Shelter (25 page)

             
Sal led them to the entrance of an underground parking deck that was the base of a tall stone-and-brick building that looked close to thirty stories or so. Two men coalesced from the shadows within, taking up flanking positions at the door: these were the muscleheads from high-on-up who ensured Sean played ball with the boss man. Sean may have kept some of his dealers, but he’d been “given” new security guys.

             
The ramp sloped down right away so that, even though the garage was lit with fluorescent caged lamps every few car lengths, no one could be seen from street level. Halfway down to the first floor, Carlos could hear the voices. And as they rounded the first curve, he heard that one of the voices was begging.

             
In the middle of a knot of guys who were professional wrestler huge, Carlos recognized Tiny, one of Sean’s other pushers. He was, in fact, tiny, a little white guy with a stocking cap and pants belted below his ass, his boxers showing. He’d been peddling pot because none of the cocaine gangs would have him, and Sean had recruited him a few months ago. Tiny was sweating now, his face bright red.

             
“I swear,” he said. “I swear I…Sean!” he spotted the three of them. “Sean, tell this asshole I didn’t - ”

             
One of the meatnecks sucker punched him in the gut and he doubled over, words becoming wheezes.

             
“What is this?” Carlos asked, though as his gut churned, he had a sinking feeling he knew.

             
Sean made no comment.

             
Sal, though, reached into his pocket and produced a gallon-sized re-sealable bag full of white powder. “Tiny was cutting our product with baking powder. He made twice the sales and kept the extra profit for himself.”

             
Sean kept him removed from the operation of it all, he only sold and passed money for drugs, but Carlos knew that, if this allegation was true, it was an unforgiveable offense.

             
“Tiny,” Sal continued, “isn’t loyal. And loyalty is
everything
.” He reached into a coat pocket again, this time coming back out with a gun in his hand. It looked like a 9mm, black and matte, and the dealer extended it, grip-first, toward Carlos.

             
“No,” he said before the order had even been given. He shook his head. “No way.”

             
Tiny surged against his captors. “I didn’t! It ain’t mine, I swear!” He was punched in the side of the head and he crumpled again, moaning. “Sean, Sean please, please,” he whimpered. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

             
“Begging never helps,” Sal told Carlos. “He’s gonne bite it anyway,” Sal’s tone was nothing but cold, and once again, Carlos found himself realizing just how unfit he was for this world of gangsters and contraband. And as he stared at the unflinching, impassive face of the man who offered him the gun, he’d never hated anyone like he did this guy. “Time to prove we don’t have to worry about you pulling the same shit.”

             
Certain circumstances had a way of putting everything else into perspective. Carlos had not known dread like this. A cold sweat broke out across his entire body, his skin feeling feverish and tight. His stomach made a rallying leap up his throat, but he found he lacked the muscle control to vomit. He swore he could feel his soul being damaged; this was the sort of thing that put a person in hell. He wasn’t sure there were enough Hail Marys or Our Fathers to undo this kind of sin. And even worse, he knew as his eyes darted wildly toward Sean, he had no options. If he ran, he’d be killed. If he refused, he’d be strung up and called a rat, and then killed. Because no matter what the movies portrayed, when you went up against this kind of organized crime as just one man alone, you were completely, absolutely powerless.

             
He didn’t really hate Sal, but himself.

             
With a clammy, shameful hand, he took the gun.

25

             
In Tampa, as a beat cop, Sean had gone into his share of businesses looking for suspects or witnesses, possibly related parties to crimes, and people had only needed one look at his badge and his blue uniform before they were all too happy to comply. He’d been addressed as “sir” and “officer,” had drawn fretful glances from the guilty and approving glances from the surrounding public.

             
But when he stepped into the Silver Plate Café in another of his sharp suits, his wool coat, and asked after the pregnant little waitress by the name of Alma Morales, he’d been looked at like the thug he was portraying. His hand had itched to reach into his wallet and pull out his official APD ID, but then he’d remembered that as Sean Taylor Drug Dealer Extraordinaire, he didn’t carry it. After a half a dozen suspicious glances, he’d learned that Alma wouldn’t be in until one from a red-haired employee who liked to crack her gum. So he’d spent the time making some follow up calls to his department, double and triple checking the rest of the puzzle pieces. Then at six, once dark had settled over the little posh Marietta shopping center, he turned off his cell and nosed the Escalade up to the curb himself – Jerome, like the PD, wasn’t going to be privy to this little meeting.

             
Inside, the Silver Plate seemed to have drawn a sizable dinner crowd: mostly college students with laptops or textbooks. But there was a smattering of families and groups of high school kids doing more goofing around than eating. The place smelled good, like fresh-baked bread. Alma wasn’t hard to spot:  the slightly-protruding stomach and long dark ponytail were a giveaway. And when her head came up from the pad she’d been scribbling on and her head happened to swing in his direction, the slim, pale face with its dark eyes confirmed the identification.

             
So too, did the look of shocked recognition that rippled across her features. Then she frowned, scowled in a downright ferocious way and spun away, making a bee line for the back of the restaurant.

             
Brushing past the waitress who attempted to greet him, and earning a startled gasp for it, he went charging through the maze of tables in pursuit of Sam’s widow. He registered dark glances from two employees behind the bakery counter – a tall skinny guy with acne and a heavyset woman as wide as she was tall, but neither made a move to intercept him. Doing a peripheral scan of his surroundings on the move was second nature, and as he followed Alma’s retreating figure past the soda fountain and across tile wet with cleaning solution, he took note of each member of the staff.

             
Thankfully, none of them got in the way. Alma went down a short hall that had openings on either side: one, rolling with steam, that presumably led to the kitchen, and the other shadowed and cool as if it was a small alcove where the exit was located. Through a swinging door, into a break room full of folding tables, lockers along one wall, a low counter on the opposite. Sean saw a fridge and a microwave, extra aprons hanging up on pegs, employee coats and scarves.

             
Alma had gone to the furthest table and was gripping the chair in front of her until her knuckles were white. Sean stopped just inside the threshold and put a palm against the swinging door in a weak attempt to guarantee them a moment of privacy.

             
“I take it you remember me.”

             
He’d only been around the girl a handful of times, but she’d always given him the impression of trembling, meek, doe of a female: graceful and sleek, beautiful, but timid and quick to please her husband.

             
The young woman who spun around now, hands clenched into fists, was anything but meek. Her brows knitted together and her cheeks flushed, lips pressed together into a white line. “Get out of here,” her voice shook and it wasn’t because of nerves. She was so furious, for a moment, he was afraid she might seize. “How dare you come here where I - ”

             
“Carlos is missing.”

             
Her mouth shut with a soft
click
of her teeth meeting. But just as quickly, her scowl returned. “He’s not my problem, and neither are you, asshole, so show yourself out before I have the Cobb County PD crawling all over this place.”

             
Obviously, Carlos had told her everything he shouldn’t have. Sean sighed and held up his free hand, palm-out in a peaceful gesture. “Look, calm down, a’ight?”

             
Her hand dove into her apron and he knew she was going for her phone.

             
“It’s not what you think,” he stepped away from the door and toward her, which brought her head and hand snapping up. Her cell was indeed clenched between her fingers, thumb hovering over the screen. He sighed, forced himself to relax his now-threatening posture. “Carlos doesn’t know the whole story. Sam did and he was helping me.” She didn’t move. “Can I at least explain myself ‘fore you have me arrested?”

             
She didn’t look happy about it, but she didn’t look scared either. Sam, he now scolded himself for not having come to this conclusion before, would never have wasted his time on some chickenshit bitch. You had to have some fight in you to put up with him. She tilted her head in silent concession. “You can
try
.”

             
No way was Alma going to be at all approving of the lie: that Sam had decided to turn drug pusher for kicks and extra cash. And while he didn’t give a shit if she liked him, he needed to find Carlos. And he felt so guilty about what he’d done to this family; Sam’s death was all on him, and he owed the poor girl something. Even if the way she stood with her arms folded beneath her breasts annoyed the piss out of him.

             
“Gimme your order pad?”

             
“What?”
              He snapped his fingers. “Give it over.”

             
She did, still scowling, a pen too, and Sean wrote a quick note that he presented to her. Alma’s eyes ran over the words
I’m a cop
and then flashed up to his, still narrow and cynical.

             
“How?”

             
“Sam said I was in Florida after high school, right?”

             
She nodded.

             
“Well…” he let it hang, let the implication sink in. He didn’t think for a second that the Silver Plate café was bugged, but in his line of work, saying things out loud was as good as broadcasting them over the radio.

             
She looked skeptical, but some of the crinkles smoothed between her brows, her eyes widened, she nibbled at her lip. “Can you prove that?”             

             
Sean had anticipated that. He toed off his right shoe and bent to retrieve what he’d stowed there that morning: his official APD identification card. Alma took it and stared at it a long moment, turning it over and over, held it up to the light as if she were trying to discern whether or not it was a fake.

             
“Okay,” she sighed, returning the plastic card. “So you are.”

             
Sean replaced the ID and stepped back into his shiny loafer.

             
“Sam knew?”             

             
When he glanced up, he saw that her expression had softened further. There was an anxiety sparkling in her eyes; she wanted so badly to believe the best of her dead husband.

             
“Yeah,” he kept his voice soft. “He did. He was helping an old friend on the gig of a lifetime.”

             
“God, Sam…” she glanced away and blinked hard a few times. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

             
It was meant to be rhetorical, and Sean knew it. “I need to find Carlos,” he prodded.

             
“I haven’t seen him.” When her gaze came back to his, she’d dried up whatever tears had threatened. “Is he in danger?”

             
He shrugged.

             
“Shit. He’s such a dumbass.”

             
Maybe being around sad, widowed pregnant chicks made him soft, but Sean felt like throwing the girl a bone. He scratched out another note on her order pad.
He wanted out for you.

             
Alma rolled her eyes, but he saw the pain tweak her features. “Okay, so we’re both dumbasses.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Is that all you wanted?”

             
What, had he expected her to hug him after he’d just dumped this much information on her? “What I told you is completely - ”

             
“Confidential. I get it.”

             
Sean crumpled up the top sheet of her order pad and wrote his cell number on the second, folded it and passed it to her. “Call me if he shows up. Please. It’s important.”

             
“Sure.”

             
He waited until she’d pocketed his number and had made firm eye contact, affirmed her words with a sharp nod. He wanted to think her stupid as he watched her smooth her hands along the crown of her head, tucking in stray pieces of ponytail, but he couldn’t. She just didn’t seem clueless enough to have been blindly led by Sam; no, she’d known what he was capable of. Nothing he’d told her that night had come as too much of a shock. Like mob wives and prisoners’ old ladies, you always had to wonder about a woman who willingly loved a man she shouldn’t have. And in Alma’s case, who’d done it twice. Crazy, or maybe too bold for her own good. He wasn’t sure.

             
“Thanks, Alma.”

             
She shrugged.

             
“Congrats on the baby.”

             
Her smile was thin as he showed himself out of the break room, but her footsteps didn’t falter as she followed him back into the café.

             
Sean was glad for the notepad when he saw the ring of curious employees who’d gathered around the soda fountain. They all leapt as he and Alma reappeared, trying to look busy, bumping into one another in their haste to depart. It gave Sean a small amount of pleasure to know that he was capable of making people jump like that, but didn’t like being so conspicuous.

             
The scent of fresh-roasted coffee was almost enough to pull him down into a chair. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in hours, but he couldn’t stay. He’d run through a McDonald’s on his way back downtown. Home right now was the pullout sofa in the office space up above his faux real estate headquarters. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was functional.

And, he remembered with an internal smile, Aisha hadn’t been complaining when she’d passed out on it beside him two nights before. From under heavy-lidded eyes, she’d glared at him, threatening castration if he ever breathed a word of it to their respective supervisors.

It was setting up to be a cold night. As he pushed through the café’s door, the drastic change in temperature was shocking. The air smelled of ice and snow, and the wind was picking up, tumbling leaves and paper trash across the parking lot.

He paused on the sidewalk to dig his leather gloves out of his coat pocket, doing a visual sweep as he did so. Traffic was heavier down on the other end of the lot where a Belk department store was flanked by a Christian bookseller and home décor boutique. Here, in front of the café, the lanes between the cars were far less congested. A black sedan with halogen headlamps that cut through the dark like blue lasers came gliding up an aisle a few rows over, able to move faster in this less-crowded section of the shopping center.

Sean tugged on his second glove and nodded in appreciation for the car’s – it was a Mercedes, he could see the hood ornament now – quiet purr as it slowed and then whipped around the corner, accelerating along behind the vehicles parked in front of the café.

Wait…

The back of his neck prickled as he recognized both the black Benz and telltale way it was advancing in front of the restaurant.

As a cop, he’d learned that paranoia was often the correct line of thought. He heard the Mercedes’ engine growl as the accelerator was stomped. He saw the dark, yawning mouth of the car’s open passenger window.

His hand went for his gun and he dove to the sidewalk as the night exploded with the sound of automatic gunfire. The windows in the front of the café shattered with a deafening crash of glass, the shards raining down on the pavement around him.

And then all he heard was the staccato beat of the AK-47 and the terrified screams coming from inside the building.