Into the Fire(65)
Evan said, “You’ve amended your position on the capitalization of ‘kay’ in text messages?”
“No. Lowercase ‘kay’ is still an atrocity. But this is almost as important. Are you ready?”
He stood naked in the bathroom, the blue-purple splotches on his skin drawing his eye in the mirror. “Bated breath.”
“So Grant’s files? I’ve been whaling away at them since, like, forever o’clock, right? And then I noticed something super un-copacetic.”
The shower was still running, the steam beckoning. Evan couldn’t wait to get his battered body to the tiled bench inside and sprawl out as if he were in a Muscovite banya. “Which was?”
“Well, it occurred to me—’cuz I’m a friggin’ genius—to check the memory. It shows four gigs on the thumb drive, but all of Grant’s files only add up to a little more than three gigs.”
This time he failed to keep impatience from his voice. “Which means?”
“Dude! Hidden file! C’mon, X. So I right-clicked and ran as administrator to look for the removable file. Then I typed in ‘attrib-s-h-r s d’ and wa-la—the hidden files all came visible.”
Dread flickered to life, augmenting the throbbing at his temples. He sensed that the thread of this discovery would somehow lead back to that mysterious smile Petro had summoned when Evan had told him it was over now for Max.
In killing Petro he thought he’d cut the head off the snake.
Yet what if he wasn’t fighting a snake at all?
But a hydra.
Sever one head and two more grow.
His voice sounded tight even to his own ears. “What’d you find, Joey?”
“More wire transfers, more bank accounts. And a key to the code names for more low-level scumbuckets Petro had in place. The dirty management at his bank and the workers at the front companies—even the bagmen who courier the cash back and forth from the dogfights.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously, still trying to slow the thrum of his heartbeat. “Good work. We can get all that stuff to the cops.”
“Yeah,” she said. “About that…”
He reached into the stall and turned off the shower, a growing void hollowing out his insides. The sudden silence was unsettling. “What, Joey?”
“Two of the names who took payoffs? Ignacio Nu?ez and Paul Brust? Are dirty cops. Looks like Petro flipped them nine weeks ago, just before Grant’s investigation started. And guess where they work?”
Already Evan was yanking on his pants, flinging his shirt over his head, his feet slipping on the shower mat, sending the bandage rolls spinning. He fought the phone back to his face in time to hear her say, “Hollywood Station.”
* * *
Max drifted through the Morongo Casino, his head delightfully swimmy from a few beers. An orchestral version of “Bad to the Bone” piped through the speakers, accompanied by the clang and din of slot machines. Carnival chaos reigned all around—spinning cherries, flashing coins dumping into payout trays, balls pinging around roulette wheels.
Max cradled a brimming bucket of quarters to his chest, each step jarring a few free.
Up ahead Violet occupied her same mythical stool, but this time she faced away, a strand of silken black hair wound around her finger. Her sandals lay on the floor where she’d kicked free of them, one slender bare foot resting on the base of the stool beside her, the stool that was his to occupy.
He drifted up behind her and said, “Can I sit here?”
She didn’t turn even now, facing rigidly away, and he felt an uptick in his chest, tendrils of fear winding themselves through his ribs.
“If you’re smart,” she said, “you’ll get as far away from me as possible.”
Slowly she turned, bloodred lips pronounced against alabaster skin, her eyes dark and impenetrable. She wore a white blouse, gauzy and loose, and as he looked on in horror, crimson began to seep through the fabric above her wrists, spreading up her arms.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” she said.
Max came awake with a jolt at the hand shaking his shoulder. Coiled in the plastic molded chair, he took a moment to get his bearings.
Hollywood Community Police Station. Lobby. Two faces leaning in over him, one white, one brown—officers wearing slacks and white button-ups with suspenders, badges dangling around their necks.
Max pressed himself upright and ground at his eye with the heel of his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “Must’ve drifted off.”
The homeless man and the young woman with the black eye were gone, replaced by a few other ragged folks spread among the chairs, looking at him.
The taller of the two men straightened up, firming his LAPD baseball cap on his head. “Max Merriweather? I’m Detective Nu?ez, and this is Detective Brust. You said you had some evidence in your cousin’s case?”
“Yeah, I do.” Max dug the zip drive from his pocket and wagged it proudly between thumb and forefinger.
Their smiles flashed in concert, as if someone had flipped a switch. Brust turned and nodded at the desk officer, who hit the button to buzz open the security door.
“Excellent, Mr. Merriweather,” Detective Nu?ez said. “Why don’t you follow us back right this way?”