Chapter 21
21
12:11 p.m. Saturday, November 2
N ick navigated his way around the cops still littering his front yard in search of Riley. Other than a few bleeding scrapes from broken glass that still stung, he’d survived the shootout remarkably unscathed.
A wrecker added its flashing lights to the chaos, squeezing into the driveway between cruisers and SUVs. Radios squawked. Neighbors gawked along the property line, probably gossiping about how they always knew there was something funny about the couple that lived in that house. Cars on Front Street eased by to rubberneck.
He spotted Sergeant Mabel Jones muscling one of the shooters into the back seat of an SUV with a hand on top of his shaved head. There was something nagging him, and he hoped to hell he was wrong about it.
“They say anything yet?” Nick asked when she shut the door.
“Not a word. They just keep doing this creepy, smug smiling thing that makes me want to punch them,” she said.
Night Prowler was indeed smirking through the rear window at Nick.
Nick held up a closed fist and made a cranking motion, with his other hand raising his middle finger at the man. The smirk turned to a glare.
“Very mature, Santiago,” Mabel said.
Nick turned his back on the SUV. “Weber and I didn’t find any IDs on them, but it shouldn’t be hard to track them through the rental car.” He nodded toward the crushed, bullet-ridden Fiat.
“These two goons fit in that little Matchbox car?”
“Barely.”
“Any idea why they were after Gentry?” she asked, jerking her chin to where a blanket-wearing Griffin was being examined by an EMT.
“I got grass stains on my pants. I need them dry-cleaned immediately,” Griffin whined.
Nick rolled his eyes. “I can give you a thousand reasons why someone would want that miniature moron dead.” Though there was only one reason he could think of that two idiots with no identities and guns with no serial numbers would go after Gentry. “I’d appreciate it if you kept me in the loop on this one,” he said to Mabel.
“You know I can’t do that, Santiago.”
“Think of it as professional courtesy.”
“You’re not a cop anymore,” she pointed out.
“No, but apparently I’m still protecting and serving. Besides, technically I’m a victim in this case.”
She gave a rueful shake of her head. “Yeah, you look like a victim.”
He grinned. “Appreciate it, Jonesy. I gotta go check in with my girl.”
He was just working his way around Gentry’s stupid smashed-up car when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Mom.
He sighed and answered the call. “Hello, Mother.”
“Why am I hearing from your aunt Nancy that there was some sort of gunfight at your house ?” his mother demanded.
“Because Aunt Nancy has a gigantic mouth?”
“Nicholas.” Dr. Marie Santiago had a way of packing a whole shitload of condescension into one word.
He dodged around two uniformed officers who looked like they were working on a pair of migraines while trying to question Lily and Fred. “Everything is fine. No one was hurt.”
“This is all because of that girlfriend of yours, isn’t it? Mark my words, trouble follows her. Why can’t you date a nice normal girl? I know a single pharmacist named Felicity on the research committee at work. She makes six figures a year and plays the harp.”
“Riley is nice, I don’t want normal, and I hate harps, Ma. The sooner you get it through your snobby thick head, the better.”
“I am not a snob just because your father and I want you to date a respectable woman with an actual profession.”
“Oh really? What does it make you?”
“A mother.”
He finally spotted Riley running interference between a fiery Jasmine and a pissed-off Weber near the front porch. Relief coursed through him.
“Yeah, well, get used to Riley, Ma. If I have my way, she’s going to be sticking around for a long, long time.”
“If you’d just let me introduce you to Felicity?—”
“Goodbye, Ma.”
Nick disconnected and made his way over to his girlfriend.
“You have a stick shoved so far up your ass?—”
“Hey, Jasmine,” Nick said, interrupting her insult.
“Oh, hi, Nick. You doing okay? No stray bullets take a bite out of you?”
“All good,” he promised.
“You didn’t ask if I was okay,” Weber pointed out like a petulant child.
Jasmine narrowed deadly brown eyes on him. “That’s because I don’t care if you’re alive or not.”
“Really? Because kissing me on my mother’s doorstep seems like caring.”
“They’ve been at this off and on for almost thirty minutes. I think it’s their love language,” Riley reported to Nick.
“Love language?” Jasmine and Weber scoffed in unison.
“I need you for a second,” Nick said, taking Riley by the hand.
“Have you guys ever heard of enemies to lovers?” Riley asked Jasmine and Weber as he dragged her away.
“I wouldn’t sleep with him if he needed an orgasm to live,” Jasmine said, pretending to dry heave.
“I don’t even find you attractive,” Weber shot back.
Jasmine’s gasp followed them as Nick led Riley into another overgrown flower bed next to the police cruiser with Lizard Boots in the back seat.
“Why do you look like you want to punch someone?” Riley asked.
“Because it’s not freaking over.”
“What do you mean it’s not over?” she demanded. “The guys with guns are in custody. They were clearly trying to kill Griffin.” She gestured at Lizard Boots through the window.
The arrestee winked at her and puckered his lips.
“Barf,” she said.
“Stop flirting with my girl, asshole,” Nick snarled, slapping the window.
“Okay, let’s go waaay over here and talk.” Riley dragged him toward the relative quiet of the garage. She pulled him inside and stabbed the button to close the garage door. “Why is this not over?”
“Because those two dumbasses are pros…ish,” he amended. “Stupid, bad-at-their-job pros. They’re hired guns. Which means someone did the hiring. Someone who didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Someone?—”
“Who’s still out there,” she said with a groan.
“Exactly.”
“Damn it. What do we do?”
“We figure out who’s at the top, take them down, and force Griffin to cough up the cash…after we raise our rates of course.”
“Of course,” she said with a teasing eye roll.
“We’ll get started as soon as I get back,” Nick said as the SUV hauling Lizard Boots pulled onto Front Street.
“Where are you going?” Riley asked.
Nick strolled into the Harrisburg PD’s bullpen like he belonged there. He had once, back in his young idealistic days.
The smell was the same, old coffee and industrial tile cleaner. The desks were the same battered commercial furniture some chief had squeezed out of the budget in the eighties. However, with a few exceptions, most of the faces were different. It was either a sign that he was getting older as this chapter of his past got more distant in the rearview mirror…or it was that cop work sucked and burnout was inevitable.
He was leaning toward the latter, but to be fair, working in the private sector hadn’t been a walk in the park recently thanks to Griffin Fucking Gentry.
Nick’s stomach grumbled, reminding him that he’d missed lunch, so he veered off in the direction of the break room. There were two rookies in uniform sitting at the same shitty table with wobbly legs he’d eaten at. They were arguing about who ran a faster mile pace at the police academy.
Nick strolled to the refrigerator and opened it. There on the top shelf, all the way to the left where it had always been, was an old black lunch bag with Weber stitched across the top.
“How’s it going?” he asked the rookies as he rummaged through the bag.
“Who are you?” the one on the left asked.
The other one kicked the first under the table. “That’s Nick Santiago, dummy.”
“Oh. Shit.”
Nick was pleased to note his reputation was still part of departmental lore.
He pulled out the Lebanon bologna sandwich inside, took a big bite, and frowned. Weber never used enough mayonnaise. Something about his lame-ass arteries. Nick took two more bites just to make sure he’d ruin Weber’s day before shoving the remains of the sandwich back in the bag.
“Have a good one,” he said, tossing a salute at the rookies on his way out the door.
“Did he just eat Weber’s lunch?”
“Shit. Let’s get out of here before we get blamed for it.”
Nick’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a call from his cousin.
“What’s up, Bri?”
“Man, people really need to secure their home security components better. I got the footage from Larstein’s cameras. Our two friends from today were the ones who jumped the fence in gardener getup and broke Larstein’s unlucky neck,” Brian said.
“Nice work. Where’s Gentry?” Nick asked.
“He and Gabe are in Gentry’s house. He was whining about wanting new pants, so I figured I’d swing by the neighbor’s and poke around his network while he changed.”
“I really hate that guy,” Nick muttered.
Brian took a slurp of something on his end. “You and me both, coz. Get this. Mrs. Penny upped the fee to thirty grand. Still don’t see how she’s going to make him cough it up, but she said something along the lines of ‘Mind your business and get me a pizza.’”
“He’ll pay if I have to rip out his pancreas and sell it on the street corner,” Nick said, nodding to the cop holding the coffeepot.
“That’s the spirit.”
A crowd had gathered in the hallway outside the interrogation rooms. “I gotta go. Let me know if anyone finds anything.”
“Will do. Try not to get arrested.”
“I’ll do my best,” Nick promised and headed into the clump of cops. “What have we got, boys and girls?”
There was a collective groan as well as a few grins of recognition. “Who let you in here, Santiago?” asked a grizzled robbery detective Nick remembered for his devotion to his grandchildren and his extended bouts of heartburn.
“What? Can’t a guy say hi to his old coworkers?”
“Not when that guy is you,” Mabel said pointedly.
“Come on. We can help each other out. You scratch my back, I send you all pizza for lunch tomorrow,” Nick cajoled.
“What kind of pizza?” the hefty desk sergeant demanded.
“Niko’s. Just tell me if Weber cracked either one of them yet.”
“Damn it. I love their primavera pizza,” a uniform muttered.
“Come on, guys. These assholes tried to shoot up my house with my girl in it,” Nick pressed.
“Neither one of those burly fuckers has said a damn word yet,” the detective said. “And I want a whole grandma pizza to myself.”
“Done,” Nick agreed.
The debate about who was getting what pizza raged until the interrogation room door opened and the captain and Weber stepped into the hall. Cops scattered like chickens.
“Let me guess. You got big fat nothing out of them,” Nick predicted.
Weber stuck his finger in his ear. “This investigation is none of your business, Nicky,” he said in a near shout.
The captain rolled his eyes ceilingward as if praying for patience. “Both of you shut up before I lock you in a cell. I don’t care who did what.” He pointed at Weber. “You, find out who these assholes are. And you, Santiello, get out of my precinct.”
One of the captain’s more endearing traits was that he liked to call people by the wrong names to keep them from feeling important in his presence.
“Come on, Captain. I was just offering my expertise?—”
Nick’s bullshitting was interrupted by the throat clearing of a tall bald man in tortoiseshell glasses and a tailored suit that screamed, I make $900 an hour . “I’m Bradford Carpendale, attorney at law. Can any of you gentlemen point me in the direction of my clients?” he asked in that polite way that felt like a disguise for a haughty fuck you.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” the captain said.
Nick and Weber shared a dark look. This wasn’t good.
“I believe they were arrested about two hours ago after accidentally trespassing on private property and getting shot at by the homeowner. I need to confer with them immediately,” the attorney said, opening a leather-bound folio and showing the contents to the captain.
Nick remembered how the captain’s jaw always did that tightening thing when he was pissed and wondered if the man’s dentist had ever commented on the state of his molars.
“Detective Weber, please show Mr. Crapathon to his clients,” the captain said.
“It’s Carpendale,” the lawyer said.
“I don’t care,” the captain said before walking away.
Weber jerked his head at Nick, which meant stay here and don’t fucking talk to anybody. Nick took it as an invitation to camp out at Weber’s desk and snoop through case files until a couple of rookies swung by and asked him about some of his more colorful exploits while with the department.
“I heard that you jumped off a three-story building into a dumpster to beat a perp on the fire escape to the ground.”
“That’s how I got this scar,” Nick said, pointing to his neck, where there was no scar because it had been the roof of a ranch house and he’d tackled the suspect on a half-inflated bounce house.
“Are you telling them about the time you got stuck in the elevator of a suspect’s building and cried until the fire marshal carried you out like a baby?” Weber asked, elbowing his way through the crowd that had gathered.
The rookies dispersed.
“I’ll have you know lots of people don’t like small enclosed spaces,” Nick pointed out.
“Chief Jennifer told that story at her retirement,” Weber said.
Nick sighed at the memory. “I never felt safer than I did nestled between her bulging biceps.” He took his feet off Weber’s desk. “What’s Million Dollar Suit Baby doing here? Did the perps make a call?”
Weber shot a dark look in the direction of interrogation. “They did not.”
“Maybe their lawyer’s psychic?”
“A psychic who got on a private plane in Dulles and arrived at Harrisburg International Airport half an hour ago.”
“Who’s the plane belong to?” Nick asked.
“A holding company based in Grand Cayman.”
“That’s helpful,” Nick said dryly.
“It gets better. The lawyer came armed with extradition papers,” Weber said.
“Seriously?”
“It seems our gun-toting, compact-car-loving friends are getting a free ride back to Colombia, where they’re wanted for murder and extortion.”
“Columbia, Maryland?” Nick asked hopefully.
“Colombia, South America. Do you want me to draw you a map?”
“I’ve played Pictionary with you before. Your South America would look like a three-legged horse wearing a bucket on its head.”
Weber ignored the justifiable jab at his artistic skills. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That I was right and they’re hired guns who work for someone with private plane money.”
“Someone with private plane money who wants Griffin Gentry dead,” Weber said.
They stared at each other stonily for a few long seconds. Weber gave a subtle nod at the two detectives who were obviously eavesdropping. Nick lifted his chin in acknowledgment.
“I guess we’ll see who bags the bad guy first,” Weber snapped loudly.
“Yeah. I guess we will,” Nick shot back. “Spoiler alert. It won’t be you.”
“Get the hell out of my chair, Nicky.”
“Gladly. Oh, and enjoy your lunch,” Nick said, getting up and heading for the exit.
“What did you do to my sandwich?” Weber demanded.
Nick answered with a middle finger over his shoulder. He was still smirking when his phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a call from Riley.
“What’s up, beautiful? Miss me already?”
“Hi. We, uh, have a small problem. Actually two problems, and I can only handle one at a time.”