Murder and Mayhem (28 page)

“This is crazy. You’ve got practically all of Los Angeles on this list.” He took a sip of the coffee, peeling his lips back from his teeth at its bitter strength. “Fuck, what is this? Battery acid? I thought cops not being able to make coffee was a myth.”

“Do I need to put more sugar into it for you, Your Highness?” Dante smirked at Rook’s upraised middle finger. “You said black.”

“I said blech when you asked if I liked it black,” he muttered, handing the cup back to his lover. “See if you can strain out the copper wire you put into it while you’re adding some of that sugar.”

“I could just kiss you and sweeten that damned mouth of yours.” Dante hoisted himself off the couch to head back toward the kitchen area. “Could be the coffeemaker. You’ve got about twelve of the damned things in here. What are you doing? Opening up a Starbucks?”

“People kept giving them to me. Like housewarming presents. That and towels.” Rook shook his head. “It’s like fucking suburbia threw up in my bathroom closet.”

“Did you call Archie?” Dante called out from the counter. “I had a couple of follow-up questions to ask him if he’s up to it.”

“Yeah, he said his pet goon was doing well too.” He frowned, trying to recall if he was remembering the right Brian Johnson from the list. “You know, I was kind of weirded out by something he said yesterday. About when the guy who shot the car up opened the door. He said something about me not being in the car with Archie. Why would he think I was there?”

“Might have been behind the hedge. Think about the front of the hotel and that block-long evergreen stand they’ve got going there.” Dante returned with Rook’s coffee, placing it carefully on the table. “Could have also thought the driver was you.”

“Stanley’s like eight and a half feet tall. We don’t even look alike,” he pointed out. “Makes me wonder if maybe the guy didn’t see Stanley bring Archie’s car from the parking structure. Like maybe he was dropped off?”

“Hotel’s got cameras. We’ve got things lined up to look at the videos. I’ll ask the lab to make sure they look at the street-facing ones first. Could be worth something.” Dante tapped at the paper in Rook’s hand. “More importantly, I need you to focus.”

“What exactly am I focusing on? Someone I know who’s hooked in with Madge?” He ruffled the sheet beneath Dante’s nose. “I keep telling you, I don’t know Madge. Shit, other than Pigeon, I don’t even really know a lot of people copping to those kinds of cons. It’s a crappy thing to do to people.”

“And stealing stuff is okay?” Dante’s eyebrows lifted, and Rook snorted at the judging look on his lover’s face.

“Better than jacking them over personally. Lifting things… they’re just things. What the Betties do is fuck with your life. Hell, Dani was good for that too. Or she used to be.” He shrugged. “Problem with those kinds of cons is that people fall in love… and then you’re fucking them over. With me, it was just business. They had. I wanted. Simple as that.”

“Who’d someone like Madge go to if she wanted to switch what she did? Because that’s kind of what she’s doing now.”

“If it’s Madge,” Rook murmured. “I don’t know. You said she was stripping the place with the other Betties, but they’re dead. So maybe she was done with them and didn’t want to split whatever they thought they’d get three… four ways? But she’d need someone to crack open the locks.”

“Which you’ve changed,” Dante replied. “Suppose she’s not interested in lock picking. The shooting yesterday tells me she’s lost patience with the whole thing. She’s moved straight into killing. Her partners. And probably you if she can do it.”

“That’s nuts.” The thought of someone he didn’t really know trying to kill him seemed outrageous. Especially for a score they didn’t even know for certain would be there. “Why would she kill them? Jane, that one I get. Ex-partner who’s going to the cops right before Madge gets her big hit. Not something I’d do, but I understand it. The others don’t fit unless they got impatient, and she was done with their shit. But she’d still need another partner. Someone she really trusts.”

“Why do you think that?” Dante looped his arm over the back of the couch. “We’ve got Pigeon saying Madge and Dani were talking about a job they could retire on. Maybe Madge is losing her cool, taking everyone around her out so she won’t have to share the profits.”

“Madge’s in long cons. You don’t pull those kind of tricks unless you can wait shit out, and usually there’s someone to help you out of jams.” Pulling his legs up, Rook stared off at the wall across from him. “
Someone’s
getting itchy. Maybe it is Madge. We’re looking at this wrong. I’ve got to think about this like if I were running the job.”

“Okay, what would you do, then?” Pursing his lips, Dante looked across the room. “Besides stare at a bunch of bricks.”

“Shut up. It helps me think,” Rook muttered, slapping at Dante’s fingers as they wandered over his thigh. “
If
I were going to run a job up against a thief, I’d want to make sure they were holding, had something really good stashed. But if I didn’t know where it was exactly, I’d need help getting the mark out so I could look.”

“Problem is, you say you don’t.” Dante grinned when Rook glared at him. “Hey, you lie. I accept that about you. I’m just saying that if you
do
have something you’d want to confess to, it can’t be to me.”

“I’ve stolen things. Let’s just leave it at that.” There were secrets he had. Deep and long secrets he knew he couldn’t share with the man sitting next to him. The trust in Dante’s eyes
hurt
, and not for the first time since he’d tumbled in with the cop, Rook wondered if Dante would stick around long enough for him to finally shed the last of his old life.

“Get back to this alleged second person. The now impatient one. Why would they want to hurry things along?” Speculation flitted over Dante’s face. “Because they can’t find this mythical big score, and you’re in the way, but they don’t know for how long.”

“How the fuck do you get that from all of this?”

“You said it yourself. When you were standing over there talking to Charlene, you told her you weren’t going to run anymore. That you were going to fight for the life you’d made. Suppose they don’t believe you. Suppose they know how you operated in the past and are scared you’re about to run. If you did, you wouldn’t leave this big score behind. You’d take it with you.”

“Solid reasoning. Mostly,” Rook muttered. He let Dante’s hand skim over his thigh, then wrapped his fingers through Dante’s, playing with a gold ring his lover had on his pinky finger. “What the hell am I missing? Shooter? That’s easy. Cheap, and they do what they’re told. But where the hell would she get the idea I’ve got something for her to steal?”

A week ago, he’d have thought he was crazy for wanting a cop—this cop—touching him. It wasn’t so long ago when his world was so black and white, he couldn’t see anything other than pain and sorrow where people were concerned, and now, in his own home, he was holding hands with the one man who’d sworn to take him down.

“Shit, Montoya. It’s you. It’s not me running that they’re scared of.” Rook’s heart stalled, twisting at the thought of what he’d brought down on himself by allowing Dante in. “
You’re
what’s different. It’s because I’m with you. They—Madge and whoever else—they know I’m with you. I bet you that’s it. They’re scared I’m going to dump whatever it is they think I have and go full legit. Well, not like I’m not now.”

“You keep saying that.” Dante patted his knee. “But do they believe it? You said it yourself, you’re not in the game anymore. You don’t know what’s going on. You’ve broken from that life.”

“I like that you didn’t say allegedly there. Makes my heart go all soft and warm.” Rook snorted.

“Even Pigeon didn’t have much. I heard firsthand how information dries up once it looks like you’re no longer on that side of the line. Hell, we need you to give me one name at least… someone Madge might run with just so we can find her, and you don’t know anyone.”

“No, but I know people who might. Out but still kind of in touch. Might know something at least. Why the hell didn’t I think of this before.” Rook skimmed the list, looking for names he’d crossed off nearly as soon as he read them. “Here, JoJa. That’s who’d know something about Madge.”

Confused, Dante took the paper from Rook, crinkling it between his fingers. “Who the hell is JoJa? He? She?”

“They.” Rook grinned at his lover. “You want information, they’ll have it. But it’ll cost you. Or more importantly, it’ll cost me. Let me take a shower, and we can head down there.”

“You’re sure as hell not coming with me,” Dante protested, snagging Rook’s belt loop before he launched off the couch.

“They’re not going to talk to you. You’re a cop.” He worked himself loose from his lover’s grasp. “What they want to be paid in, you don’t got, ’Toya. You need me in this. And ’sides, the fucking bitch tried to kill my grandfather. I owe her for that.”

“This is a bad idea,” Dante said again. “I just want you to know that. You shouldn’t be out here. Docs haven’t cleared you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hank replied loudly. “I heard you the first twenty times you said it. I’m not that deaf. Besides, you needed backup to do this. You think I’m going to let you walk into… whatever this is… by yourself, you’re fucking crazy, Montoya.”

On a rainy late afternoon, West Hollywood became a landscape of bokeh and sharp lines. With its quilt-patterned streets and patchwork architecture, the neighborhood spooled out from under Los Angeles’s hills, clutching tightly to Santa Monica Boulevard as it stretched its way out to the coast. Organic food chains battled to edge in beside entrenched tiny businesses, slyly packaging their expansive presence to fit into the area’s eclectic blend of brash hues and Old World styling.

Dante drove past a corner café, marveling at the fire-eater performing near its entrance in defiance of the rain spitting down on the slow-moving sidewalk traffic. A few feet away, a woman waited at the crosswalk for the light to change, holding back a pack of dogs on rainbow leashes as she chatted to a tall black man in red platform boots. One of her dogs, a small wire-haired terrier, bounced about, its tiny body clearing the shoulder of a placid-faced mastiff standing patiently next to it.

“Gay neighborhood, right?” Hank’s eyes followed the man in heels as he crossed the street.

“Little bit. Yes.” Dante eyed his partner. “Why?”

“My wife’s kid brother is coming to live with us. Kid’s fourteen and came out last weekend in full glitter, glory, and rainbows. Her parents aren’t… well, I think it’s going to come down to him or them.” He shrugged off Dante’s frown. “It’s a nonissue. We’ve already chosen him. Fuck them.”

“Every day, you surprise me, Camden.” He shouldn’t have been shocked. Hank, for all his bluster, was solid, a good man to have at his back. After Vince, Hank was a damned good partner and someone Dante’d finally been willing to trust.

“Hey, I like the kid. A hell of a lot more than I like her parents. Just wondering if we shouldn’t see if he can go to school around here, maybe. Not far from our house. As the crow flies.” His partner scowled slightly. “What I don’t like seeing is all the bars. How many fucking bars do you all need?”

“And again, just as I begin to respect you, you go and tear down the pedestal I was building. You all?” Traffic picked up, clogging the broad street. “You don’t go to bars?”

“I’m married, remember?” He flashed the ring on his finger. “I haven’t seen a bar since this thing came on. And I don’t intend to have a long walk to a volcano to get rid of it. Hey, turn right. That’s our street coming up. Let’s hope your boy hasn’t steered us wrong.”

“He wants this over with as much as anyone else.” Dante eased the unmarked onto a side street. “Cocky when it was just him. I think them coming after his grandfather shook him up. There it is. JoJa’s Curiosities. Just need to find a place to park.”

It’d been a battle with Rook. One common sense appeared to have won, but Dante wasn’t certain. They’d gone at it, angling around each other until the air was hot enough to scald milk, and still Rook hadn’t been willing to give in. At wit’s end, Dante played the one card he knew Rook couldn’t fight—a few handcuffs and the bed’s metal frame.

“How long do you think it took him to get out of those?” Hank leaned over the front seat to retrieve the brown-paper-wrapped flat Rook’d set aside before Dante manacled him to the bed they’d shared.

“Probably five minutes. If that. I also zip tied the door from the outside.” He shrugged at Hank’s mocking, outraged gasp. “I told him I called his assistant to let him out. Charlene said she’d be there within the hour. And he’d already called JoJa’s to tell them I was coming. He might be pissed off at me, but Rook won’t jack this up.”

“What do you give another guy after you’ve fucked him over?” Hank unfolded himself from the car, hefting the large package under his arm. “Me? I know flowers and chocolates are good. If it’s really bad, then it’s a really big gift card from a shoe place in the mall. Never jewelry. Apparently that means I’ve cheated on her, and she’ll carve off my dick when I’m asleep.”

“And you stay married to this woman?” Dante chuckled.

“Laugh now, Montoya. After what you pulled today, I’d be wearing metal boxers if I were you.” Hank scanned the busy street. “What is this place? Some kind of pawn shop?”

“Collectibles. Froufrou. Rook said they deal with specialty items.” Dante began to cross, hopping quickly onto the median. “Two owners, JoJo and Janet. Apparently they were fences at one time.”

“And let me guess. Now they’ve gone clean like your lover and the woman with the cat.” Hank snorted. “I’m calling bullshit. How many people go clean after years of ripping people off?”

“Four so far. I’m not holding my breath they’re all legit,” Dante replied, shielding his face from the spray kicked up by a passing delivery truck. “Come on. I don’t want get whatever that is wet. Rook said it’s a pay to play deal with these two. And from what I understand, you’re holding about seven grand under your arm that he’s coughing up as a bribe, so don’t drop it.”