Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(41)

“What, you’re gonna kill my family, too? Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

“Then what are you here for?” Gary sneered. “Because you just assaulted a goddamn Metro cop, in his own home. You know what that means? Do you even understand what you’ve done?”

He was so eager to pin a crime on me, I decided to let him have one.

“Your pal Carl Holt was a homicide cop, too, right up until I arranged a closed-casket funeral for him.” I fixed him with a glare. “Your badge means shit to me. Now answer the question.”

He slumped, putting his back against the wall. “No. Mona and Lindsey aren’t here. They aren’t…in my life anymore.”

“Good. Progress. Now we’re communicating. Let me get right to the point.” I tugged the DVD from my pocket and slid it across the floor. “That’s a copy, for you to watch at your leisure. It’s a video of your little meeting at the Mormon Fort today.”

I could hear the breath catch in his throat.

“How did you—”

“You were talking to one of my people, not Lauren’s. We got the whole thing on video. Crystal-clear audio, unmistakably your face, and all those lovely little incriminating statements. You’re bent, Gary. You’re as bent as your buddy Holt was, but at least he only whored his badge out to one customer. You’re taking cash from Sullivan while working for Lauren Carmichael, and using Agent Black’s task force to do it.”

“It’s not—it’s not like that,” he said, his voice small.

“No? Then tell me what it’s like.”

“Lauren didn’t send me to join the Redemption Choir. I was already a member. I was a beat cop, back in Denver, when I met Sullivan. It was right after my wife walked out on me. See, she didn’t know what I was. Not until she walked in and saw my real face in the bathroom mirror. Five years of marriage, total self-control, never let on, but I slip once…that’s what it’s like for us, Faust. You don’t understand. You can’t. The evil’s always bubbling just under the skin, wanting to come out.

“That was the last time I saw my wife or my daughter. I got my divorce papers by mail. Didn’t contest it. Sullivan trusts me, I think, because the same thing happened to him.”

“Hold it, he’s married?” I said. This was news to me.

Gary shook his head. “Was. Human wife. He was trying to go native, see. He figured she was ready to learn the truth. She wasn’t. She freaked, came at him with a kitchen knife, and he hit her a little too hard trying to defend himself. Snapped her neck.”

Given what I knew about the way Sullivan treated women, I had my doubts that Gary had the whole story. I believed he believed it, though.

“He wanted somebody closer to the West Coast,” Gary said, “to keep an eye on things for the Choir and lay groundwork for expanding our operations. I was originally supposed to land in Los Angeles, but this was the only place I could get a transfer to.”

“You aren’t Pinfeather,” I mused. I had thought he might be, but the timing was all wrong. According to Caitlin, the Night-Blooming Flowers’ super-agent was a recent arrival. Gary had been working in Vegas for years.

“Who’s that?”

I shook my head. “Never mind. So let me guess: you were out here spinning your wheels, and Carl Holt introduced you to Lauren Carmichael.”

“It’s a complicated story.”

“That’s all right,” I said, holding the gun on him. “I’ve got time.”





Twenty-One

Gary seemed to be thinking about how he wanted to phrase it, and I didn’t blame him. In his shoes, I’d be nervous too.

“While Carl was, um—”

“Covering up murders for Lauren and her crew.”

He nodded. “He tried to get me on board. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Lauren said she didn’t need me for anything hard-core, just to keep tabs on the local cambion, which I was already doing, and report back to her.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t understand either,” Gary said. “Not at first. Then Sullivan rolled into town with twenty of his best friends and told me I was officially reactivated. Suddenly I had two bosses, and there’s no way I could tell Sullivan I’d been informing on the local cambion. I’d be a traitor. I’ve seen what he does to traitors.”

“Three bosses, once Agent Black came into the picture,” I said.

“Yeah. That was Lauren’s doing. She pulled strings with some senator to get a joint task force rolling after Nicky Agnelli’s gang, and pulled even more strings to put me on it. That’s what she does, Faust. I never wanted any of this, but she just pulled me deeper and deeper…”

I felt for him, I really did. Another time, another place, we could have had a drink together. Right now, though, I didn’t have room for empathy. I needed him scared.

“Save the sob story,” I snapped, lifting the gun a little to remind him it was there. “You made your own bed. Do what I tell you and you might live long enough to climb out of it. Why did Lauren send you to steal Father Alvarez’s manuscript?”

“Change of plans. You’ve seen the Enclave, right?”