The thing that most struck me about Quinn when I met him at the Municipal Farm was his nonchalance, his water-off-a-duck’s-back reaction to a man holding a woman hostage, a homemade knife at her throat. I’d known guys like him on the bomb squad, guys who looked at a bundle of wires wrapped around a package of explosives and shrapnel the way the people who do the
New York Times
crossword puzzle in ink look at the Sunday edition, an interesting problem to be solved but not one they hadn’t seen before.
They lived for the competition, the higher the stakes the better. And like a center fielder that drifts back, loping to the warning track, glove extended at the last second, making a snow-cone catch and bouncing off the wall with a smile before trotting to the dugout, they made it look easy.
I wasn’t one of those guys. I sweated a case from start to finish, second-guessing, starting over, feeling a piece of me die if it went bad, thanking a god I wasn’t certain I believed in when it went right. In the years since I began shaking I sometimes wondered if going all in all the time hadn’t taken a toll on my brain, stressing a neural connection until it short-circuited. The doctors told me no, but what did they know? They couldn’t even come up with a better name for my movement disorder than “tics.”
The light changed, people sliding past us, scattered wind whipping raindrops splattering at our feet. I flashed on images of Quinn talking to Kate in the ambulance, handing her a card, and of Kate walking out of Simon’s office saying she had to make a call and staying in the car when we got to Roni Chase’s house to make another.
“Kate Scranton called you,” I said.
“She’s persistent.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That you’re proud, stubborn, and resistant to reason.”
“That’s it?”
“And she said you need a minder.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her I don’t babysit.”
“What do you do?”
“I help people make peace or make war.”
“I thought you were a hostage negotiator,” I said.
“That’s the peace part. Not every conflict can be resolved. People need help with the fight too.”
“How do you do that?”
He shrugged. “Make sure they know what they’re fighting for and why and that they understand what they have to do to win. If they can’t do it or aren’t willing to do it, then it’s time to make peace.”
“And if they are willing to do it?”
“I show them how.”
“Ever do it for them?”
“If they can’t and if they pay me enough.”
“What if they can’t pay you?”
“Maybe. If I care enough about who wins.”
“Is Kate paying you?”
“We’ll see.”
He was shorter than me and younger by at least ten years. He also carried less weight, but more of it was wiry muscle. His leather jacket hung loose, a slight bulge on his right hip I took for a holstered gun. He was willing, that much was for certain, and he was for hire, my gut telling me it didn’t matter for which side as long as the money made it into his account. Not my type.
“I’ll pass,” I said, turning my back and stepping off the curb.
“I found Mendez. He wants to talk to you.”
The light turned red again. I came back to the sidewalk. “Why would he talk to you, and why does he want to talk to me?”
Quinn smiled. “Two questions, same answer. He realized it’s in his best interests.”
I didn’t like Quinn, and I liked it less that Kate had gone behind my back telling him enough to get Mendez’s attention, information that could give Mendez more of an edge than he already had.
“How do I know you didn’t tell Mendez too much and that we aren’t walking into a trap?”
“This isn’t my first dance. Besides, I’m guessing you were about to go hunting him. What were you going to do? Set a trap and use yourself as bait?”
The really annoying thing about guys like Quinn was that they were too often right and they knew it.
“How’d you find Mendez?”
“I’ve done some work with gang task forces. I knew who to ask and where to look.”
“What did you do? Invite him to meet you at Starbucks so you could buy him a latte?”
He shook his head, letting out a long breath. “Kate was right. She said you’d make this difficult, so I’m going to make it easy. I’ve been following you since you left the jail. You’re shaking and wobbling, just like Kate told me you would. She said that you wouldn’t listen, that you’d turn me down, and that when you did I should tell you that the moon is pink, whatever the hell that means.”
I chuckled. “She said that?”
“She did. And she said to tell you that if you try to do this on your own and get yourself killed, Joy will never forgive you, and she won’t either.”
“And how are you going to keep me from getting killed?”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an orange. “With this.”
“A piece of fruit?”
He opened his coat, showing me the butt of his gun. “In case the orange doesn’t do the trick.”
Quinn drove a stripped-down black SUV wrapped in dark tinted windows, stick shift and rubber mats, no sound system for talk radio, top forty, or hard rock, the cup holders stuffed with gum wrappers, loose change, and wadded scraps of scribbled paper. There was a canvas bag on the front passenger seat that smelled like old sweat but rattled like it was packed with steel when I moved it to the back.
“More oranges?” I asked him.
“Odds and ends,” he said, settling behind the wheel and tossing me the orange. “Whose orange is that?”
“Yours, I guess.”
“Don’t guess.”
“Okay. It’s yours.”
“Based on what?”
“You gave it to me.”
“Whose name is on it?”
I rotated the orange, finding the familiar stamp. “Sunkist.”
“My name Sunkist?”
He was making a point that began to dawn on me. “No, and neither is mine.”
“Exactly. So you’ve got the orange. That gives you a possessor’s rights. Maybe that’s enough for you to keep it, maybe not. But I want the orange. I tell you it’s mine, that I bought and paid for it and I want it back. Naturally you say bullshit because you’ve got the orange and I don’t have a receipt for it and my name isn’t Sunkist. Now make peace.”
I laughed. “When my kids were little, I’d tell them to work it out or I’d take the orange and neither one of them would get it. They’d both be mad at me, and I’d end up with an orange I didn’t want.”
“And,” Quinn said, “if you were Solomon, you’d tell them to cut it in half.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
“Nope. They’d still be mad. The real is question is, why do you want the orange?”
I shrugged. “I’m hungry. I want to eat it.”
“And I want to use the peel to bake a cake.”
“You don’t look the type.”
“I’m not. I prefer moon pies. But if I was, we can both get what we want. You can have the fruit, and I can have the peel. We can make peace because knowing why we want what we want lets us expand the pie and meet both of our needs.”
“That’s swell, Dr. Feel Good, but suppose I don’t give a shit about you or your cake and I want the whole thing because I don’t share well with others.”
He smiled. “That’s when we find out how hungry you are and how badly I want to bake that pie.”
“What are you, an ex-cop, a lawyer, a shrink, or just a guy who sells fruit?”
“My father is a psychiatrist and my mother is a psychologist, which means every time I farted when I was growing up, I got analyzed. I broke their hearts when I applied to the police academy instead of Harvard. I spent six years on patrol, another ten as a detective, went to law school at night, passed the bar but never practiced. Couldn’t see selling slices of my life measured in tenths of an hour. Stayed a cop and ended up a hostage negotiator until I quit the force and opened up my own fruit stand.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“They gave me a choice. Quit or get fired.”
“Why?”
“When the fruit is rotten, someone has to take the fall. It was my turn, which was only fair because it was my fault. Two people died. One of them was a hostage, and one of them was a cop.”
“But they still use you as a freelancer?”
“The department ran out of negotiators, which made it easy for them to forgive even if they didn’t forget. Kate told me what she knows and thinks she knows about your case. I need you to tell me the rest.”
I started to talk, but my vocal cords froze, my chin bobbing, my torso following suit, the words finally coming in a stutter.
“It’s not a short story. Be better if we stopped somewhere for a few minutes.”
“No problem. Mendez won’t start without us.”
“Are we on a schedule?”
“Anytime after dark. I’ll send him a text message when we’re ready.”
“You must be good if you’ve got him sitting by the phone waiting for you to call.”
“I let him pick the place as long as I got to pick the time. Turf is a big issue for him. It’s one of the ways he defines himself. I’m not into real estate, but going in unprepared can get you killed. This way he’ll feel like he’s in control and we’ll be ready.”
A powerful spasm jerked me forward, bending me at the waist, twisting me clockwise. I grunted and braced myself, one hand flattened on the dash, the other on the passenger door, taking a deep breath when it passed, looking at Quinn, wondering if he was having second thoughts. He didn’t blink, smile, or frown, his eyes doing all the work, boring in, deciding how, not whether. I was another problem to be solved, more water off a duck’s back.
“You have some place in mind we can go?”
“Yeah. You look like you could use some religion.”
He parked behind a small, two-story church in Northeast, the first floor ringed in limestone, the second in dark red brick. There were no lights on and no other cars in the one-row parking lot. I followed him out of the car to the back door where there was a keypad lock. He punched in a code and opened the door, turning on lights as we walked down a narrow hall.
“Let me guess,” I said, “you’re a preacher in your spare time.”
“No chance. The only thing worse than the pay is the hours. This church has a small congregation. The building is only open on Sunday and Tuesday. I did some work for them a while back.”
“And they let you use the church for client meetings?”
“No, but I was with the pastor one time when he punched in the code for the back door.”
We came to the end of the hall, and he opened another door, turning on a single ceiling fixture, casting faint light and long shadows on the bare-bones sanctuary with its hard-backed wooden pews, scuffed and scarred. Stained-glass windows lined the walls, one of them broken out and covered over with plywood. There was a shallow stage with a portable lectern and two leather chairs immediately to our right.
“Take a seat,” he said, pointing to the chairs, “and preach to me.”
My chair was soft, the room quiet and peaceful. It wasn’t a cure for tics, but it was soothing, my body and brain easing as I gave Quinn the gospel, breaking it down into the books of Chase, Martin, Crenshaw, and Staley.
“I think you’re right about Jimmy Martin,” Quinn said. “He’s caught in the crossfire between two sides. Someone is using his kids to keep him quiet, and the other is trying to kill him. If he talks, his kids die. If he dies, his kids die. If that’s the world you’re living in, solitary confinement looks pretty damn good. Nobody goes to that much trouble for a truckload of copper.”
“But they would for three quarters of a million dollars in guns.”
He nodded, opened his phone, sent Cesar Mendez a text, and looked at me. “One hour.”
Quinn drove east on Independence Avenue, slowing down as we approached Roni Chase’s office. Night had fallen, and it was dark and deserted, the adjacent storefronts shut down for the day.
“Turn in here. That’s Roni’s office,” I said. “Circle the building. I’ll check the door.”
“Why?”
“I want to be certain she’s not lying on the floor with a bullet in the back of her head.”
The door was locked. I peered in the windows, but there was nothing to see, just chairs, her desk, papers stacked in neat piles from one side to the other, her computer monitor turned off, no dead bodies in sight, a light on in the back. Quinn pulled up, leaning out his window.
“The back door is a piece of cake. You want to have a look around?”
“We have time?”
He looked at his watch. “We’ve got fifty-five minutes. If we can’t toss her office in ten, we should hang it up.”
Quinn drove, I walked, and he had the door open by the time I caught up to him, his canvas bag open at his feet. He pulled out two halogen penlights, handed one to me, zippered the bag, and put it back in the SUV.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Missing pieces.”
“Oh, missing pieces. That’s helpful.”
I turned off the light in the back of Roni’s office, crossed to the front, lowered and closed the blinds on the storefront glass and turned on my penlight.
“If Roni is protecting Brett Staley, she probably knows where he is. We’re looking for anything that can tell us where he’s hiding.”
“You think she’s part of this?”
“No. I think Brett is and she’s helping him.”
“Then that makes her part of this.”
“Not in the way you mean it. Whoever killed Nick Staley stuck around in the grocery for a reason. The only reason that fits is that the killer was waiting for Brett. Which means Brett didn’t kill his father or Frank Crenshaw. I think Roni is protecting Brett in the truest sense. She’s trying to keep him alive.”
Quinn’s cell phone beeped. He read the screen. “Text message from Mendez. He moved up the meeting time. He says if we’re not there in ten minutes we can forget it.”
“How far away are we?”
“Ten minutes.”
“I’d say Mendez just put your orange peel in his pocket.” I took a quick glance at Roni’s desk, sweeping everything into a wastebasket and tucking it under my arm. “Let’s roll.”
Quinn barreled onto Independence Avenue, fish-tailing and slaloming through eastbound traffic.
“Independence Avenue becomes Winner Road about four miles east of here just before we hit what’s left of the old steel mill,” he said.
“I’ve driven past it. There’s a building a couple of blocks long that’s nothing but a bunch of broken-out windows and aluminum siding.”
“That’s the billet yard where they stored steel rods and bars. Access is off a side street called Ewing. Winner bridges the steel yard like an overpass. Ewing runs parallel and one-way east down a steep hill. The gate to the yard is at the bottom of the hill underneath Winner.”
“We’re meeting him at the billet yard?”
“No. There are two layers of ten-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire to keep people out. The yard is abandoned. No need for on-site security with that fence. We’re meeting Mendez at the bottom of the hill beneath the overpass.”
“Is that the only way in?”
“There’s a road that runs north and south along the yard called Winchester. There’s nothing else down there, except a couple of old machine shops and a few broken-down abandoned houses.”
“Perfect for Mendez. The overhead traffic muffles any noise. He can put people at the top of the hill on Ewing and down along Winchester in case anyone gets close. This time of night, we should be the only people within a mile. No one will hear or see us. We should have gotten there earlier.”
“And done what? Set up an ambush? We’re there to talk to the man, not take him down.”
“He made sure of that, moving up the timetable.”
“This was never about gaining a tactical advantage. There’re only two of us, and I don’t know how many of them. This is about going in and getting what information we can without giving him a reason to kill us. You want to take a pass, now is the time to tell me.”
I shook my head. “This is my deal. Not yours. Drop me off. I’ll call you when it’s time to pick me up.”
He laughed. “I’ve met Kate Scranton one time, but that was enough to know I don’t want her coming after me the rest of my life.”
Two minutes later, we stopped at the top of the hill. A burly figure stood five feet back of the curb, camouflaged by darkness, one arm at his side, his hand tucked behind him, no doubt holding a gun. He motioned us down the hill with his other hand.
Quinn let the SUV coast down the hill, headlights picking up the sign above the gate,
SHEFFIELD INDUSTRIAL STATION, GATE NO
. 2. Another solitary figure stood in front of the gate, hands in his jacket pocket. Rectangular pillars supporting the overpass broke the hill into four segments. The man at the bottom of the hill waved at us, gesturing that we were to pull over into the center, the pillars funneling us toward him. When we were halfway down the hill, he raised his hand, telling us to stop.
High-beam headlights flashed behind us, filling the cab of the SUV. I looked over my shoulder, squinting at three cars that had been parked at the top of the hill beneath the overpass, invisible to us until now. The cars crept closer, the center car holding course, the other two flanking us. Only then did a Lexus sedan emerge from Winchester, passing the man at the gate, blocking us in, its high-beams adding to the blinding glare.
The driver got out of each car on our flanks, opening Quinn’s door and mine, motioning us to get out. No one had spoken a word, but there was no doubt who was in charge and what we were supposed to do. They closed our doors, turned us toward the SUV, and made us spread, patting us down and taking our guns and holding them up to the Lexus.
The lights on the Lexus went off, the other cars doing the same. I blinked in the sudden darkness, aware that the passenger door on the Lexus had opened and someone was getting out, my eyes too dilated to capture any other details. I felt a hand on my back shove me toward the Lexus.
There were seven of them, the guy at the top of the hill, the one at the gate, the drivers of the three cars, and the two in the Lexus. They were half my age, faster, and stronger, no doubt armed and anxious to prove themselves in a fight even if it wasn’t a fair one.
I looked to my left, expecting to see Quinn, but he wasn’t there. Doors on the car next to Quinn opened and closed, the engine racing as it sped away, Quinn staring at me from the rear passenger seat, a gun pressed against his cheek. The numbers had changed, five against one for me and two against one for Quinn. I didn’t like either of our odds.
Cesar Mendez stepped toward me as one of the other men handed him the keys to the SUV.
“You wanted to talk,” he said. “Let’s talk.”