The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(43)
Jennifer texted me with directions to her new place. She’d moved out of Silverado Ranch, trading her anonymous house in the burbs for digs deeper in the city, not far from the airport. The trail led me down roads lined with strip clubs and foreclosures, dirty white concrete and barbed-wire fencing. A terraced three-story tenement squatted at the tail of a dead-end street, and I had enough street smarts to read the graffiti on the walls: this wasn’t friendly territory for a man without a tribe.
I rumbled up slow in the Barracuda and got flagged down by a teenager with the eyes of a Vietnam vet. He wore yellow and brown, Cinco Calles colors. Just like the two guys loitering by the tenement door, the other one standing watch on the corner, and the three or four playing spotter from balconies and broken windows.
“What you need, man?” he asked, giving me a nod.
“Here to see Jennifer.”
He squinted, sizing me up. “A’ight, you wait right here. Put it in park, okay?”
I obliged and kept my hands on the wheel so nobody felt antsy. I knew Jen used these guys as runners and occasional muscle, but that didn’t mean they knew me. He walked over to the guys on the door, and one ran inside. I waited.
A couple of minutes later, he jogged back over. “Okay, you’re cool. Go up to the third floor. Guy there is gonna scope you, make sure you’re not packin’ anything you shouldn’t be. You check out, he’ll tell you what room she’s in today.”
Today? I glanced up at the tenement and wondered how many apartments she was renting.
“Park your car right there,” he said, pointing to an open spot between a pair of rusted-out junkers. “I’ll keep an eye out, make sure nobody messes with it.”
I slipped him a folded twenty. I didn’t have to, he was on Jennifer’s payroll, but it never hurts to make a good impression. Just past the front door, under the wary eyes of the thugs keeping watch, I felt like I’d stepped into a sauna. No air-conditioning in the hallways and most of the windows were broken and boarded over, leaving the tenement to marinate in sweat and decay. The air smelled like liver and onions, and a slow bass beat thumped from behind flimsy wall paneling. I took the stairs up to the top, where another guard was waiting for me with a black plastic wand in his hand.
I knew the routine and held my arms out in a T position while he ran the wand over me from neck to toe and listened to its popping and squealing. Finally, satisfied, he nodded his head down the hall.
“Three-oh-five,” he grunted, then went back to sitting on a folding chair and reading a rumpled copy of Car and Driver.
I could have found my way there by following the music and the sound of raucous laughter. It wasn’t even noon, but Jennifer had a party in full swing. A roomful of people I’d never seen before were shaking it on dirty, splintered floorboards and draped out on threadbare sofas, half of them with their lips either wrapped around a freshly rolled joint or pressed against another partygoer. Jennifer spotted me through the haze of smoke and waved, walking over.
“My new place!” she shouted over the music. “You like it?”
“Pretty sure I don’t!” I shouted back with a smile. “Somewhere we can talk?”
She tugged my sleeve and led me into the kitchen, where we could both hear ourselves think.
“Why,” I said, “are you throwing a party at ten in the morning?”
She laughed and waved a hand, giggly. I was feeling a little fuzzy myself just passing through.
“Aw, sugar, that’s whatcha call the ‘new normal.’ Starts whenever people wake up, ends when the last one drops. After a while, you don’t even notice it. I was gettin’ too hands-off living out in the burbs.”
“Considering we’re under federal investigation,” I said, “isn’t hands-off a good thing?”
“Not when I can take the bull by the horns. This building? I own it. I’ve been working with the Cinco Calles for years, but now they’re full partners. Gives ’em something to fight for.”
“The guards, the lookouts, changing rooms from day to day,” I said, figuring it out. “You turned this place into a fortress.”
“You always were a quick one, sugar. You know how paranoid Nicky’s being? Well, if he decides to take me out of the picture, he’s gonna have the fight of his life. Not just with the Cincos, neither. Look out there. You see the big guy in the blue and black? He’s with the Bishops. They’re not scrappin’ with the Cincos anymore, not since I sat ’em all down at a table together.”
Something about that nagged at the back of my brain, and I scoured my memory until a bulb lit up.
“The Bishops? Don’t they guard some of Nicky’s warehouses?”
“Sure do,” Jennifer said with a sly smile. “For now, anyway.”
Twenty-One
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. Not under any circumstances. Jennifer, you are not going to war with Nicky Agnelli.”
She had the grace to pretend to be hurt, but not enough to keep from smiling.
“What? Little ol’ me? Thought never even crossed my mind. All I’m saying is if he wants to come at me, I won’t make it easy for him. And when he tries, he might find out he doesn’t have as many friends as he thinks he does.”
I knew that tone of voice, and I knew I wasn’t going to budge her. The best I could do was shake my head and say, “Just…be careful, okay? Don’t push for a fight if you don’t have to.”