Immortality Is the Suck (13 page)

much I ached to pick up that shield. “Right,” I said, trying to sound smart-ass

and like I didn't care. “Don't want dead men busting bad guys.”

I laced the watch on carefully. It was about five years old and had a

message engraved on the back. From Peter. I wondered if good old Stan had

read the message.

“You've got some interesting numbers on your speed dial,” said Stan to

me. “I ran a trace on one and had an FBI agent up my ass ten minutes later.”

“There's a lot of cross-pollination these days,” I said calmly, wondering

who the fuck of my “associates” was also working for the FBI. And how much

they knew. “Which number was that?”

“Hmm, I don't recall,” said Stan.

“Four shots fired,” said Peter, neatly changing the subject. He spread out

the crime scene sketch. I saw, uncomfortably, the outline that was supposed to

be my body. “Two hit Armante. One was Stan's in Richie. We found a slug in

the door frame near us. All the slugs were from a .38.”

“Why do you think there was a second shooter?” I asked.

“Richie was carrying a Glock, not a .38.”

“You think it was the guy who punctured me in the throat?” I asked.

Stan shook his head. “We found a door at the back open; there could have

been even more than two.”

“You hear any bikes? Cars? Anyone in the area see any vehicles leaving

the scene?”

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83

“We canvassed the entire block. Hardly anybody's in that part of the

Marina late at night.”

At least, hardly anyone who had legal business there. I'd performed plenty

of “transactions” in those alleys.

“I didn't hear anything,” said Stan.

“So they escaped on foot,” I said.

“Hard to believe,” said Peter. “Stan called dispatch seconds later and it

couldn't have been five minutes before the entire area was enclosed in a

dragnet. The only way out would have been via water.”

“Harbor patrol reported nothing,” said Stan.

I thought of Betsy and Caballo running up that two-story wall. It was a

trick I meant to try soon. “Tell me about this 'sting,'” I said.

“My source in the DEA said Armante had a meet with a pilot that the

Mongols recruited to traffic,” said Stan. He gave Peter a meaningful look from

beneath those impressive eyebrows of his.

Fucking hell. So an ex-Marine pilot, who had kept up his license, and

who, by the way, had just spent two years infiltrating the infamous Mongols

Motorcycle Club, the biggest meth distribution operation in Southern

California, shows up at the meet with the undercover DEA agent. It's a sting

custom-made for yours truly. Except I didn't do it. For once, but no one is

going to believe me. Peter's got a look on his face like he's suffering some deep

internal pain. He must have thought I'd finally blown it. And then, capper, he

gets to watch me die.

“Helluva coincidence Bertoni's CI was killed with the same MO,” Stan

commented, his eyebrow raised and pointed straight at me. Homicide

detectives don't believe in coincidences.

“Obviously a hit,” I said. “Retaliation for the Mongol arrests last month.”

“How do Paolo Spence and Richie Ortiz fit into that theory?”

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A. M. Riley

Good question. “I don't know,” I admitted. “But Freeway was scared

shitless of somebody.”

Stan's gaze focused on me with the steady intensity of a gem cutter on a

raw diamond. “Really?”

I felt Peter shoot me a glance from beneath his lashes.

“We were both keeping a low profile,” I said. “He was too smart to do

anything to bring attention to himself.”

“And yet he wound up dead. Maybe you overestimated his intelligence.”

Stan slid out a file with Freeway's name on it. “We spoke to his mother and she

said—”

“You've
questioned
her? You should have called me first. ” I snatched the

file from Stan's fingers and saw that Freeway's mother had been called in to ID

his body. Damn.

“You hadn't yet told us your death was a ruse,” said Stan.

I could hear my own teeth grinding. “It wasn't a ruse.”

Stan ignored me, turning the pages of the interview report. “She said they

were about to move to a new home. Apparently your CI had recently come into

a lot of cash.”

Goddamn you, Freeway. You were never smart enough to play double

agent.

“We've heard more than our usual share of rumors, lately, about an LAPD

officer involved in the meth trade,” said Stan. “Add to that the fifty thousand

missing last month from the Vice evidence log…”

“That was some kind of clerical screw up,” I said immediately. “And LAPD

conspiracy theories are as regular as the swallows at Capistrano. A new batch

lands every spring.”

“You always have a clever answer, don't you, Bertoni?”

“There's a third party with an interest in both cases,” said Peter, hurriedly.

“Adam and his CI may have just been caught in the crossfire.”

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85

“What third party? And what's their interest?”

Peter tapped his fingers on the table. “Something was being trafficked

besides Armante's meth.”

He meant the blood, of course.

“How do you know that?” asked Stan.

“My CI was moving something when he was killed,” I told him.

“Really? Were you
there
?”

“Later,” I said quickly. “After he was killed.”

“I'd sent Adam to question a man who'd worked with Armante. He took my

Cadillac. Didn't the Boyle Heights men call it in?” Peter looked at Stan and

then away. I had to struggle not to gape at him. Had Peter just
lied
for me?

Stan's eyes narrowed a bit and he glanced from Peter to me and shifted

uncomfortably. He took a breath. Let it out, and obviously decided to set it

aside. Probably it was sidling up too close to the “relationship” issue that he

always sought to avoid. “What kind of drug?”

“We don't know. There's nothing on the street about it yet,” I said.

“So we have a new substance,” Peter said. “Who's usually in at the ground

floor of a new product?”

“The Mexican Mafia,” said Stan. “I'd bet on it.”

“Then you'd bet wrong,” I said. “Freeway would never trust those
cholos
.

Never. He'd only trust another Mongol. Or someone associated with the

Mongols.”

“Then I have to ask you
yet again
,” said Stan, like I was stupid, “what

about Paolo Spence? What about Richie? They were part of the ICE sweep last

year. No OMG connections.”

“Drugs connect them all,” I said. “They were part of the largest meth

distribution ring outside the OMG's. They're rivals for any new business. Drugs

are the connection. This stinks of some kind of territorial battle. The 'M' have

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A. M. Riley

been promising a war for a year. Now a new drug hits the streets and they are

determined to take out the rival OMG's from day one.”

Stan rubbed his lower lip with a callused thumb. “There are signs that

something was stolen from the building where we found your CI's body.”

“The drugs.”

“Maybe. The CS techs are busting a vein analyzing every square inch of

your friend's body. I've asked them to take a look at a workbench in the room

too.”

I thought of myself, backing up into that bench when I'd discovered the

blood and didn't look at Peter, who, rather pointedly, avoided looking at me as

well. I found myself holding my breath, waiting to see if he'd say anything.

“We could hypothesize all night. Adam's the one in the pit. He's the one

who can get us the answers we need,” he said. I could have kissed him.

“So if you could get the DEA to at least confirm our suspicions, Stan?”

Peter turned the page to the agent's bio. Starz, a.k.a Sergio Armante. Twice

decorated, father of three. Damn, I think, reading his bio over Peter's shoulder.

Why him and not me?

Peter sighed. “We've been following this trail of bodies for months, Adam.

La Eme has claimed a lot of cold-blooded murders. You heard about the boy

shot down on Commerce Street? We had a tip that the same man offed Paolo

Spence.”

“I knew Paolo,” I said. “He got out just before ICE busted Viktor.” Viktor

had been the leader of a huge meth distribution and weapons smuggling ring

part of the Mexican Mafia. His nickname was El Diablo. You guess why. “But I

thought the Mexican government got him in a sweep last month.”

“So did we. Then his body falls out of a car trunk in the impound lot in

San Diego. Dead of exsanguination via two puncture wounds in his neck. So,

we figure this guy is the one we want for the kid's death and maybe a couple

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87

others. We think we've got a line on the M's through him and then we got a tip

that he was holing up in that warehouse.”

“Who phoned in the tip?”

Neither of them answered me. I felt more than saw the quick exchange

between them.

“Our source is UA,” said Stan. “I…went by his place and it looks like he's

been gone for a few days.”

“Fifty bucks says he shows up exsanguinated with puncture wounds,” I

said. “What a clusterfuck this is. Why didn't you call in Vice before now?”

I saw a muscle clench in Peter's jaw.

“We still haven't called in Vice,” said Stan. “You aren't working this case.

You are a person of interest.”

“
What
?”

Peter stood up. “Another round?” he asked us both.

While Peter was in the kitchen, Stan gave me one of his fierce looks. “I

know you're in this up to your chin, Bertoni,” he said.

“You watch too many old movies, Stan,” I told him. Peter came back in the

room and plunked a bottle of Miller down in front of me and poured more coffee

into Stan's cup.

“Thanks for bringing the files,” said Peter.

“Sure. We had FBI come in an hour ago,” said Stan to Peter. “A couple

numbers on Leonard Chavez's phone are persons of interest to them too.”

“Freeway's phone?” Damn, I wish I'd lifted it before CSI had gotten there.

“What did you tell him?”

“As little as possible.”

Now, I should explain here that neither Stan nor Peter is being a bad cop

or a bad American. It's just the FBI can be kind of self-centered about things.

As in, they'd rather bust a terrorist than solve a homicide. Go figure. They're

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A. M. Riley

not big into sharing information with homicide detectives. And homicide

detectives aren't big into giving out hard-won info without getting something in

return.

I mulled over my decision for a minute, but in the end I knew I had to

hand over Caballo's cell phone.

Stan looked down at the thing like it might give him a disease. “What is

that?”

“Dude dropped it when I was questioning him about Freeway,” I said.

Stan's lip twisted. “Your prints are all over it, aren't they?”

“At the time, I really couldn't stop and put on gloves, man. I'll bet the

numbers are interesting.”

Stan drew a pair of gloves out of his pocket. Of course he carried them

everywhere with him. The man was a fucking Eagle Scout. He opened the

phone and pressed the contacts list. The only name there was “Ozone.”

Stan pressed the speed dial. The phone rang and on the fourth ring we

had a message from AT&T telling us that that cell phone customer was no

longer in service.

“I've never heard the name 'Ozone' before,” said Peter.

Stan had been a homicide detective since the silent film era. He fixed me

with a suspicious glare. “You knew an Ozone, didn't you, Adam?”

I answered Stan, because I'd never been able to lie to Peter with any

success. “Name is new to me too.”

Stan's expressionless gaze held mine. He pocketed the cell phone. “I'll

have the service give us a complete list of calls.”

Peter looked bored. “All prepaid toss aways, odds are.”

I picked up my beer bottle and poked at the edge of the label with my

thumbnail. “I'd like to talk to your DEA connection,” I said. “He and I can

cross-reference a little, maybe find parallels.”

“His identity is privileged,” said Stan.

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89

“Don't blame me if we're tripping over each other, then,” I said.

“You won't be tripping over anything but your own feet, Bertoni,” said

Stan. “Because you're not on this case. Not this one, or any other, for that

matter.” He turned to Peter. “I'll leave these copies of the files.” He rose and

lifted his suit jacket from the back of the chair where he'd hung it. “Do me a

favor and take his statement. I'll contact our gang task force in the morning,”