The Competition

58

Bailey tapped me on the arm. “Can we powwow for a minute?”

“Sure.” I turned back to the bound-and-cuffed Shane. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

“‘Don’t go anywhere,’” Shane said. “That’s a real knee-slapper. Who knew you DAs could be such a laugh riot.”

Bailey pulled me into the bedroom. “I like your idea of a setup with Jax, but I think we need to take a minute and decide what we want to do with him, assuming Shane can arrange a meet.”

“My guess is that Logan has to hook up with him again to restock. So, we put a bug on Jax and follow him until they meet.”

“But what if Logan’s already met with Jax?”

Then the next shooting couldn’t be far off. That was probably true regardless. I knew that. We all did. But somehow, Bailey’s words brought the urgency home in a way that made my chest tighten. “Then we’ll need to squeeze the guy. Find out everything he knows about Logan. See if he knows what Logan’s planning.”

“And Logan would tell him because…?”

I exhaled sharply and shook my head. “You’re right. He wouldn’t necessarily.” I started pacing. “But this Jax guy’s the most solid lead yet. We’ve got to do something with him. And thanks to Shane, we’ve got leverage.” I stopped pacing and looked at Bailey. “But Shane’s got to be the one to talk to Jax, find out whether he’s met with Logan.”

Bailey frowned. “I really hate to rely on him for something like that. Why don’t we just bust Jax and force him to cooperate? Like you said, we’ve got the leverage. Shane’s testimony alone will nail him-and he’ll probably be carrying something we can bust him for.”

“What if he won’t deal?” Criminals aren’t the most logical bunch. You can’t count on them to act in their own best interest-let alone figure out what that is. “Besides, setting up Jax as a decoy is our best shot at catching Logan. And we have to use Shane to do that.” Bailey didn’t look entirely convinced. “How about this: if he tells Shane there’s no plan to meet up with Logan again, we bust him. I know it’s risky to let Shane set this up. But if it pays off, it’s more than worth it.”

Bailey reluctantly nodded. “But we’ll need serious backup,” she said. “This Jax character might bring friends. A lot could go wrong. How about I call Graden and get him to give us Harrellson and a couple of others?”

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.”

Involving Graden was a good news/bad news proposition. If he liked our plan, it meant we’d be covered both physically and politically if anything went wrong. But if he, or more likely someone above him, didn’t like it, we’d be shut down. And there were some pretty obvious reasons for the brass to nix the idea. It was a risky gambit, planting a bug on a known drug and gun seller. If we lost him, or if he found the bug before he met with Logan, he’d be in the wind. In which case we-or at least LAPD-would be on the hook for losing a major player. The potential shitstorm of blame was incalculable.

So odds were, we wouldn’t get approval. But this was the only move we had. We needed to make it, and make it fast. Bailey and I and the shrinks agreed that Logan wasn’t about to end his siege on a dud like the Cinemark theater. He was gearing up for another, and probably bigger, round. This might be our best-and maybe only-chance to prevent it. If we asked for permission, we’d be shut down. We couldn’t afford that.

If it all went south and I wound up fired, so be it. Better that than knowing I blew a chance to stop more carnage. “We could get some…unofficial backup. Let me make a few phone calls.”

Bailey raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Hurry.”

“You know, mija, at some point a debt is paid. Done with. I can’t always be bailing you out of shit.” Luis Revelo, shot-caller for the Sylmar Sevens gang, spoke patiently, as though explaining the facts of life to a dim-​witted younger cousin.

We’d met when he was suspected-wrongly-of having raped the daughter of a wealthy doctor and businessman who turned out to have unfortunate “associations” that linked him to child pornography and murder. I cleared Luis of the rape, and in return, he tricked out my Honda, which had been badly vandalized during the case. Luis planned to go into marketing and give up the gang life. He was aiming for an MBA and had just finished his second year of community college with a 4.0 average. He looked like a shoo-in for acceptance to the University of California in Los Angeles. But he still had to pay the rent. For himself, his mother, a few cousins, and assorted others.

So for now, he was still the gang leader. Which had made him a great source of information for me in past cases. Right now, it meant that he had the firepower and the manpower to provide serious, if potentially overzealous, backup.

“What do you mean always?” I said. “I ever ask you for backup before? And besides, I saved your life. Remember? I’d say that means you’ll be owing me for a while.”

“Aww don’ zaggerate. No jury woulda convicted me. Susan woulda told ’em I din’t-damn, I mean didn’t do it.”

This is so typical. Win a case, it was a no-brainer anybody could’ve won. Lose a case, it’s all you. No matter how you slice it, we never get credit.

“You didn’t seem so sure of that when you kidnapped me just so you could beg me to help you.” Luis had had a couple of his soldiers scoop me off the street so he could plead his case to me privately. Lucky for him, I was open-minded enough to listen. Also, they had guns.

“I said I was sorry. An’ we jus’ snatched you for a little bit. You gonna keep bringin’ that up forever?”

Why stop when it worked so well? “You know, Luis, another prosecutor, who didn’t have such a highly developed sense of humor, might have actually filed charges for that ‘little bit.’ You don’t realize how fortunate you are that it was me and not some hard-ass.”

“Yeah, you’re cool, I know that. But look, it’s bad for my rep to be hanging around with a DA. I got my name to think of. I got to keep respeck in the ranks. You feel me?”

The burdens of leadership could be daunting. “Respect, Luis. Anyway, this is for the shooting at Fairmont High. You hear about that?”

There was a long pause. “Shit, everybody heard about that. Why din’t you say so? Those pendejo motherfuckers. Whadda you need?”