The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(91)

“He said they’d given him no choice but to retire, now that they’d betrayed his trust in this manner.”

“No shit,” Cantor said. “His trust? Like they betrayed him?”

He laughed.

“I’m almost positive I read somewhere that karma is a bitch.”

“I saved the best part for last,” Jenny said. “Before Abrams left, he turned and pointed a finger at me, like he was still the most powerful guy in the room, and said that this wasn’t over between us.”

“Him and you,” Cantor said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And how did you respond to a terrifying threat like that?”

“I told him that he probably knew league rules a lot better than I did,” Jenny said, “but I was pretty sure that when you got your ass kicked the way he just had, they didn’t let you play overtime.”

They spoke for a few more minutes more about the scene in A. J. Frost’s suite after Abrams had left and about Jenny’s riding to the commissioner’s party with Frost and the rest of them in one of those giant-size party limos.

“Like we were all going to the prom together.”

Eventually she got around to asking Cantor how he was doing, the two of them not having spoken since she’d gotten to Miami. He told her that he was not just suspended without pay, he’d also been asked to turn over all his files relating to the deaths of Joe Wolf, Thomas Wolf, and John Gallo and ordered to stay away from the ongoing investigation being conducted by the new detectives assigned to the cases.

“So they’ve completely shut you down,” Jenny Wolf said.

“Well,” Cantor said, “they think they have.”

Then he asked her to check in with him later—he had another call coming in that he needed to take.





One Hundred Eight



CANTOR HAD BEEN WONDERING when he would call.

He’d been following him off and on for a couple of weeks and doing almost nothing to hide the fact that he was. He’d done the same thing with Danny Wolf and his brother Jack, just not as often. He wanted them all to know that he was still on their asses, maybe for no other reason than that he was going crazy with boredom.

But there was a through line, he knew, from the night Joe Wolf went into the water to the night John Gallo did the same, a line that ran directly through the Wolf brothers and the guy now speaking to him at the other end of the line.

“We need to talk,” Erik Mason said.

“Wait—I thought that was my line the last time we were together,” Cantor said to him.

“So now it’s my turn.”

“And what exactly do we need to talk about?”

“About how you’ve got me all wrong,” Mason said. “Me and my boss.”

“I assume you mean the boss who’s still alive.”

“When you hear what I have to say, you’ll understand why I’m calling you,” Mason said. “You’ll also know most of what you want to know.”

“I’m listening right now.”

“You know where Harris’ steak house is, right?” Mason said.

Where Jenny had walked out on him that night.

“I grew up not far from there. Russian Hill.”

“So you know there’s a lot across the street. I’ll meet you there at eleven o’clock. I’ll be driving Mr. Barr around before that. He’s got a couple of charity events he needs to attend.”

“Charity,” Cantor said, “always begins at the arms dealer’s home.”

Mason let that one go.

“Why not just meet at a bar someplace?” Cantor said.

“Because I don’t want to be seen with you, and you don’t want to be seen with me,” Mason said. “We’ll do this face-to-face, out in the open. Straight up.”

“As a practical matter, why should I trust you?”

“Because it’s like I told you that day outside the gym,” Mason said. “I didn’t kill anybody. And I’m not interested in busting your balls the way you’ve been busting mine by tailing me.”

“To be determined,” Cantor said. “On the ball-busting part, I mean.”

“Listen,” Mason said. “I’m doing us both a solid here. You find out things you want to know. And I get you off my ass in the process.”

“Not making any promises on the last part until I hear what you have to say.”

“And don’t wear a wire. I’ve got a gadget that’ll tell me if you are,” Mason said. “If you do wear one, all bets are off. All’s you’ll have done is waste my time, and yours.”

“Got it.”

“We’re doing this cop to cop,” Mason said.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Come alone. And remember, no wire.”

“No wire,” Cantor said.

He didn’t tell him what else he planned to wear.

Everything except a badge, of course.





One Hundred Nine



CANTOR WAS TEN MINUTES early. When he pulled past Harris’, he saw that it was closed. He couldn’t help but think back to the night when he’d been there with Jenny and she left him standing in front of the place before they’d both been busted for a date that turned into a train wreck.