The Inn(55)

“Back off.” I shoved him away. “I didn’t know you geniuses had an undercover operation going. Are you seriously posing as Cline’s gardeners? What are you doing, peering in his windows and watching him eat breakfast while you prune his rosebushes?”

“That’s as close as we’ve been able to get,” the woman said. “Cline handpicks his crew from the streets, and they sweep the house daily for bugs. He never interacts with anyone but his soldiers, and when they’re outside the house, they never talk shop.”

“We’ve sent in potential crew members, prostitutes, corrupt cops looking to get onto his payroll,” the man said. “We even flipped the guy’s cousin and sent him in for a friendly family visit wearing a wire. Nothing. This guy won’t even discuss his business with his own flesh and blood. Just to get in as gardeners, we had to construct foolproof fake identities, and all we get to listen to day in and day out is the shitty music his people play in the backyard while we pull up his weeds. We can’t get anywhere near Cline.”

“The drug boat was going to be our big payoff.” The woman poked me hard in the chest. “And you fucked it up.”

Nick, Malone, and Susan came running around the side of the bar; they must have sensed something was wrong. Nick and Malone were reaching for their guns, causing the two cops to reach for theirs, but I stepped between the two sides, my arms out. “Stop! Stop! It’s okay.”

“Who the hell are these pricks?” Nick got right up in the male cop’s face; they were nose to nose, as if they were two wolves fighting over food.

I explained the situation as both parties stood glaring at each other.

“If you knew the drug boat existed, why didn’t you just hit it?” Nick shook his head.

“We had a tracker in one of the tubs of product,” the female cop said. “We had another one on Cline’s car. We were waiting for the two to meet. We were going to jump on him then, but you idiots dumped it all into the sea.”

“We were trying to protect our town,” I said. “We want this guy out of here as much as you do.”

“Yeah, well, you just did him a favor,” the woman said, taking a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket and sticking one in her mouth. “And you—” She looked at Susan. “I’d have expected more from a fed. You let these guys go running around like vigilantes while you sit back and write stories about circus hamsters for the local rag?”

“Circus hamsters?” I looked at Susan.

She rolled her eyes. “A local kindergartner taught his hamster to walk a tightrope he made out of shoelaces. I needed a feel-good filler.” She turned to the undercovers. I could see a new tension in her face. “You shouldn’t have that information,” Susan said. “Who gave you approval to do a background check on me? I’m not a part of your investigation!”

“You became a part of it when this guy”—the woman gestured to me—“turned up and put a potted plant through the windshield of Cline’s car. We wanted to know who we were dealing with. Turns out it’s a bunch of renegade dumb-asses.”

“These dumb-asses have done more damage to Cline in two days than you have in months,” Susan said. “Take a look at yourselves before you go insulting them.”

The female cop came toward me. Though she had to look up at me, she was still intimidating, her features hard and taut.

“Stay off Cline.” She poked me again. “Or you’ll find yourself sharing a jail cell with him.”





CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR





SIMBO COULDN’T BELIEVE it had come to this. He sat on the edge of the motel bed and looked at his hands. They were still trembling. This was not how it was supposed to go. He’d been with Cline for three years and never slipped, never gotten himself tangled up in a felony arrest that would be worth betraying his boss to squeeze out of. Cline had made it clear from the beginning: If you go down for serious time, you’re dead. It didn’t matter if Simbo decided to trade Cline in. The man was going to come for him in any case.

The police had come after him, of course. Within minutes of Simbo arriving at the hospital with a concussion due to the door inside the Inn opening in his face, there were two cops standing at the end of his bed. They were Boston undercovers who looked familiar, for some reason, a man and a woman with the keys to his handcuffs. Simbo had told them what they wanted to hear, made them promises, waited until their backs were turned, and split. He wouldn’t turn Cline in. Maybe that would help when the man came for him.

Maybe he’d make an exception as he had before.

Cline never hired users. It was another one of his policies. Simbo went to the filthy motel bathroom now and stared at himself in the cracked mirror, tried to breathe through the nausea. He remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on Cline, a face in the back seat of a shiny black Escalade watching through the window as Simbo beat a homeless man half to death with a tire iron. The man had come for Simbo’s stash, which Simbo had spent the whole day getting, kneeling between the legs of men in business suits in expensive cars, using his body and his mouth because he had nothing else to offer. Simbo had thought Cline was just another one of these men indulging their secret desires on the way home to the wife and kiddies. But instead, Cline had been the one offering something—a way out, a use for the violence and fury Simbo was so accustomed to.