Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(40)

“You stupid bastard,” she hissed. “What, you remember me from the protest? Lauren sent me there. It’s called undercover work. I was trying to chat up the real protesters to find out if they were planning to vandalize the construction site, and you hauled me out and nearly put my arm in a sling!”

He blinked, stunned.

Pixie leaned closer. “You think you’re the only informant on her payroll? You think you’re the only person pulling strings for her in this town? You’re small-fry, Kemper. Small. Fry. You’d better remember that, or your next job is gonna be serving fries.”

I sat back down in front of the screen and looked over at Jennifer, while Gary muttered a muffled apology.

“She’s good,” I said.

“Told ya.” Jennifer tapped the side of her nose. “I got a nose for these things.”

We both high-fived Pixie when she got back in the van. On the monitors, Gary drove away, off to lay low for a while.

“We got it,” Pixie said, checking the console. “Should be a crisp, clean recording. What’s next?”

“Next,” I said, “I sit down with our friend Gary and teach him the facts of life.”

? ? ?

Finding Gary’s home address wasn’t hard for Pixie, and thanks to her quick thinking, we knew he’d be there faking a bout of food poisoning.

“Sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” Jennifer asked.

“Guy’s a Metro detective with a lot of juice, not even counting his FBI and DEA pals. If this goes south, nobody but me is taking a fall for it. Besides, you’re the insurance.”

I asked Pixie to double-check her research when we got near the address. The detective lived a little north of the airport, in a neighborhood even I wouldn’t walk through at night on my own. We zeroed in on a three-story apartment building with salmon-pink stucco walls and a couple of overflowing Dumpsters that hadn’t been emptied in a good month or two.

“Positive,” Pixie said. “This is his address on record. Second floor, apartment 26.”

“Maybe he’s frugal?” Jennifer said, squinting at the second-floor windows. Tacked-up sheets passed for curtains here and there. Other windows bristled with cheap AC units.

I picked up a freshly burned DVD in a plastic jewel case and wedged it in my hip pocket. “That or a crackhead. I’m going to have a chat. You two get the other copies squirreled away. Don’t think it’ll be necessary, but just in case.”

They left me at the curb. I circled around the apartment building. The side door sported a cracked window covered in bent and rusted wire mesh. The doorknob jiggled in my hand, barely hanging on by a couple of half-stripped screws, and I let myself in. A rank odor clung to the back stairway, a mingling of cooked onions, liver, and rotting trash.

The problem with paying someone like Gary Kemper a surprise visit was that you never knew how he was going to react. If I knocked on the door and said hello, maybe he’d stand still long enough to listen to reason. Or maybe, since he already believed I was gunning for his head, he’d pull his service piece and blast me on the spot. Too risky to chance it. I listened at his door, catching the faint echoes of what sounded like a basketball game on a tinny television.

I knocked on the door, then stood off to the left, out of the peephole’s line of sight. Footsteps shuffled up on the other side. I heard him there, standing still, deciding.

The sound of a pistol sliding out of a leather shoulder holster makes a distinctive rustle. Once you’ve heard it, you always recognize it. Metal rattled on the other side as he undid the security chain. I waited until the clicking of the deadbolt, and the slow turn of the knob, to pivot on my heel and give the door a vicious kick.

The door swung in, hard, smacking into Gary and sending him stumbling a step backward. He needed a second to recover, and I didn’t let him have it. I barreled into his apartment, sweeping my arm out to knock his gun hand to one side and driving a balled-up fist into his gut. He threw his weight forward, hooking his free arm around my neck and pulling me to the floor with him. We wrestled for the gun on the rough hardwood floor, rolling, kicking at each other. He rabbit-punched me, hard, and I curled an arm in front of me to ward him off. Then I drove my knee up between his legs. He yelped, the pain enough to loosen his grip on the gun.

I grabbed the piece, a blue chrome snub-nosed nine millimeter, and rolled to one side. He was about to launch himself at me when I stuck the barrel in his face. He made like a statue.

“Calm,” I panted. “Down.”

He stared at me wide eyed as we both caught our breath, sitting a few feet apart on his living room floor. The apartment wasn’t as bad inside as it looked on the outside. Shabby-cozy, a one-bedroom nest with a Denver Broncos pennant on the wall over a half-empty liquor cabinet. Given the two empty bottles of Grand Marnier on his kitchen counter and the dirty shot glass sitting on the end table next to his threadbare couch, I had a hunch where a lot of his disposable income went.

Photos over the television caught my eye. Gary at a park with a younger woman and a cherub-faced toddler. A wedding shot, minus the kid. Gary pushing the little girl on a swing. I nodded toward the pictures.

“Gary, I’m going to need an honest answer from you. Is somebody going to walk in on us while we’re talking? Because that’s going to complicate things.”

If looks could kill, the revulsion in his eyes would have stopped my heart cold.