Dead Red (38 page)

“Some guy I know. Said he was looking for her.”

“What guy?”

“A friend of the cop who was killed.”

Fuck.

“What’s his name?” Jack asked.

“Jimmy something,” Joseph said. “The last name’s Italian or some shit.”

I sat down on the floor next to Joseph. “Greek,” I said. “Kisparidas.” I looked at Jack. “Jimmy Key.”

“Who the fuck’s Jimmy Key?” asked Jack.

“The guy you met with Robby the other day in front of his aunt’s house. Ricky’s friend from Iraq.” I turned back to Joseph. “You weren’t looking for Angela Golden,” I said. “You were looking for the guns Ricky’d stashed. And you found them in the shed.”

Joseph didn’t answer right away. When he got his thoughts together, he said, “I
was
looking for the Spanish girl. I figured what’s-her-name would lead me to Golden’s kid. When the college kid took me back to the shed, I saw the guns and figured if I couldn’t get the girl, least I could get the guns.”

“You’re Tony Blake’s bodyguard.” Jack said. “You moonlighting as a gunrunner, Joseph?”

Joseph shook his head.

“Where are the guns now?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away, so I asked him again, this time with my foot next to his ear. I surprised myself as I realized I was ready to cause this guy a lot of pain.

“In the trunk of my car.”

Jack laughed. “Son of a bitch.” Jack tapped Joseph’s head a few times with his gun. “Tell me, Joey. How’d you get involved in all this?”

Joseph got quiet again. Whatever he had to say was sticking in his throat. “This Jimmy guy,” he finally said. “He was blackmailing me.”

“What the hell for?”

He shook his head and whispered. “Not me. Not exactly.”

“Tony Blake,” I said. “Jimmy was blackmailing your boss.”

Joseph nodded. “Yeah.”

“With what?”

No answer. Jack pressed the gun hard against Joseph’s temple. “The man asked you a question,” he said. “With what?”

Joseph swallowed and got himself up on his elbows. He turned his head to spit once more on the carpet.

“The girl,” he said.

The elevator door opened and out stepped Charles and Angela Golden. Before they could begin to comprehend the scene in front of them, my cell phone rang. We were all oddly frozen for the next few moments, caught in a bizarre tableau: the Goldens taking in Joseph, bloody and beaten on the floor; Jack standing above him, gun poised at his head; me sitting on the floor next to Joseph as my cell phone rang and rang. At the time, it made perfect sense to check my caller ID. Edgar was calling.

“What’s up?” I answered.

“Raymond,” the voice on the other end said. “It’s Marissa.” A long pause as everyone waited, including me, while I made sense of Marissa’s voice coming from Edgar’s phone. “I think I’m in trouble again.”

“What are you talking about? What did the doctors say?”

“I got discharged.”

“You need us to come and get you?”

“Somebody’s already got me.”

“What does that mean? I’m Kinda busy here, Marissa.”

“Hey, Raymond.” It was a guy’s voice now. If the call had come in five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have recognized it. Now I knew exactly who it was. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”

I tried to keep my voice steady and calm. “The girl doesn’t belong to me, Jimmy. What do you want?”

A few seconds passed, then I heard a voice I knew very well.

“Ray,” the voice said. “I’m sorry, man.”

Fucking shit. Jimmy Key had Edgar.

Chapter 32

IF THIS WERE A MOVIE, I WOULD HAVE said something threatening along the lines of “If you even think of hurting him…” after I heard Jimmy take the phone back.

But this was real, and I was scared shitless for Edgar. I wasn’t going to say anything that would bring harm to my friend. Especially since he was only in this position because of me. I got off the floor, switched my cell to speaker so everyone could hear, and said, “What do you want, Jimmy?”

“I want my guns, man,” he said. “That’s
all
I’ve wanted for the past week.”

“Is that why you killed Ricky?”

“He backed out of our deal, Ray. Mr. Marine turned into a real pussy just when I needed him the most.” He took a breath. “I hear that happens when you find out you’re gonna be a daddy.”

I made a mistake, Ray. A big one.

I looked over at Angela Golden’s belly.
No way.
I didn’t care how much Ricky had gone through, no way would he—“Marissa?”

“That’s what she told our boy, man. They’d been together a short time, and Ricky didn’t shoot no blanks.”

That’s
why he was looking for an apartment. He was going to protect
this
family like he couldn’t protect the young Iraqi woman and their unborn child from the bombing. But where the hell was he going to get the money for—the guns. Then he must have had a change of heart and backed out. He was too good a guy to abandon his pregnant girlfriend, but much too good a Marine to get involved with smuggling weapons. No wonder he was all twisted around that night in his cab.

“I can’t give you something I don’t have, Jimmy,” I lied.

“But I’m betting you know where they are, Ray.”

I looked over at Joseph, still on the carpet.
Good bet, Jimmy.

“What if I do?”

He laughed. “Like the man on TV says, Ray. ‘Let’s make a deal.’”

“Just like that? The guns for Edgar and Marissa?”

“Then we’re square,” Jimmy said.

It couldn’t be that easy. I looked at Charles Golden and his daughter, who seemed to have recovered from whatever surprised state they were in when they came off the elevator. I motioned for Golden to take his daughter into the apartment. He was about to argue, but his daughter dragged him down the hallway and out of earshot. For once Charles Golden let someone else take over.

“So you’re just going to trust us?” I asked Jimmy, because I sure as hell didn’t trust him. “What stops us from turning you in once we get Edgar and Marissa?”

He laughed again. “Ask Blake’s boy, Ray. I’ll wait. Keep me on the speaker, though. I wanna hear him tell it.”

Jack reached down and pulled Joseph off the ground.

Jack shoved him hard against the wall. Joseph almost went down again, but Jack held him up. “Speak, asshole.”

“Okay,” Joseph said, shaking off Jack’s hand. “The fuck’s it matter now?” He rolled his neck around, making an audible cracking sound. “The girl?” he said. “Little Miss Golden? Blake’s the father of her kid.”

Now, that shut us up.

“And how do you know this?” Jack asked.

“Ricky told me,” Jimmy’s voice came through the phone. “
Marissa
told
him
. Hell, it was Ricky’s idea to blackmail the kid fucker in the first place. Seems The Magician likes to make his penis disappear into underage girls. That’s how Marissa got to know our future mayor before she aged out.”

“And Angela?” I said.

“Met the man through dear old dad. They had a party out at the house on Long Island last year. Blake talked Angela into showing him the family boat after everyone had gone to bed, and … well, we’ve all seen the movies, boys. Let’s just say they had an ongoing relationship until he knocked her up.”

“Does Golden know?”

Joseph spoke up. “He knew the girl was pregnant. But he had no idea it was Blake, and she wasn’t telling.”

Now it was coming together. Ricky T was blackmailing Golden
and
Blake. Golden, because his underage daughter’s future would be ruined if anyone found out she was pregnant; and Blake, because he was the father. Whatever he was demanding, add his share of the reward money for finding Angela Golden, mix in some profit from smuggling guns, and
Bam!
Ricky T’s got himself a down payment on a two-bedroom condo where he was going to keep his new family safe this time. The best laid plans.…

“Enough schoolgirl gossip, boys,” Jimmy said. “I want my guns. And I’ve waited too damn long. I got some nasty people waiting on my ass for this.”

Poor guy.

“Where are you now?” Jack asked.

Jimmy laughed. “Close enough, Magnum. I’ll tell you where I’m
going
to be,” he said. “How long will it take you to get my stuff?”

Jack and I looked at each other. The real answer was: however long it takes us on the elevator down to the parking garage. But Jimmy Key was not going to get the real answer.

“Less than an hour,” I said.

“Get the guns and call me back in thirty minutes—and I’m not even gonna get into all the do’s and don’ts of this situation, you hear me?”

“We hear you,” I said.

“Good.” He hung up.

I held the phone out for a few more seconds, staring at it as if it were going to provide me with some answers, and then slipped it into my front pocket.

“Now what?” I said.

Jack walked around in a circle, his gun at his side. He closed his eyes while thinking over the news; I kept my eyes on Joseph, who no longer seemed to be a threat. I watched him anyway.

“Okay,” Jack said. “The guns are in the trunk, right?”

Joseph mumbled a “Yes.”

“We know Jimmy’s in the area ’cause he’s got Edgar.” He gave that some thought. “Shit, he musta followed us up to Albany, got the
chica
after we left, and headed back down here less than a half hour behind us.”

“Figuring to use Marissa as a bargaining chip, because she’s pregnant with Ricky’s kid,” I said. “Damn.”

“All right,” Jack said. “Personally, I don’t give a shit about the guns. Our goal here is to get the girl and Edgar back. Agreed?”

I
did
care about the guns getting in the wrong hands someday when I could have prevented it, but not nearly as much as I did about Edgar and Marissa. “Work backward from your goal,” Uncle Ray would say.

“Agreed,” I said, hoping we’d figure out something better soon.

Jack held out his hand to Joseph. “Gimme the keys.”

Joseph looked as if he were about to refuse, but remembered the situation he was in. He reached into his pocket and tossed the keys to Jack.

“What the fuck do we do with him?” Jack asked me.

Sometimes, under pressure, I come up with real good ideas. I hoped this was one of them.

“You still want to protect your boss?” I asked. “Tony Blake, I mean. Not Charles Golden.”

He nodded. “That’s what he’s paying me for.”

“Stay here with the Goldens.” I turned to Jack before he could object. “I know. It’s a shitty option, but it’s the only one we got right now.”

“What if he decides to split on us?” Jack asked.

“Then the word gets out about his boss, and I help Robby identify Joseph as his shooter.” I looked at Joseph. “You down with that?”

He gave me another nod.

“We get the guns to Jimmy Key,” I said. “We exchange them for Edgar and Marissa, and then try to think of a way to get the guns back once they’re safe.”

“Golden’s not going to want this info out there either, Ray.”

“All he knows is his daughter’s pregnant. I hate the idea of Blake getting away with this shit, Jack, but I’d hate it even more if Mrs. Torres were to find out her dead son was into blackmailing and gun smuggling. The papers’ll drag Ricky’s name through the mud. That family has been through enough.”

“How confident are you that you’ll be able to figure out how to get those guns back?” Jack asked.

I shrugged. “One thing at a time, Jack.”

“Okay, Ray.” He didn’t like it. “But as soon as I smell things going south, I’m taking care of things myself.”

“I can live with that.” I turned back to Joseph. “Stay with the Goldens. Take out your phone and call me.” I gave him my number, then he dialed and hung up as soon as my phone buzzed so we had each other’s numbers. “Let’s go, Jack.”

I went to the elevator and pressed the Down button. Jack grabbed Joseph by the elbow before he followed. “I even
think
you’re fucking with us, you’ll be seeing Ricky T real soon.”

Joseph looked into Jack’s eyes and tried to manage a smirk. It came out as a grimace. He pulled his elbow back and walked away. Jack and I stepped into the elevator and headed down.

“We’re handing over guns to the guy who killed Ricky, Ray,” Jack said.

“I know, Jack. But if Ricky were here, he’d tell us to protect his kid, you know that. What choice do we have?”

There was no answer to that, because we both knew the answer was “none.”

*   *   *

We opened the trunk of Joseph’s car, and the guns Robby had photographed and sent us yesterday morning—a lifetime ago—were there: bundled up in the green duffel bag. We did a quick count. All twenty of them—the number Robby had counted—were still there. If what I’d learned from Edgar was correct, we were looking at about forty thousand dollars’ worth of assault pistols.

We closed up the bag and shut the trunk. Jack held out his hand. “Let me drive,” he said. “Make me feel like I’m the boss again.”

I didn’t argue. We were out on the avenue in less than a minute. There was Edgar’s car, parked directly across the street from where all this had started about a week ago when Ricky was killed.

“Call the man,” Jack said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I dialed the number I had for Jimmy, put the phone on speaker, and he picked up after one ring.

“Musta had the guns close, Ray. Smart.”

“Where are we meeting, Jimmy?”

“Right down to business.” I listened to a few seconds of silence. “Get on the BQE and head toward Staten Island.”

“Then what?” Jack said.

“I’ll call back in five minutes,” Jimmy said and hung up.

“He’s fucking playing games, Ray.”

“He’s got Edgar and Marissa, Jack. He can afford to.”

We hit the BQE, and Jack took the exit for Staten Island. Traffic was pretty light at the moment, and we were cruising along at a brisk forty-five. But anyone who’s ever driven this stretch of road will tell you that you never know what the Brooklyn Queens Expressway will throw at you. I hoped Jimmy would call back before we hit any slowdowns.

My phone rang. “Yeah?” he said on speaker.