Chapter 43
By the time Clarence returned from the diner, Nix had been Mirandized and cuffed. El Paso had already been taken away. John had summoned another squad car to come for Nix.
Lear, her former partner, stood in the background, watching with remarkable indifference as Mitch questioned her about Oz’s identity. “Did Malone ever tell you Oz’s real name? Do you know who he is?”
She didn’t speak a word.
When the car arrived, Mitch and John escorted her over to it. Before getting in, she faced the pair of them with defiance. “You’ve got to admit that I was good. You were completely taken in.”
“Until we weren’t,” John said. “We’d suspected you for months, but after Bayou Coeur, we were ninety-nine percent sure. This morning after we found out about Malone, Mitch came up with the idea of pretending to be Oz. You fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Mitch flashed her a grin. “See, we’re good, too. You’ve been completely taken in.”
She frowned. “By what?”
“Our ‘going at each other’ and him accusing me of ‘losing perspective and all reason.’ Our tiff has all been an act.”
She divided a look of disbelief between them. “Since when?”
“We debuted it with my unruly drunk episode. John showed up at the jail last Sunday morning with his steely-eyed glower well in place.” Mitch shivered. “Scared me into thinking it might be for real. But all those arguments we staged, you were taking straight to Malone, and that’s what we wanted.”
“The therapy with Dr. Reede?”
“Essential,” John said. “We’d learned Malone was her patient. Mitch hoped to get Malone’s secrets, hopefully admissions, from her.”
“We set it up to look like I was going off the rails so John would insist on therapy for me,” Mitch said. “Appearing to be on John’s shit list gave me the freedom to operate a little more… How would you put it, John?”
“Unregulated.”
“Unregulated,” Mitch repeated, then stepped back and motioned Nix into the car. “We’ve kept you too long, and you’ve got people at the jail waiting on you.”
As John assisted her into the back seat, she said, “Suppose I could help you. Provide you with information about Oz’s operation. I could name a few names.”
“Can you name his?” Mitch asked.
“No.”
“Gee, that’s too bad.” He closed the car door and thumped the roof of the car.
As it pulled away, he and John looked at each other and began laughing. “We did it, bro,” Mitch said, pulling John into a hug. They slapped each other on the back. “We pulled it off. There were times when even I was convinced it was for real and wanted to club you.”
“You were a total prick,” John said. “Of course, you’re always a prick.”
Mitch pulled back his fist as though to slug John, and that was when he saw Dylan out of the corner of his eye, standing under the pediment above the entrance to the building. She was looking at him with stark disillusionment.
Realizing what she must have overheard, his stomach dropped.
John said something unintelligible and moved away.
Dylan seemed not to notice. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Mitch. “It was all an act?”
“I admitted to you that it was an act.”
“You didn’t admit all of it, Mitch. You didn’t tell me that you and John cooked it up, or that I was an unknowing participant in a… a police operation.”
“No, Dylan. Listen.” He jogged toward her, but she backed away from him.
He stopped where he was, held up both hands, and patted the air.
“All right, all right. Just like I told you, I devised it. Laid it out for John. He and I set it up. The whole shebang, the whole pretense. But you know what part of it became real.”
“What part was that, Mitch?”
“You know what part. I—Oh dammit!” His phone vibrated in his hand. He glanced at it. Tucker. He looked at her imploringly. “I’ve got to get this, but this conversation between us is not over. We are not over.”
The way she folded her arms across her middle indicated otherwise, but he couldn’t miss this call. He clicked on. “I’m here.”
“Greer called me.”
As hard as it was to do while she was looking at him as though ready to kill, he turned his back to her and took several steps away, saying into the phone, “He was supposed to call me.”
“Couldn’t get you, so he called me. Marvin Davis came through. He was an errand boy for Malone, who had him doing chickenshit jobs like delivering packages periodically to a mansion in the Garden District.
“He never saw anybody, just put the envelopes in a lockbox hidden in some bushes. On one such errand, curiosity got the best of him. He peeled back a corner of the envelope, and it was—”
“Cash.”
“No. Better. Reports on intake and outgo of cash and product. The recipient must’ve noticed that the envelope had been tampered with, because days after his meddling, Davis sensed that Malone was watching him.
Like a hawk, he said. Asking questions. Was he happy working for him?
Like that. About that time, Davis was arrested for a mail fraud scheme, money laundering, so on and so on.
“But he told Greer today that he was actually relieved when he was taken into custody. He was afraid that Malone was working up to killing him. He made his deal with the federal prosecutor and has been babysat by marshals ever since.”
“Who’d the mansion belong to?”
“An LLC.”
“But it’s Busby’s.”
“You’re batting a thousand, Mitch. It’s him.”
Mitch exhaled in a gust, looked over at John, and gave him a wide grin and thumbs-up. But it was too early to celebrate any more than that. Busby still wasn’t in custody.
He went back to Tucker on his phone. “After the raid today that cost him plenty, and with his heaviest heavy hanging in a meat locker, and El Paso in the slammer, Busby’s got to be feeling the pressure. We’ve gotta grab him.”
Tucker said, “He’s got a private jet. He shows it in his commercials. I’ve dispatched a couple of agents out there to snoop around.”
Mitch chewed the inside of his cheek, looked at Dylan, who still appeared hurt and furious in equal measure, then looked at John, who was now talking on his phone.
Mitch said, “I can give you some info on Oz’s flight plans, but I want to be invited to the party.”
“Can’t do it, Mitch.”
“I deserve to be there. You know why.”
Tucker sighed. “Fuck it. What have you got?”
Mitch told him what he knew.
“How’d you get that?”
“Tell you later. But we gotta move.”
“On it,” Tucker said and clicked off.
Mitch went back to Dylan and reached for her hands. She didn’t give them up easily, but he clasped them and held on. “It’s him.”
She took a quick breath, and tears came to her eyes. “Congratulations.”
“But we don’t have him. I’ve got to go.”
“I know. Go.”
“I don’t want to leave you, having you think—”
“Mitch!” John rushed up to them, breathing hard. “Beth is having contractions. Dylan will have to stay with Andrew. And you’ve got work to do.”