No Way Out (31 page)

“Where’d they take Quinn?”

“That’s Quinn’s problem, not yours. Luis will take care of him. He’s a very safe driver.”

Mendez leaned against the front of the Lexus, his hands clasped below his belt, a casual pose, like a sleepy-eyed snake, letting me know that he held my life in his hands and didn’t much care whether I lived or died. Guys like him that held back always blew hotter when they finally cut loose. It wasn’t much different than what happened to me when I tried to contain the shakes except when I blew, I didn’t ice-pick, rape, or strangle anyone. I just fell apart.

“It’s your problem if you want any information from me.”

“Amigo, you’re the one who asked for this meeting.”

“And you said yes because you need me.”

He spat. “I don’t need you, and if I did, I’d take what I need and believe me, you wouldn’t turn me down.”

We’d skipped hello and gone straight to the pissing match. Two things were likely to happen if I didn’t change the conversation. The first was that I’d run out of piss. I was unarmed, alone, and holding a hand that was more bluff than high hole cards. The second was that I would come undone, shake, spasm, and crumble, getting nothing more for my trouble than a kick in the head. The first-round tremors, the little ones, were flickering through me like internal static electricity not yet rippling along the surface. I put my hands in my pockets, pressing down to anchor myself, my right hand bumping into the orange.

“You hungry?” I asked Mendez.

“What? Are you crazy, man? Asking me am I hungry.”

I pulled the orange out of my pocket, tossing it to him. “Just asking. You see, that orange is the solution to the problem you and I’ve got.”

He grabbed the orange with one hand, slamming it onto the hood of Quinn’s SUV, drew a knife, stabbed the orange, and dragged it across the hood, the blade gouging the paint, leaving the orange to wobble and ooze.

“You are the one with the problem, dragging my butt out here to play games.”

The flat thud of the orange being crushed against the hood together with the steel-on-steel screech of the knife scraping against the paint dropped the flag for the gremlins waiting to race through my body. I yelped like I was the one who’d been stabbed, my knees giving way, my upper body banging against the front grill of the SUV as I slid down against it, squatting on the ground, grasping the bumper to keep from falling over.

Mendez stepped back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I laughed, gasping. “That was Quinn’s orange, and he’s going to be really pissed off that you killed it.”

Two of his men grabbed me under my arms, hoisting me to my feet, letting go before my legs were ready to stand on their own, grabbing me again when I started to melt. Mendez stepped into me, clamping his hand around my throat, lifting my chin, starring down at me.

“I got no time to play games with you.”

I wrapped my hands around his wrist. “It’s not a game. I shake. I can’t help it.”

He tipped his head at the two men holding me up, all three letting me go at once, backing away as I squatted, folding over, my forehead touching the ground, my hands out in front of me like I should have been facing east.

“We’re out of here,” Mendez said.

I pushed myself up, grabbed the SUV’s bumper, then the grill, then the hood, leaning against the car, trying to catch my breath. Mendez was watching me from behind the Lexus’s open door.

“Hang on. I know about the guns.”

“What guns?” Mendez asked.

“The stolen guns you’re supposed to be smuggling to Nuestra Familia in Mexico.”

He came back slowly, reluctant to get too close, as if he might catch whatever I had—the one time ignorance of my disorder had worked to my advantage. He drew a gun, his outstretched arm bringing the barrel a foot from my face.

“I give you one chance to tell me what you got to tell me, or I make sure you don’t shake no more.”

I took deep breaths, trying to smooth out the tremors, holding one hand up, buying time, stuttering.

“Nuestra Familia sent you here. They need guns. You send them what they need.”

Mendez came closer, screwing the barrel of his gun under my chin. “You made a big mistake getting into my business.”

“You made a bigger mistake trusting Brett Staley. Now you can’t find him, but I can.”

He cocked his head to one side, easing back on the gun.

“Tell me where he is and you get to go home.”

I took another deep breath, my vocal cords relaxing, my legs holding steady, letting me stand straight. “First, we talk.”

“About what?”

“The guns.”

He waved his gun at me. “This is the only gun you need to know about.”

“Believe me, it’s got my full attention, but if anything happens to Quinn or me, you’re going to have the cops, the FBI, and the ATF climbing up your ass and coming out of your ears. Work with me and you may get some breathing room, make things right with the folks back home.”

His eyes opened wide, his brow popping up. “You’re full of shit.”

“I don’t think so. Five gun dealers have been robbed in the last three months. You were supposed to ship those guns to Mexico, but something went wrong and the guns are still in Kansas City, which can’t make Nuestra too happy. Whatever went wrong, Brett Staley is part of it. That’s why you’ve been trying to run him down, and that’s what got Eberto Garza killed. In the meantime, ATF is all over you.”

“What do you want?”

“Brett Staley.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to protect a friend of mine, a woman. I can’t do that as long as Staley is on the street.”

“How do I know you aren’t working with ATF?”

“One of their agents, Braylon Jennings, tried leaning on me, but I don’t belong to anyone. He knows more about you than I do, and once Brett is taken care of, I never heard of you.”

“You saying you’d forget about the guns as long as your friend is okay?”

“I’m saying the woman is my problem, the guns are your problem, and Brett Staley is the solution to both our problems.”

He thought for a moment. “You got questions, ask me. Then you tell me where to find Brett Staley.”

“You do know him?”

He nodded.

“From his father’s grocery?”

Another nod.

“You sell him dope?”

He shrugged. “I know he gets high.”

“Did he ask you to hook up his cousin, Frank Crenshaw, with a gun?”

Mendez shook his head.

“Did Crenshaw come to you for the gun?”

He shook his head again.

I didn’t see any of the tics or twitches that Kate relied on as signs of deception. He was looking at me straight on, not ducking. His answers were all gestures except for one spoken reply that didn’t answer the question directly, making it hard to assess his honesty and even harder for me to testify against him.

“Did you sell or give the gun to Crenshaw?”

Mendez smiled, his lips closed. “No.”

“Then where did Crenshaw get the gun?”

“He stole it. Now where do I find Brett Staley?”

At first, I thought it was another non-answer, and then I realized he was telling me the truth, the whole truth. I ignored his question.

“Of course. You didn’t want to send your people to gun shows, especially in places where they’d stand out. That would’ve made it too easy for ATF to put you in the mix. Better to contract it out with guys who’d blend in, look like every other redneck with a confederate flag. But I’m guessing they didn’t deliver. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You don’t have the guns. What happened? Did they want more money or get a better offer?”

“Brett Staley, where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Mendez raised his gun an inch from my eye, preparing to squeeze the trigger. “Wrong answer.”

Headlights appeared at the top of the hill, a car rolling our way, one of Mendez’s men trotting toward it, looking back at him.

“It’s Luis—he’s here.”

The car followed an arc, stopping when it was perpendicular to the driver’s side of Quinn’s SUV, engine off, high-beams washing over us. Luis stepped out, clinging to the frame of the open door.

“Kill the lights,” Mendez said.

Luis ignored him, stumbling toward us, cradling his left arm with his right, his head down.

Mendez lowered his gun, turning toward him, shouting. “What’s the matter? Are you deaf? I said kill the fucking lights!”

Luis didn’t answer, falling to his knees, then flattening out on the ground. Mendez and the two men who’d been holding me up rushed to his side, the driver of the Lexus hesitating, holding back, his gun aimed at me. The rear door on the driver’s side of Luis’s car opened. It was Quinn. The driver of the Lexus followed my eyes and saw him, ignoring me, yelling, and taking aim.

I hit the driver in the throat with my elbow, folding him in half, hitting him again, this time on the back of his neck, dropping him to the pavement, a kick to the head putting him out. I grabbed his gun as Quinn drew down on Mendez and the others.

“On the ground, on your face and spread out,” I said.

Quinn retrieved his canvas bag from the SUV, sifting through the contents for plastic handcuffs, binding each of them and emptying their pockets. He scooped up their guns, cell phones, and car keys, throwing them over the chain-link fence protecting the abandoned steel mill while I gathered our guns.

“What about the other two?” I asked Quinn, “the guy who was in the car with you and the one at the top of the hill.”

“They’re resting uncomfortably.”

I handed him the orange with the knife still embedded in it.

“Mendez didn’t want this after all.”

Lying on the pavement, Mendez shouted at us. “You’re dead men, both of you!”

Quinn walked over to him, pulled his hair, raising his head, and crammed the orange in his mouth. “Not today, amigo.”

“So all that win-win, expand-the-pie bullshit,” I asked Quinn as we left Mendez behind, “is that just bullshit?”

“The basic principles apply across the board, but the board is a big place. Works great with two neighbors fighting over whose dog barks louder, but not so well with gun-running drug dealers used to getting their way the hard way. Mendez didn’t give it a chance, so we had to use a zero-sum strategy he understands. I hope you got what you came for.”

“All that and more. Mendez didn’t steal the guns. That was Frank Crenshaw, Nick Staley, and Jimmy Martin. Brett Staley had to have been part of it. They were supposed to sell the guns to Mendez, but something went wrong, the deal didn’t go through.”

“Maybe they got greedy and wanted more money,” Quinn said.

“That, or maybe they found another customer and decided to let the market set the price. Nuestra Familia isn’t the only cartel buying guns north of the border.”

“So Mendez or his competition upped the ante, killing Crenshaw and Nick Staley and going after Jimmy Martin.”

“Probably to convince them to sell at the right price. And, right about now, I’d say that the best offer Brett Staley is going to get is his life for those guns.”

“That will be the last deal he makes,” Quinn said. “No way do they leave him alive after taking out the others. And that means Jimmy Martin is doing time on borrowed time. But why kill Eberto Garza?”

“Eberto Garza was an accident, a victim of friendly fire if it was Mendez or mistaken identity if it was someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is that Brett Staley is the key now. He’s on the run, and I’m not the only one chasing him.”

Quinn nodded. “Where do you want me to drop you?”

“Had enough?”

“I told Kate Scranton I’d get you to a meeting with Mendez and bring you back in one piece. It wasn’t pretty, but I did my thing.”

“I envy you.”

“Why?”

“You know when to quit.”

“In my business, that’s the name of the game.”

“You ever look back, wonder if you should have stuck around or ask yourself if there was something else you could have done?”

Quinn shook his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. You’re a crusader, and I’m a mercenary. You have to feel that way, or you don’t have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But that’s a luxury I can’t afford.”

“Understood. You can drop me at Roni Chase’s house.”

“What are you going to do if she stiff-arms you again?”

“Offer her an orange.”

Quinn’s cell phone rang when we pulled up to Roni’s house. He answered and handed me the phone.

“Are you okay?” Kate asked.

“Never better.”

“I tried calling you on the phone Simon gave you, but you didn’t answer.”

I checked the phone. “Dead battery.”

“Lucy has been trying to reach you too.”

“Tell her I’m fine, and tell her I’m getting close.”

“You should call Joy. She’s worried.”

“You talked to her?”

Kate hesitated. “She called Lucy when she couldn’t reach you. Lucy told her about Quinn. She called to thank me for making sure you didn’t go after Mendez alone.”

“Call her back, tell her I’m okay, that Quinn’s taking good care of me, and that I’ll be home late.”

“It would be better if you called her.”

“I don’t want to lie to her,” I said and hung up.

I shook Quinn’s hand, thanked him, and got out of the SUV, watching from the curb as he drove away. He jolted to a stop halfway down the block, brake lights flashing, backing up to where he’d left me, his window down.

“One man’s trash,” he said, handing me the wastebasket I’d taken from Roni’s office.

“I hope is another man’s treasure.”

I turned on my cell phone. Joy had left me a text message asking if I was okay. I answered, telling her that I loved her. The superintendent at the Farm had also sent me a text message with the names of people who had visited Jimmy Martin, one name raising more questions than it answered.

The front porch light was on. I did a quick sort through the contents of the wastebasket, most of which was mail addressed to Roni and her clients. A collection agency was threatening to file suit against her grandmother, who guaranteed payment of her mother’s medical bills. The county sent her a notice of a tax lien that had been filed against the house. There were complaints and demands for a host of other creditors for amounts long since past due.

The mail was no different for her clients, most of them up against the same wall. There was one piece of mail different from all the others. It was a monthly statement showing an account that had been paid on time and in full by a client who couldn’t, reminding me again not to confuse the improbable with the impossible.

I rang the doorbell and waited, grabbing the heavy brass knocker on the front door and pounding it against the hard oak when no one answered. Lillian Chase opened it long moments later.

“Where’s Roni?”

“Out. She didn’t say where.”

“I need to borrow your car.”