Scare Crow (14 page)

We had to enlist a new shipment guy anyway. The other one was getting sloppy and reckless
with his m
oney.

On the day I headed to the port of San Francisco, I had already done research on one
of the cargo supervisors, but I needed to see him for myself before I approached him
with an offer he couldn’t refuse. He wasn’t the type of inside guy we normally worked
with. He was a family man, married twenty-five years, with two daughters in high school
and two more away at college. Expen
sive.

I had followed him in his beat-up minivan. We drove for almost two hours in traffic
until we came to a quiet little town. Nice place to raise four daugh
ters.

As soon as he got out of the van, one of his teenage girls skipped out of the house,
kissed him, and drove off in the min
ivan.

He spent the next few hours cutting the grass and doing chores around the house, after
he had just gotten off a night shift at the ship
yard.

This was definitely my guy—one who needed the money and had everything to lose if
he got caught or tried to go to the cops when I started blackmailing
him.

My era of dark and deadly deeds was continuing to pile up as Tiny stopped in front
of a decrepit duplex apartment building that was in the same neighborhood as my mother’s.
This was not what I had been expecting, but if Tiny said this was the place, then
this was the p
lace.

I had known Tiny for a long time. His uncle, Henry Grimes, was our accountant. A few
years back, Henry had begged us to give Tiny some work, get him off the streets and
out of trouble. It turned out that he did us a favor more than we did him. Tiny was
a great addition. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I trusted
him.

I climbed up the holey carpeted stairs and let myself into the upstairs apartment,
which was pretty easy given that the door was practically falling off its hi
nges.

I checked out the one-bedroom apartment. It was empty and cold, except for an old
mattress that had been thrown on the living-room floor, with a phone next to it. The
windows shook in the wind, and the heat was on just enough to keep the pipes from
freezing. It wasn’t what I had expected a guy making extra cash on the side to be
livin
g in.

I found myself a spot against a wall and sank down to the floor, expecting a long
wait. Before I had time to even fully stretch my legs out, I heard someone coming
in through the fire escape. I got my gun out and waited in the hallway that led through
the kitchen. A figure came around the wall, and I jammed my gun against his s
kull.

I swore and pulled the gun
away.

It was Spider. He was unmoved by the fact that I had almost shot
him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him with a hiss to my v
oice.

He looked around the apartment. “Question is … what the hell are
you
doing here? What have you and Tiny been u
p to?”

I put my gun away and went to find my spot on the floor. He sank against the opposite
wall.

“This doesn’t concern you,” I said to
him.

“There seems to be a lot of stuff that doesn’t concern me these
days.”

We both watched the wall across from us for a w
hile.

“How did you find me?” I wondered fin
ally.

“You and Tiny have been going off on your own lately. I figured I’d follow you to
see what you were up to.” He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out.
“So, who are we waiting
for?”

“One of Shield’s ballbusters.” I figured he’d have found this out eventu
ally.

“Business or plea
sure?”

“It’s pers
onal.”

“Ah,” he said, barking a dark laugh, “I should have known all this had to do with
Emmy. Only she would melt your brain into thinking that this was a good
idea.”

“What would you have me do? Ignore the fact that the people who murdered Rocco and
did that to Emmy get to walk this e
arth?”

“No. But you and I both know there are ways to get your revenge without you risking
yourself. We have people who can take care of that for
you.”

“Like I said, it’s pers
onal.”

“What if the captains find out that you’ve been personally doling out judgment? That
you’re on some sort of killing rampage? Do you think that they’d feel confident in
you handling all the business aff
airs?”

“They won’t find out about this. I’ve been very car
eful.”

“You could have asked me for my help, you
know.”

“Would you have agreed to hel
p me?”

“I would have definitely tried to talk you out of it. But I wouldn’t have let you
take all the risk on your own.” There was pain in his v
oice.

“I didn’t want you invo
lved.”

“In case something goes w
rong?”

“Nothing will go wrong. You and Carly are not to get caught up in all
this.”

Spider’s expression flickered. “We’ve always worked as a team, Cam. If I don’t know
what you’re up to, how can I have your
back?”

I didn’t have an answer for him. He was right. Spider and I had had each other’s back
from the first day we met. The more I tried to hide things from him and Carly, the
faster the darkness was spreading through. I could fee
l it.

“Is that why you set up the dummy shipment with Shield without telling me? Because
of Emmy?” he wondered. “You know the captains will find out about the shipment and
w
orry.”

I should have known that Spider would eventually put two and two together when he
saw that newspaper article about Shield’s drug seizure. “The captains’ shipment will
be coming in safe and sound. All they’ll see is the money rolling in and the cops
too busy to notice the new shipment hitting the str
eets.”

“And you don’t think they’ll want to know who was trying to bring in dope on their
turf?”

“I’ll confess it was me. That we were getting too much heat and needed to distract
the feds. Besides, they won’t appreciate seeing Shield with all that free
dope.”

“And they won’t wonder who actually paid for the ship
ment?”

I also should have known that it wouldn’t take Carly long to rat me out to Spider.
I realized then how clouded my judgment was becoming. Dark cl
ouds.

“We’ll call it an early Christmas present. A freebie for all the other fuckups this
year.” My voice had faded. Somebody was climbing up the stairs outside the door. Spider
and I eyed each other. We pulled our guns out. He got up to wait behind the door,
and I just stood as the welcoming committee. When the door opened, Mike Westfall had
a gun to his shaved head and was shoved into the living room by Sp
ider.

“Officer Westfall,” I exclaimed, clasping my hands together with elation. I was going
to enjoy
this.

“Sit,” Spider ordered
him.

Westfall took a seat on his dirty old mattress and waited, his expression oddly so
lemn.

“You know why I’m here?” I asked
him.

“Yes,” he answered and looked up at me. “I knew I would eventually have to pay for
what happened to that
girl.”

I was taken aback by his response. I had expected him to deny everything and try to
talk his way out, but Mike actually looked like he felt guilty. This made me cur
ious.

I glanced at the bare room. “Quite the shithole you have
here.”

“I don’t need
much.”

“You’re a junkie?” I hadn’t found any dope or drug paraphernalia, but that was the
only explanation as to the decrepit state of his apart
ment.

“Never touched the stuff,” the officer replied candidly in pas
sing.

Then he glanced up; he looked at my gun, and then he looked at me. “Have you ever
had to choose between your family and doing the right t
hing?”

He waited, like he was actually looking for an an
swer.

Spider cleared his throat and signaled me with his
gun.

Mike was the guard who had been stationed at Emmy’s door after Shield had kidnapped
her. Mike sat and did nothing while Emmy got beaten up. He could have protected her.
He could have helped her escape before she was forced to go through all that. There
was no doubt that I was going to kill him, but not just yet. I was suddenly interested
in what he had to
say.

Officer Westfall let his hands fall between his knees and dropped his head. “There
was a moment. When the girl was behind the door and pleaded with me to let her out.
There was a moment when I thought I was hearing my own daught—” He stopped and took
a breath. “When I thought I was going to unlock the door and let her escape before
that pig came back for
her.”

“And yet, you did nothing,” I hi
ssed.

He looked up at me. “You loved her, didn’t
you?”

I glared at him and pulled out my
gun.

“You wouldn’t have come for me yourself if you didn’t love her,” he surmised in a
whisper as he dropped his face again and closed his eyes. He reached into his s
hirt.

“Hey! Hands where I can see them,” Spider ordered, but I shook my
head.

Mike’s gun was still in its holster on his hip. Whatever he was reaching for, it wasn’t
a
gun.

He pulled out a piece of paper—a picture that he kissed. Then he made the sign of
the c
ross.

“We get to decide when you’re ready, pal,” Spider snapped and looked at me with a
question. “What are you waiting for?” he mou
thed.

Mike was holding the picture in his palm, eerily
calm.

“Who’s in the picture,
Mike?”

He looked up but did not res
pond.

“Give it to me,” I dema
nded.

But he held my
eyes.

Spider brought his gun to Mike’s te
mple.

Mike got the message and finally conceded, handing me the pic
ture.

It was a picture of a woman and a child sitting on a bed, smiling, arms interlocked.
They both had shaved heads. They were in a hospital somewhere. The little girl was
in a pink bathrobe. Her skin was gray, and she had tubes sticking out everyw
here.

“Who is
this?”

“That’s my wife and my daughter,” he answered, his eyes fixed on the picture as if
he were right there with them, interlocked on the bed. “My daughter got really sick
when she was five years old. She’s been sick ever since. Leuk
emia.”

I knew this could have been a ruse, a way to get sympathy so that I wouldn’t kill
him. But when he looked up at me as I held the picture in my hands, I could see it
in his eyes—the hate. Just the thought of having some scum like me so close to his
wife and child was enough to make him want to gut me and use my intestines as a speed
bump. Only a man who was truly in love would have that kind of reaction. I would
know.

I gave him back the picture, and he started to breathe again, putting the picture
back inside his shirt so that I couldn’t get to it a
gain.

“The shaved h
eads?”

He brushed his hand to his naked skull, and a sad smile came to his lips. “She was
pretty upset when she started losing her hair. She used to have long brown hair. It
was so thick and curly you couldn’t put a brush through it. We let her shave all our
heads. It helped a little
bit.”

I leaned against the wall and crossed my hands over my chest, tucking my gun under.
“Why the hell would you risk all that just to work for Sh
ield?”

“Do you think I want to work for that asshole?” he growled. “I have no choice. My
salary isn’t enough to cover our medical bills. By working for Shield, I can afford
to pay for her medical care, and my wife can stay at our daughter’s bedside. Every
penny I have goes to keep my girl a
live.”

I kept my composure, but something was rising within me. Something that I had been
trying my whole life to quash, kill
off.

“I had someone do research on you. None of this ever cam
e up.”

“My wife and I got married in Jamaica but never filed the paperwork here. My wife
is extremely stubborn and didn’t want to change her name when we got mar
ried.”

“And no one has ever wondered, asked you about
them?”

“No one here knows they even exist. Since I started working for Shield, I’ve been
staying away from them.” Then he looked me in the eye. “Wouldn’t
you?”

I stood by with my gun, knowing what needed to be
done.

Mike continued, “I’m sorry for what happened to your girl. But if I would have let
her go, then Shield would have killed me or looked into my past and then killed me.
I chose my fa
mily.”

We were done pretending that Emmy was just another girl. I believed that everything
Mike had said was the truth. But now he knew how deep my love for Emmy ran, and he
now knew that I was going against the will of the Coalition, that I was out for the
blood of every man who had had any contact with Emmy. Mike was armed with information
that would get me and everyone I ever cared for ki
lled.

But Mike had his own reasons for being there, for having made really bad decisions.
A deathly ill daughter. Mounting hospital bills. A family that was everything to
him.