Into the Fire(99)
That’s how you did it.
You nibbled.
Building inspections would be less stringent by 3 percent. The cupboards of battered-women’s shelters would grow a touch more bare. Police officers would patrol with last year’s model of Kevlar vest. Everyone would still get by.
But she and her team would get by a little easier than everyone else.
Unfortunately, the time for business as usual had passed. The game had changed.
“Gentlemen,” she said.
The men muted as if she’d punched a button on a remote.
“Benjamin Bedrosov was killed earlier tonight,” she said.
They sagged in their chairs, dread tugging them downward. After they caught their breath, speculation erupted. “What’s that mean about our holdings?”
“How are we gonna keep the operation together?”
“Did the same guy off him?”
“Not inside Twin Towers.”
“Must’ve paid someone off.”
“What’s this guy’s fucking reach?”
The Steel Woman lifted a manicured hand. The boys silenced once more.
“Our contingency plans?” she asked, eyeing the heavyset gentleman in his usual seat halfway down the left side of the table.
Fitz registered her look. She’d anticipated as much. As an assistant officer in charge at LAPD’s Criminal Investigation Division, he would have attuned himself to nonverbal signals.
He also had access to all order of disgraced former operators and off-the-books weaponry.
He nodded, tugged at the sallow folds of his jowls. “I have a new team in place,” he said, sounding a bit ragged. “And we’re moving on it.”
“And the contingency plans to our contingency plans?”
At the mention of this, nervousness stirred the room.
Fitz said, “I wanted to talk to you about that—”
“We don’t have to do anything,” she said soothingly. “Not now and probably not ever. It’s a last resort. We just need to lay the theoretical groundwork.”
Like so many, he required encouragement to do what was difficult but necessary.
He rubbed his forehead, clearly agitated. “Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll look into it myself.”
“We’re decided, then.” She clapped her hands together, a rare show of cheer. Now she had to refocus their lizard brains from risk to reward. “I’ve begun the process of making inquiries for Bedrosov’s replacement,” she said, moving breezily to the next action item. “Which means that our affairs call for a bit of restructuring.” She reached for the blocky phone and tapped the intercom button to the side of the keypad. “Rolando. We’re ready.”
Rolando entered in a waft of cologne, a steel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
The handcuff was of course absurd, a bit of testosterone-intensive stage direction she included for the men.
She’d assembled the papers herself as always and locked them into the briefcase prior to the meeting. For all Rolando knew, they were take-out menus.
She extracted a set of keys from her pocket, freed her daft assistant from the manacles, and waited for him to exit. The door sucked closed behind him with a certain heft, completing the soundproof seal.
Only then did she unlock the briefcase and click open the titanium snaps. She distributed the latest operating agreements to the appropriate parties around the table.
They sipped coffee, tea, and sparkling water.
And they signed.
51
A Troubled Son of a Bitch
Evan drove through the thin light of earliest dawn back to Max Merriweather. As he drew up on the Lincoln Heights house, he noted a creamy white Jaguar parked in the driveway and a dose of adrenaline hit his weary bloodstream. The car’s door was open, and as Evan eased past to park out of sight, he noted a silver-haired man in a Fila velour tracksuit prowling across the front lawn, lifting his tennis shoes high with each step to free them from the sucking mud.
In the man’s other hand was a gun.
Leaving the truck, Evan jogged up behind the man, who stood scraping the bottoms of his shoes on the lip of the cracked concrete porch. He held the gun uncomfortably away from his body, as if concerned it might nip him. He smelled powerfully of Bengay and gave off no aggressive energy that Evan could discern.
Before Evan could address him, the man rapped on the door and shouted, “Whoever’s in there, I’m giving you fair warning to desert the premises.”
Evan said, “Excuse me.”
The man swung around, an uncocked Smith & Wesson .44 Special flopping in his loose grip. Evan could see through the frame into the empty chambers of the cylinder. An orange tint of surface rust on the decades-old revolver said it was a sock-drawer gun.
“Don’t point that at me.” Evan’s headache was gnawing on his skull with a vengeance, and it was all he could do to keep the undercurrent of rage from his voice.
“This is my property,” the man said. He had a Bluetooth wireless bud in his right ear, turned off.
“I understand,” Evan said. “But you don’t want to point a gun at me. Even if it is unloaded.”
The man looked at the gun, sighed, and lowered it. “I hate this thing anyway.”
“What are you doing here?”