”

“Too bad you can’t ask her late husband. She killed him and brought his coke business back home, probably did you behind the bar for old times’ sake her first night home and never looked back. Had to gripe your ass to see her and Colby bumping and grinding.”

Grisnik smiled. “Say what you want, Jack, he’s the one on his knees.”

Colby stared up at me, his arms handcuffed behind him, his face a bloody mess.

I looked at him without pity. He had betrayed Wendy, me, the people he worked with, and those he was sworn to serve. Colby had treated all of us as chips to be played in a game he had lost. Grisnik was no better, his loyalty belonging to a woman who’d had him by the short hairs since he had his first wet dream.

“Where’s my daughter?”

“Ask him,” Grisnik said. “Go ahead. I asked him plenty of times. He wouldn’t tell me, but he said he’d tell you. I guess that’s what family is all about.”

Colby may have convinced Grisnik to bring me here, hoping that the cavalry wouldn’t be far behind, but I ignored him. Wendy may have escaped or never been captured. If Grisnik didn’t know where she was, I wouldn’t help him find out. That information would only buy both Colby and me a bullet.

“Wendy can’t hurt you. Colby used her to launder his cut, but he wasn’t stupid enough to tell her about you or Tanja,” I said.

“Colby was stupid enough to tell Wendy everything and she was probably stupid enough to demand her cut. She and Colby, and now you, are the last of the loose ends. Then Tanja and I are out. Retired, fat, and happy,” said Grisnik.

I shined my?ashlight on Colby. One of his front teeth was gone and the corners of his mouth were crusted with dried blood, his lips swollen and cracked.

“She didn’t know a goddamn thing,” Colby said. “She didn’t want to know.”

“Bullshit! Tell him where she is,” Grisnik said.

“Fuck you,” Colby said.

Grisnik’s face grew hard, blood rushing from his neck to his cheeks, his eyes bulging. “Damn you!” he said, pressing the barrel of his gun against Colby’s temple.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over,” I said, my voice cracking with stutters. “I copied Wendy’s hard drive before you stole her computer. I gave it to Troy Clark a few hours ago. He says Colby kept very good records. Tanja has probably been picked up by now and you know what that means. First one to make a deal wins. She’ll give you up before the ink on her fingerprints dries. You can turn yourself in and try to beat her to the punch or hide down here for the next fifty years. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

Grisnik shook his head, turning his gun toward me. “Listen to you, Jack. You’re a lousy liar. Troy Clark is right. You are half crazy.”

Tremors began to percolate in my gut, tickling their way into my arms. I didn’t have much time left before I’d be on my knees next to Colby. I had to convince Grisnik that he was finished, that Wendy couldn’t hurt him. If I succeeded, he’d come to the only other conclusion. He’d have to kill both Colby and me, a price I’d pay to keep her safe.

“This is the way I figure it,” I said. “Tanja handled supply. Rice handled the money. You took care of the KCK cops and Colby played us. Rice went down, but he was willing to do the time to protect his investment. Marcellus Pearson and Javy Ordonez were both going down, but neither of them would take the long view like Rice did. So you decided to close up shop. Latrell Kelly bailed you out with Marcellus.”

“I was supposed to do him, but I was only going to warn him,” Colby said. “Tell him to get out of town. I was too late.”

“Is that what you told Javy Ordonez? Except he said he was staying put, so you killed him.”

“I set up the meeting with Javy, but that’s all,” Colby said. “Grisnik killed him. There’s another entrance to the mine on the other side of the lake. Comes out in the woods behind the rail yard. Grisnik showed me. Perfect way to get in and out without being seen. Grisnik used the boat. We didn’t know that Latrell used the other side for some kind of hiding place. Grisnik found his gun and the photograph of Latrell and his mother. It was just dumb luck.”

I looked at Grisnik. “That’s why you put Javy’s body in the Dumpster. You knew it would get caught in the sweeper blade, just like the homeless bums you told me about. You left the gun where it would be found and planted the photograph. But you couldn’t have known any of that would tie back to Latrell. We didn’t find out about him until later.”

“I didn’t care who it tied back to so long as it wasn’t me,” Grisnik said.

“And Thomas Rice?”

Colby said, “Rice panicked after you and Grisnik went to see him. He was afraid you’d go after his wife. He called me. I told Grisnik and he called New York. They said Rice had to go.”

“And you gave the job to Wilson Reddick,” I said. “What about Bodie Grant?”

“In the water,” Colby said, nodding at the lake. “That one’s on me, too,” he added, dropping his head.

“Why?”

He hesitated, choking on his answer. “Tanja,” he said.

“She tell you that she’d chosen you instead of Grisnik?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Pathetic, huh?”

“You don’t know how pathetic,” Grisnik said. “I’m a patient man, but I’ve run out of patience.” He stuck his gun in Colby’s ear. “Tell me where I can find Wendy.”

Colby raised his face toward me. For an instant, a crooked smile?ashed across half his face. It happened so fast, I wasn’t certain I’d seen it. Then his face and his voice?attened out.

“I threw her body in the Missouri River. She’s halfway to St. Louis.”

“Well, ain’t that the shits,” Grisnik said and shot Colby in the head.