In Shadows (2 page)

AKE
C
ROWLEY SQUINTED THROUGH THE RAIN
rattling against his parked sedan. Storm-tossed Galveston Bay was little more than a roiling, brown illusion through the sheeting windshield, and the late-afternoon sky barely contained enough light to allow him to read the letter in his hands.

Uncle Albert was murdered, Jake, and we need to talk. I don’t know if you’re ever going to answer my calls, but won’t you come home to at least pay your respects? I love you, Jake. I miss you.

He folded the crumpled letter, slipped it carefully back into the envelope, and returned it to the glove box.

Jake sighed. He’d driven all the way from Houston through the downpour to meet a man who refused to show his face anywhere near the city, and Jake could understand why. If Reever gave up the information Jake needed, two of the biggest crime lords in Houston might be making license plates for years to come. If, that was, they could be prosecuted
successfully through the corrupt and politicized legal system that had taken hold in recent years.

Distant tympanies of thunder rattled the air, and now Jake could barely make out the rolling gray surf through the curtain of glassy droplets. His cell phone buzzed, and he snapped it open, expecting to hear Cramer, his partner, who was home sick with the flu. He’d bust Jake’s chops for being stupid enough to hold a meeting like this alone.

“Yeah,” said Jake.

“‘Yeah’? You don’t speak to me three times in fourteen years, and ‘yeah’ is what I get?”

“Pam?” His cousin’s voice filled him with dread and pain. In his mind’s eye, she still stood waving at him from the airport window, but incongruously it was his mother’s voice—from an even more distant past—that echoed through his thoughts.

Run away, Jake. Run away.

“Glad you remembered,” said Pam.

“Look, I don’t have time right now. How did you get this number?”

“A desk sergeant gave it to me. I guess I was pretty persuasive. How come it doesn’t work on you?”

Jake shook his head. “Honestly, Pam, this is a really bad time.”

The wind picked up, the storm roaring in straight off the water. Marble-size raindrops threatened to burst through the windshield. Why the hell had Reever insisted on meeting here in this seawall parking lot? Jake didn’t like it that the place he’d supposed would be very
public
ended up being all too secluded because of the storm. But even Reever couldn’t have known the weather was going to be this bad.

“Jake, Uncle Albert was beaten to death. It was bad. Real bad.”

A muscle spasmed in Jake’s belly, and his fingers tightened on the phone. Albert was another old, long-buried memory.

“Jake? You there?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded shaky. Hell,
it felt
shaky.

The only thing visible now was the veneer of water cascading across the glass, and Jake found himself wondering how so much fluid could be diverted down into that little cavity concealing the windshield wipers without making its way into the engine compartment.

“Jake, you’re not saying anything.”

“What do you want me to say, Pam?”

“Nothing, I guess. I’m sorry I called.”

“I’ll call you back. I’m meeting someone, and it’s kind of important.”

He glanced around and noticed that the windows were just as useless as the windshield. It occurred to him that if this was more than just a rainstorm—if a tornado or water spout were heading in his direction—he would have no way of knowing it was coming, and nowhere to run.

“Sure, Jake. I’ll be waiting for your call.” The click of the receiver on the other end was like a slap in the face.

Jake slipped the phone into the pocket of his sports coat. He and Pam had been raised like brother and sister. Hearing her voice after so long . . . a swirling cauldron of emotions gurgled within him. The bile of shame, and fear, churned in his throat, and he knew that if he couldn’t stifle it, it would remind him of Mandi. He could hear Cramer’s husky voice chiding him, his partner’s deep drawl heavy with Cajun weirdness.

Watch yo ass, not de bitch on de street. Man, you better keep you ducks in a row or you gonna end up on a slab.

The giant black man could just as easily slip into slick white jive with an inflection tighter than a frog’s behind. He
formed his persona to fit the situation. But the Cajun was real enough. Cramer’s grandmother, his memere, had been raised in the deep bayous of Louisiana, and
she
didn’t speak anything but patois-twisted English.

The trouble was that Reever was no street tough. He was a trigger man for the Houston mob who had become disenchanted after his brother had taken a fall for one of the higher-ups and gotten stiffed. Usually the organization was smarter than that. Either you took care of your own when they did you a favor or you got rid of them. Apparently they’d made a mistake this time, and Jake planned to capitalize on it.

But where was Reever? The beachfront parking lot had been empty when Jake arrived. He’d driven slowly around the area, circling a couple of blocks of old Victorian homes. But no one was sitting in any of the cars parked on the street. No one stared at him from the dripping front porches. Reever was probably pulled over on the highway now, waiting out a storm this strong. Jake could have gone ahead and carried on the conversation with Pam if he’d had the nerve.

A memory of Albert flashed through his mind, heavy flannel shirt across thin shoulders, the old man’s gray beard flecked with sawdust. Albert was equipment-and land-poor like most small loggers, and he had already been getting too old for the business when Jake had left Maine fourteen years earlier. He was a lifelong bachelor who always smelled of pipe tobacco, axle grease, and pine pitch. And Jake loved him like a father.

The dampness was seeping into Jake’s pores. Even though it was still in the seventies outside, he started the car and turned on the heater. Over the thrum of the engine and the pounding of the rain, he heard another car behind him. He flipped on his lights and stomped the brake pedal several
times, and a set of headlights answered, the car itself just a ghost through the downpour.

Reever parked the sedan so close to Jake’s driver’s side door that Jake wondered for an instant if he was being corralled. He instinctively rested his hand on the gearshift, then slipped it to the Glock in his shoulder holster. The familiar feel of the weapon stirred up mixed emotions, and Jake let his hand slide slowly away. There was no sign of anyone else in the car, and as he watched, Reever jumped out and ran around to drop into the front seat with Jake, already soaked in the seconds it took him to get there.

“Fuckin’ like the fuckin’ flood out there!” said Reever, shaking his greasy black hair.

“How come you didn’t park on the other side?” said Jake, eyeing him closely.

Reever shrugged, water dripping off his wide forehead. “Couldn’t see! I told you it’s like a fucking Noah flood out there, you jerk.”

“Nice to see you, too.”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ right. How’s the ball and chain and the kids?”

Reever’s grin reminded Jake of one he’d seen on a burn victim in the morgue, skin peeling away from widely spaced yellow teeth, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that something grotesque was growing inside Reever’s mouth.

“They’re fine.”

Reever knew perfectly well that Jake was unattached. Jake wondered if he used similar banter on people he was about to off. He didn’t believe the guy would be stupid enough to try to murder a cop in such a public place. But that was the trouble with Reever. He was unpredictable.

“What have you got for me?” asked Jake, keeping his eyes on Reever’s hands.

“I took a big chance coming here.”

“Me, too. So cut the crap. Do we have a deal or not?”

“How you gonna protect me?”

“Come on, you know the skit. If what you have is solid enough for convictions, then I’ll go to bat for you with the Houston DA, and you’ll probably go into witness protection. New name, whole new identity.”

Jake had no way of knowing if the DA would go for anything of the sort, and he was sure Reever was street-savvy enough to know that. They were both kidding themselves and each other, Jake because he wanted the bust so badly, Reever because he wanted the cash.

“And a lot of money,” said Reever, grinning.

“I don’t know what you mean by a lot. I’m not Bill Gates.”

Reever’s laugh sounded like the screech of a head-on collision. “Shit! You’re not even my cleaning lady! If I thought
you
were going to pay me I’d still be in my hotel room in San Antone getting blown by that blond whore. If your bosses want to put the Torrios away, then they’ll come up with the money.”

“How much?”

Reever laughed again. “We’ll talk once I go into protection.”

“That’ll be a little late for negotiation on your end. And maybe way too late for me to get the info I need.”

Reever shook his head, and Jake noticed something in his eyes, like an errant thought tightening the laugh lines at the corners, but then it was gone.

“That’ll be plenty of time,” said Reever. “I got a lot to tell. You can buy it word by fuckin’ word. Ain’t that the way they pay magazine writers?”

“I guess.”

Jake glanced out his window as a microburst of pebblelike rain struck the glass. He hated the other car blocking his view. But he turned his attention quickly back to Reever.

“Nervous?” said Reever, laughing. “Big-city pig like you? What you got to be afraid of?”

“Double-crossing a cop is not a good thing.”

Reever frowned. “You threatening me?”

“Should I be?”

Reever shook his head. “You got no cause to jack with me. We’re each other’s insurance. I don’t play straight with you, you got nothing, zip, nada. You don’t play straight with me, I’m dead.”

“You got that right.”

But there was still something bothersome in the way Reever held his head, in the way his finger kept sliding back and forth on his thigh just a millimeter, as though squeezing a nonexistent trigger. Jake had had a lot of hunches over the years, and Cramer had drilled it into his head to listen to them.

A bad hunch don’t cost you much. Maybe somebody will laugh at you. Being laughed at alive is a hell of a lot better than being laughed at dead. It’s bad mojo ignoring hunches.

There it was again. Reever
almost
turned toward his window. What was he looking for?
Who
was he waiting for? Jake gave the car some gas, listening to the engine race, resting his hand casually on the gearshift lever again.

On your gun
, insisted Cramer’s voice. But Jake ignored it. Cramer was always giving Jake a hard time for not being quick enough on the draw.

“So talk,” he said, playing the game. “Give me something to prove you’re not full of shit.”

“The Torrios are in with the Zinos.”

Jake frowned. That was news, if it was true. The Zinos were big in Vegas and LA. What the hell would they be doing in Houston? “You mean the Zinos are here?”

“Here, there, everywhere.” Reever chuckled. “Where ain’t they?”

“The Torrios wouldn’t share with the Zinos. They have no reason to.”

Reever shrugged. “Pot’s big enough, you don’t mind sharing.”

“There’s no pot big enough for Jimmy and José Torrio to share. This sounds like a crock.”

“Banks,” said Reever.

“Now I know you’re full of shit,” said Jake, relaxing a little. Maybe that’s all this was, Reever bullshitting, playing him, seeing if he knew enough to even deal with. “Neither of the Torrios is stupid enough to rob banks.”

“I didn’t say they were going to rob them,” said Reever. “They’re going to
buy
them. Then they can do what they want with the money. The Torrios have the local connections with crooked bankers. The Zinos have the laundered money in mutual funds to do the transactions clean.”

Reever wasn’t a Harvard economist, but Jake got the picture. The Torrios’ group was muscle. The Zinos had finesse. They were used to dealing in figures where the zeros strung out right to the horizon. The Zinos probably had plenty of people on their payroll who
had
graduated from Harvard. If they and the Torrios got together and ended up owning controlling interests in Houston banks, installing their own people inside, who knew what kind of billion-dollar mischief they could concoct?

Jake heard the loud roar of a powerful engine and splashing water behind the car. A dark sedan skidded sideways, almost striking the rear bumper, blocking him in. A hazy pair of figures leaped from the car, and Jake glanced over just as Reever was reaching under his coat.

“You son of a bitch!” spat Jake, backhanding Reever hard, crushing his nose.

Reever’s head snapped back and then forward, and Jake backhanded him again. He jerked the gearshift down into
drive and floored the car. The sedan crashed into the low concrete retaining wall just as a shotgun blast sent shards of glass ricocheting around the interior. Jake ducked, jerking the lever into reverse, and floored the car again, ramming the sedan. He jerked his pistol out of the shoulder holster just as the man with the shotgun prepared to pump off another round.