CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Pride and Procedures
Once the dust had settled, I looked over at Christina. She’d acquired a few abrasions in the melee, as well as a dark spot on her cheekbone certain to turn into a sizable bruise. That had to hurt. I retrieved a Popsicle from the ground and handed it to her, gesturing to her face. The cold would help numb the pain.
She held the still-wrapped frozen treat to her cheek. “Thanks.”
We searched Joe’s truck, which turned out to be a veritable pharmacy on wheels. There was cocaine in the glove compartment, more crystal meth in the toolbox, a dozen prerolled joints tucked inside a folded map under the seat.
I lay on my tummy to search under the freezer. “Holy shit.” Reaching a hand underneath, I pulled out a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. I sat cross-legged on the floor and checked the chamber. Loaded. Whoa. I looked up at Christina.
Her eyes were wide. “Yikes.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yikes.”
“He must’ve panicked and forgot he had the gun.”
“Thank God.” I was a good shot, sure, but my Glock would have been no match for a shotgun at point-blank range.
Once we’d secured the evidence and had Joe’s ice-cream truck towed to the federal impound lot, the two of us headed back to the stakeout house on foot.
We’d need to obtain a search warrant to look through Joe’s apartment, but it couldn’t hurt to get Christina some medical attention before heading to the courthouse. I felt a little guilty that I’d escaped unscathed this time—other than my fingernail, that is.
“Let’s make a quick stop by the doc-in-a-box,” I suggested. “Ajay’ll fix you up.”
We left the dog in the backyard with a bowl of water, piled into Pinky, and headed to the clinic. You might have expected us to be jovial then, celebrating our victory. But everything was still too fresh, the adrenaline not yet gone from our systems. I felt myself begin to shake and glanced over at Christina. She, too, was quivering, as the adrenaline drained from her bloodstream. We drove the entire way to the medical clinic in silence.
Kelsey spied us as we came in the door. “Back again?”
I nodded, hiking a thumb at Christina. “Her turn this time.”
Kelsey pushed away from the counter, rolling back in her chair. “I’ll make a new file.”
Once Christina had completed the same reams of paperwork I’d filled out not so long ago, a nurse led us to an exam room to wait.
A moment later Dr. Maju entered the room. His T-shirt today sported a picture of Bart Simpson with the words
DON’T HAVE A COW, MAN
printed below. When he noticed that the patient sitting on the table was Christina, he bolted across the room. He brushed back her bangs, tilting his head as he eyed her bruise and abrasions. “What the hell happened?” He retrieved his flashlight from his pocket and shone his light in her left eye.
“Stop that.” She pushed his arm away. “That’s annoying. I’m fine.”
Christina told Ajay about the takedown.
Ajay’s face clouded when he learned that Joe had been the one to hurt his woman, his mouth dropping when she told him about the loaded shotgun I’d found under the freezer. Ajay’s eyes narrowed. “That asswipe. I should’ve offed him last Friday night. I could’ve cut him into pieces and had him hauled away with the other biohazards. No one would have been the wiser.”
I filed that tidbit of information away for future reference. It might come in handy someday.
Ajay cleaned Christina’s superficial wounds, applying antibiotic ointment and covering them with small circular Band-Aids, then giving her a kiss on the cheek.
When he finished with Christina, he took a look at my forearm. “The cream seems to be working.”
A slightly raised, uneven line crossed my skin, the surrounding flesh still pink, but it looked much better than it had initially. It was my battle scar. A wound that would serve as a constant reminder of the dangers of my job. But hell, it was nothing compared to the hole Joe’s shotgun could’ve put in me and Christina.
I would never have faced dangers like this if I’d stayed with Martin and McGee. Was that where I belonged? What would I have done if Joe had pulled the shotgun on us? Was I just fooling myself that I had what it took to be a special agent?
Then again, Christina and I had taken Joe down today with little effort, despite his hidden weapon and his attempts to resist arrest. We’d stopped a tax cheat and taken a drug dealer off the streets, saving untold numbers of children from a life of drug addiction. We had a lot to be proud of. This feeling, this sense of accomplishment, duty, purpose, and—why not admit it?—heroism, was precisely why I loved my job.
I’d never felt like a hero at the CPA firm. It simply wasn’t the same. Even though it was an auditor’s job to search for internal-control issues, clients weren’t too happy when you discovered their CFO had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars or that their accounting staff had overstated earnings by a few million or so. Telling a client they’d have to reissue that glowing earnings report to show the company had actually incurred a net loss was awkward, especially when you followed it up with a hefty bill for your services. Yep, Martin and McGee could keep their 401(k) matching, their cushy corner office, their six-figure salary, safety, and security. Tara Holloway was born to be a special agent.
* * *
Once we’d finished at the medical clinic, we made a brief detour by the courthouse. Ross O’Donnell met us there, arguing to get us a search warrant for Joe’s apartment.
One glance at the wounds dotting Christina’s skin and Judge Trumbull granted our request without so much as a question. She might be a bleeding heart, but a bleeding federal agent was something even a liberal judge like Alice Trumbull couldn’t ignore. Besides, once we mentioned the loaded shotgun, her bleeding heart had been stanched.
Joe’s apartment was in a rundown gray stucco complex located a few miles from the crack shack. We parked Pinky next to a graffiti-covered Dumpster and picked our way among cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, and trash to Joe’s building. The water in the pool was green and cloudy, the bottom not even visible through the murk. I hung on to the rickety iron rail as Christina led the way up cracked concrete steps to the third-floor apartment. She fumbled with the key ring we’d confiscated from Joe’s truck, eventually finding a key that fit the lock. She pushed the door open and looked inside. “Wow.”
I stepped up behind her and took a look. Mounted on the wall opposite a cheap metal-frame futon was an enormous state-of-the-art high-definition flat-screen TV, one of the items Joe had foolishly purchased with cash, resulting in the electronics store reporting the sale to the feds. An Xbox game system and a DVR were hooked up to the TV. Off to the left stood a cabinet filled with top-of-the-line stereo equipment, every video game known to man, and a CD rack full of the latest music. Despite the high-dollar electronics, the place was filthy and unkempt, a thick layer of dust coating the equipment, the blue carpet stained, unopened mail littering the Formica breakfast bar. A faint smell of stale beer and cooking grease permeated the air.
I riffled through the mail, confiscating an invoice from Joe’s ice-cream supplier, his bank and credit card statements, and his bills. The supplier could provide us with information detailing how much ice cream Joe had purchased. All we’d have to do was tack on the standard markup and we’d be able to compute his profits and the taxes owed on his ice-cream business. The bank statement would show any cash Joe had run through his account that might not have been accounted for on his tax return. The credit card statement and other bills would enable us to estimate how much money Joe had spent. Any spending in excess of his ice-cream profits would presumably be funded by income from drug sales. Then, of course, we’d adjust for cash on hand. Not an exact method, but the best we could do. And hey, if Joe didn’t like the numbers we came up with, he was welcome to provide reliable financial records to support an adjustment.
In Joe’s bedroom, we found a pricey laptop computer on his unmade bed. When I hit the space bar, the screensaver disappeared, replaced by a photo of a blond woman with enormous breasts lying spread-eagled on a hammock, pleasuring herself with what appeared to be either a zucchini or cucumber. I didn’t look long enough to figure out for sure. “Ew.” I drew my hand back in disgust and slammed the screen closed.
As happy as I was to have helped put an end to Joe’s career in illegal pharmaceuticals, drugs were Christina’s domain. Cold hard cash was what I was after. As an IRS special agent, I served as Uncle Sam’s bill collector. After a thorough search, we found a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills in a Ziploc bag floating in Joe’s toilet tank, a sizable stash of marijuana in his bottom dresser drawer, and a box of tissues and an extra-large jar of Vaseline—lid off and half empty—on his night table. Urk.
Christina sat next to me as I counted out the bills on the kitchen table. “There’s over seventeen grand here.” I dialed the Lobo to give her the good news.
“Good job, girl. I don’t care what those asses up the line say, hiring you was no mistake.”
“Um … thanks?”
* * *
Our next stop was the nail salon. The technician filed my jagged nail and repaired my French tip. For kicks, Christina and I had her paint tiny pink-topped ice-cream cones on our thumbs.
Alicia met us for dinner and celebratory margaritas at a Mexican restaurant in the West End. After dinner, Christina and I bade each other farewell, knowing we’d meet again at Joe’s trial if the guy was stupid enough to plead not guilty. At this point he’d racked up an extensive array of charges. Not only would he face drug, weapon, and tax violations, but he’d also face charges for resisting arrest and assaulting a federal agent. Still, his worst crime was his mullet. They say fashions come back around every twenty years or so. Joe wouldn’t see the light of day until his haircut was in style again. In the meantime, it would give his boyfriends in prison something to run their fingers through.
I ran back by the crack house and picked up the dog. Christina’s apartments didn’t allow pets, so it looked like he was mine now, at least until I could figure out what to do with him. When I finally arrived home, I was exhausted to the core. I’d planned on finishing my tax return, but my body wasn’t in agreement. My muscles ached and I had a major tension headache.
I led the dog through the service door that opened from my garage to my tiny back patio. He immediately made himself at home, jumping onto the padded wicker patio chair and settling in for the night. I filled his bowl with water and gave him a pat on the head. “Good night, boy.”
As I stepped into my town house, Annie ran up and rubbed against my ankles. I picked her up carefully and nuzzled her, her white fur sticking to my lashes, wet with fresh tears I could no longer keep in check. Sheez. I was losing it. The bust had gone well today, for the most part, but if Joe had gone for his shotgun …
I let the cat go, plopped down on my couch, and closed my eyes.
Things could have easily turned out different today. I could’ve ended up with much worse injuries than a chipped fingernail. If Joe had gotten to his gun, Christina and I could’ve lost our lives. I found myself wondering who would have delivered my eulogy.
Eddie.
Maybe talking things through would help. I called Eddie’s home number. Thankfully he was on my speed dial so I only had to manage one key on the cordless phone. I couldn’t see much through the tears I was fighting. When he answered, I gave him the rundown on Joe’s bust.
“A shotgun?” Eddie said when I finished. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
Eddie paused a moment, then exhaled loudly. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Shit.”
There was silence for a moment, a silence that communicated things better left unsaid, fears better left buried. How many times could we expect to cheat death? We were well trained, sure, but there was no denying that sheer luck played a large part in our coming out of these busts alive.
“Look on the bright side,” Eddie said. “With Joe’s bust over, you get to come back to work with me. The Lobo sent me a new case today. I’ve got twenty boxes full of financial records you can help me sort through.”
“Ugh. Now I wish Joe had killed me.” As usual, Eddie had cheered me up in his own warped way.
After we said good-bye, I went upstairs to the bathroom to run a bubble bath. Henry had kicked most of the cat litter out of his box, but I didn’t have the energy to sweep it up just then. I soaked in the lavender-scented water until it went cold. I’d just finished patting myself dry when the phone rang. I wrapped the towel around me and grabbed the receiver in the bedroom.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Brett said, a sexy, teasing tone in his voice. “Some parts of you more than others.”
Despite my wretched state, even I had to laugh at that. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”
“When can I see you again?”
As much as I’d love to experience another dozen or so Brett-induced orgasms, it would have to wait at least a couple more days. Tomorrow night Christina and I were heading to the Adolphus Hotel to get the goods on Michael Gryder and XChange Investments. “I’ll be tied up with work tomorrow night. Why don’t you come over for dinner on Thursday?”
By then, my investigation into Gryder’s scheme would be well under way, and I’d know once and for all whether Brett was a willing player in the scam. If he was involved, I’d ply him with a few glasses of wine, get him naked, then slip my handcuffs on him as he lay there, unsuspecting. And if he wasn’t involved, I’d ply him with a few glasses of wine, get him naked, then slip my handcuffs on him as he lay there, unsuspecting. Either way, only one plan to remember. That kept things simple.
If Brett proved innocent, I’d also come clean with him about what had happened today. About Joe. The drugs. The loaded shotgun. Brett had a right to know, didn’t he? Of course he did.
“Dinner sounds great.” Brett paused for a minute. “You sound tired. Everything okay?” The concern in his voice wrapped around me like a warm blanket, my reservations temporarily set aside.