Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(77)

“It’s true?” Cheese whispered.

I gave Cheese the answer in my dead gaze.

“Bubba’s gotta know I had nothing to do with him getting piped.”

I looked at Angie. She sighed, looked at Cheese, and then down at the small shelf below the glass.

“Patrick,” Cheese said, and all the pseudo-Superfly intonations had left his voice, “you have to let Bubba know.”

“Know what?” Angie said.

“That I had nothing to do with this.”

Angie smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, sure, Cheese. Sure.”

He whacked the glass with the back of his hand. “You listen to me! I had nothing to do with this.”

“Bubba doesn’t see it that way, Cheese.”

“So, tell him.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because it’s true.”

“I don’t buy that, Cheese.”

Cheese pulled his chair forward, squeezed the phone so hard I expected it to crack in half. “Fucking listen to me, you piece of shit. That psychotic thinks I piped him, I might as well shiv some guard, make sure I stay locked in solitary for life. That man is a walking fucking death sentence. Now you tell him—”

“Fuck you, Cheese.”

“What?”

I said it again, very slowly.

Then I said, “I came to you two days ago and begged for the life of a four-year-old girl. Now she’s dead. Because of you. And you want mercy? I’m going to tell Bubba you apologized for having him piped.”

“No.”

“Tell him you said you were sorry. You’ll make it up to him somehow.”

“No.” Cheese shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

“Watch me, Cheese.”

I took the phone away from my ear and reached out to hang it up.

“She’s not dead.”

“What?” Angie said.

I put the phone back to my ear.

“She’s not dead,” Cheese said.

“Who?” I said.

Cheese rolled his eyes, tilted his head back in the direction of the guard standing watch by the door.

“You know who.”

“Where is she?” Angie said.

Cheese shook his head. “Give me a few days.”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice.” He looked back over his shoulder, then leaned in close to the window and whispered into the phone. “Someone will contact you. Trust me. I got to clear some things first.”

“Bubba’s very angry,” Angie said. “And he has friends.” She glanced around the prison walls.

“No shit,” Cheese said. “His pals, the fucking Twoomey brothers, just got dropped for a bank job in Everett. They’ll be rotating in here next week for processing. So stop trying to scare me. I’m scared. Okay? But I need time. Call off the dog. I’ll send a message to you, I promise.”

“How do you know for sure she’s alive?”

“I know. Okay?” He gave us a rueful smile. “You two don’t have a clue what’s really going on. Do you know that?”

“We know it now,” I said.

“You let Bubba know I’m clean when it comes what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone,” he sang.

I leaned back in my chair, studied him for a minute. He looked sincere, but Cheese is good at that. He’s made a career out of knowing exactly which things can hurt people most and then identifying the people who want those things. Need them. He knows how to dangle bags of heroin in front of addicted women, make them blow strangers for it, and then only give them half of what he promised. He knows how to dangle half-truths in front of cops and DAs and get them to sign on the dotted line, before he delivers a facsimile of what he originally promised.

“I need more,” I said.

The guard rapped the door and said, “Sixty seconds, Inmate Olamon.”

“More? The fuck you need?”

“I want the girl,” I said. “I want her now.”

“I can’t tell—”

“Fuck you.” I banged on the glass. “Where is she, Cheese? Where is she?”

“If I tell you, they’ll know it came from me, and I’ll be dead by the morning.” He backed up as he spoke, palms-up in front of him, terror filling his fat face.

“Give me something hard. Something I can follow up, then.”

“Independent corroboration,” Angie said.

“Independent what?”

“Thirty seconds,” the guard said.

“Give us something, Cheese.”

Cheese looked over his shoulder desperately, then at the walls holding him in, the thick glass between us.

“Come on,” he begged.

“Twenty seconds,” Angie said.

“Don’t. Look—”

“Fifteen.”

“No, I—”

“Tick-tock,” I said. “Tick-tock.”

“The bitch’s boyfriend,” Cheese said. “You know?”

“He blew town,” Angie said.

“Then find him,” Cheese hissed. “It’s all I got. Ask him what his part was the night the kid vanished.”