Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) (7 page)

“Shouldn’t someone like that be ready to squeal on the SOB?” Zeke asked.

“Sure, if he had something in the way of evidence. Otherwise, it’s just a jailbird’s word against a guy who already took the city for a bunch of money.”

“You know this last guy’s name or where he’s stashed?”

Washington laughed. “Can’t do all your work for you, rookie.”

Zeke nodded. “Fair enough. Thanks for all your help.”

“Yeah, man, you’re welcome. Dawson underestimated you today, with those small-timers he sent after you. But you can bet he knows guys who’d make riding in this car seem like no big deal.”

“Thanks for that, too.”

“No problem,” Sergeant of Detectives Washington said. “I really liked that hit you laid on those Green Bay dudes.”

Donald Magro sat in Jonas Dawson’s top floor, lake-view office in a La Salle Street high rise and asked a simple question, “Has the witness been inconvenienced?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dawson replied. “Seriously inconvenienced.”

“So I’m good then?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You having some other problem?”

“No, what do you mean?” Dawson asked.

“You look like you ate some bad fish.”

The lawyer gave his most important client a weak grin. “You know, I think I might have a touch of food poisoning. Maybe I should think about filing a civil suit.”

Magro shook his head. “Stick to what you’re good at. If you’re really sick and it’s from something you ate, I’ll have a chat with the responsible party. It’ll all get worked out.”

Dawson waved off the offer of help. “I was just joking about taking the guy to court. An antacid or two will fix me up.”

“Okay then. We’ll all get on with our business and nobody has any worries.”

Magro stood, ready to leave. Dawson got to his feet and extended a hand. His client took it in both of his hands, possessively.

“You know you’re very important to a lot of people, Jonas.”

“I do.”

“If something more serious than a queasy stomach is bothering you, I need to know.”

“I’m good. I think I’ll knock off for the day in a few minutes. Go home and lie down. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

Tightening his grip on the lawyer’s hand, Magro said, “But
I’m
fine right now, right?”

“Yeah, sure, Don. Couldn’t be finer.”

Magro looked for a glimmer of deceit in Dawson’s eyes but didn’t find any.

He released his grip on the lawyer and said, “Good.”

Dawson followed his client to his office door, gave him what he hoped was a reassuring pat on the back and, once he was alone again, all but collapsed onto his leather sofa. He looked out at the city below him and wondered how long he’d have one of the best views in town. He’d literally risen above any expectations he’d ever had for himself as a young man.

He’d always been smart, at least compared to most of the guys in the neighborhood. He hustled, too. Racing down the basketball court for a fast break layup or turning a ground ball into an infield single, he always busted his ass to make something out of nothing. Most times, things worked out for him. He came out ahead of the game.

When he didn’t have the money to go to a university right out of high school, he went to a community college at night, and worked in a trading pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during the day. He saw all the asshole traders buying and selling by yelling at each other. Open outcry they called it. The traders thought they were tough guys, pushing and shoving each other whenever they scrambled to get a piece of some juicy deal. The poor mopes working in the pits for the exchange, writing down the trades as they got called out, had to avoid being trampled half the time.

Except for Jonas. When he’d interviewed for the job, he’d been told every pit had to have one big tough exchange SOB working in the midst of the mob. Someone who’d look out for his co-workers and could chill out overheated traders without giving them any lip. Mute intimidation was the ticket.

That was what the guy who had hired Jonas asked if he could do.

Jonas only glared and nodded. Which was perfect. He got the job.

By succeeding at his job, though, Jonas eliminated any chance of moving up in the world at the Merc. Being an exchange employee offered limited prospects for the future. The big money lay in having a trader take a shine to you and give you a job with his company. That was where you got the chance to become a trader yourself. Sure, you’d inevitably become as big an asshole as the rest of them but, Jesus God, the money could be enormous.

Most traders, even the women, flashed rolls of bills that could gag a hippo.

Usually, nothing smaller than C-notes, too.

Only Jonas would never catch on with a trading company because he scared all the traders, made them realize they were pussies not hard guys, and they hated him for it. The day after he got his associate’s degree from his community college, he quit the exchange and applied for a job with the cops. His first year in uniform, he toed the line, kept his nose clean and learned who was who in the department. Sucked up without being obvious about it.

He went back to night school, aiming for a bachelor’s degree in public administration. Three years later, he had both graduated with honors and passed the sergeant’s exam. In his mid-twenties, he was a man on the move with his eyes wide open for opportunities.

One thing he’d noticed right off was that drug dealers, often younger than he was and barely literate, had rolls of money just as big as the guys in the trading pits. The dealers were assholes, too, but they were usually a lot tougher than commodities traders. Then again, cops were tougher than exchange employees.

Sergeant Jonas Dawson felt it was time the boys in blue, who kept the city from falling into complete ruin, received greater compensation for the work they did than their city paychecks. He thought an equitable redistribution of liquid assets — cash — should provide street cops with comfortable retirements in warm places. So he came up with a plan.

He and a select crew would relieve street dealers of both their drugs and their money. The narcotics they’d resell to the mob, the old line gangsters that had given the town a large part of its reputation, for pennies on the dollar and protection from the organizations that would be ripped off. The irony of having the mob protecting cops was part of the appeal for Dawson.

The underworld figure Dawson approached with the idea had also been a young up-and-comer on his side of the street: Donald Magro. Don had sold it to his bosses, and the plan had worked for a long time. Everybody made money. Lots of it.

As what he called a precautionary measure, Dawson had given his bent cops only 10% of their proceeds up front. He said it was for their own safety. So if things ever got hot they wouldn’t have summer homes, fancy cars or stashes of cash in their basements to explain to prosecutors and the IRS. When they chose to retire or otherwise left the department, a foreign bank account would be opened for each of them, in an alias, fully funded with what they were owed.

The only problem turned out to be that receiving even a small fraction of their ill-gotten gains turned out to be too obvious to escape official notice. Three of the gang in blue thought it would be okay to exhibit their own huge rolls of money in restaurants, bars and even their own police station. Eyebrows were raised and internal affairs went to work.

Two things saved Sergeant Jonas Dawson. He’d stashed
all
his booty where nobody ever found it. No investigator was able to track down a dollar that couldn’t be accounted for by his official income. The other thing was the three stooges who’d been indiscreet had immediately been provided with lawyers who whispered the following directly into their ears:
Say nothing and you’ll get double what you have stashed when you get out. Rat Sergeant Dawson out and you’re dead.

That, of course, left wriggle room for the stooges to squeal on the others in the gang. So everybody but Dawson got pinched, convicted and locked up. They all got killed in prison, too, except for Stevie Zimmerman who had managed to kill the two guys sent to shank him. Stevie Z was still locked up under another name in another state.

Every day he stepped out his front door, Jonas Dawson worried Stevie Z might be waiting for him, released by the courts just so he could get revenge on Dawson and give any number of honest cops and prosecutors a good laugh.

It had been a long time, though, since Dawson thought he had to worry about Pamela Keller. Then he bumped into that woman in Northbrook Court, a damn shopping mall he went to maybe once a year. She’d looked just like Pamela. It was all he could do to keep from strangling her right there in the food court.

Then goddamn Zeke Edison, of all people, has a photo of the same young woman on his phone at Teddy’s Diner, for Christ’s sake. Thinking about that again made cold sweat pop out on Dawson’s forehead. All he could do now was hope those damn Hawaiians of his threw a good enough beating into the guy to get him to back off.

If they hadn’t, he’d have to call in the two pros who’d
inconvenienced
Don Magro’s problem witness.

When Zeke returned to Aaron Levy’s office, Reggie asked him, “Did that cop give you a hard time?”

“No.”

“Did he return my baton?”

“Forgot to ask. I’ll buy you a new one.”

Reggie frowned.

“What?” Zeke asked. “The old one had sentimental value.”

“Your ass isn’t the only one I’ve saved with that baton.”

Zeke looked at Aaron in a silent plea for help.

The older man shrugged. “I also have an emotional attachment to some of my tools.”

Vindicated, Reggie smiled and said, “See?”

Zeke gave up. “All right, I’ll buy you a new baton
and
get your old one back. Good enough?”

“Have a heart etched on the new one. Put our initials inside the heart.”

Zeke laughed. “So when you’re beating the hell out of someone you’ll think fondly of me?” He turned to Aaron. “You ever meet anyone like her?”

“If you knew sabra girls, you wouldn’t ask,” Aaron told him.

“Can we get back to work now?” Zeke asked.

He received two nods and filled Aaron and Reggie in on his chat with Washington.

“What I’d like to find out is the name and location of Jonas Dawson’s sole surviving partner in crime. See if he’d feel like talking to me. At the least, that should rattle Dawson some more. Maybe make him do something stupid, even dumber than trying to muscle me. You think you might be able to find the name of this guy, Aaron?”

“Get his name? Certainly. Find out where he’s being held? Probably. Arrange a conversation with him? Who can say?”

Reggie asked Aaron, “This guy’s been inside a long time?”

“Yes, many years.”

“I’ll talk to him. Maybe he’ll be in the mood to hear a woman’s voice. I’ll even give him phone sex, if he wants.”

Both men looked at Reggie.

“Hey, think about it,” she told them. “That shit’s for guys who are desperate. It won’t bother me, and if it gets us something we want …”

Zeke and Aaron exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing.

Maybe their business needed a female partner.

They both looked at Reggie and nodded.

Zeke adding, “Oh, baby.”

Zeke’s Porsche came with a hands-free phone feature. In response to his hello, an unfamiliar female voice asked, “Have I reached Zeke Edison?”

Before he could answer, Reggie said, “You haven’t called to offer him phone sex, have you?”

“
What?
No. I must have the wrong number. Sorry.”

“How about real sex? Pro athletes get a lot of unsolicited offers,” Reggie said.

That was true, Zeke knew. He’d always ended phone calls and closed hotel room doors immediately when such approaches came his way. His high school coach had been the first authority figure to warn him and his teammates about such overtures.

“Boys, I’m going to tell you about tar-babies. They might look good at first, but you just can’t ever get rid of them. One way or another, they’ll stick to you for the rest of your life.”

With Reggie handling things, though, he was curious how the call might work out.

After a moment’s pause, the caller said, “Have I reached Zeke Edison’s phone? Are you his secretary or something?”

“His dominatrix. I was just teaching him to roll over when you interrupted.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Unless you’re bullshitting me.”

Zeke laughed and thumbed his nose at Reggie.

“She is. This is Zeke Edison. Who’s calling and how’d you get my phone number?”

“My name is Roberta Lane. I’m a reporter for the
Trib,
and I got your mobile number from George A. Black when I called your house.”

“The house number is unlisted, too,” Zeke said.

“In your name, yeah, but not in Mr. Black’s.”

Zeke sighed. He should have known George would make the phone number publicly available to his horde of relatives. By extension, that meant the rest of the world, too.

“Are you new on the sports beat, Ms. Lane? If so, I’m still retired from football and have no intention of returning to the NFL.”

“That’s not why I called. I do stories on crime and official corruption. I was in Teddy’s Diner keeping an eye on Jonas Dawson. I saw him react to something he saw as he went by your table. It looked like someone put a cattle prod up his ass.”

Reggie grinned and whispered, “I like her.”

“And if I said that whatever happened at Teddy’s is a private matter?” Zeke asked.

“I’d say that would be a shame. I was hoping we might talk. Swap what I know about Jonas Dawson for what you know about him. My thought was we might be of help to each other.”

Zeke thought for a moment. “You know A. J. Price?”

“The paper’s pro basketball columnist? He’s retired, I think. I used to see him in the building at holiday parties, but I don’t know him personally.”

“You know anybody at the paper who knows A.J.?”

“I’d have to think about that.”

“If you can find someone, have that person tell A.J. you’re trustworthy. If A.J. calls and tells me you’re okay, we’ll talk again.”

“Okay, that’s fair. I’ll see what I can do, and you know what, Mr. Edison?”

“What?”

“I’ve got a feeling this is going to work out for both of us.”