B009QTK5QA EBOK (11 page)

“He did?”

“Yes,” Codaselli said, smiling. “But I was fairly certain he was just saying that to get the money.”

“So, why’d you give it to him then?”

He brushed again at his knee. “Wishful thinking, I suppose. I was hoping there was a slight chance he’d come back.”

“Come back?”

“Our deal was that he’d be back the next day,” he explained. “We’d start laying the groundwork for his succession. I would’ve shared with him my cancer diagnosis. And he would’ve learned that I don’t have much longer. I knew it was a foolish wish at the time, but that didn’t stop me from making it. I could care less about the money. I just wanted my son around.”

I leaned back in the sofa. He’d gotten hit with a double whammy. Losing his son and his future at the same time. Not an easy thing to swallow for anyone.

“So, what are you doing about it?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t believe you’re just letting it go,” I said. “Given all that is on your plate, I’m not buying that you’re just accepting the fact that he’s gone. You may not have your people out searching for him day and night, but I can’t believe that if this matters to you in the way you say it does, that you’re just accepting this as a done deal and letting your son walk.”

Codaselli pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked tired, fatigued. His clothes hung loosely on his body. He didn’t seem near death, but it was easy to see the toll everything was taking on him.

“You’re correct again, Mr. Tyler,” he said. “Someone made a mistake.”

“I’m not following you.”

He leaned forward and set his elbows on his knees. “Someone thought they could blackmail me to get to my son.”

TWENTY-SIX

Codaselli’s eyes hardened and for the first time, I saw a man who was absolutely capable of running a crime organization and doing the things necessary to stay on top of that food chain.

“They obviously didn’t know who I was,” Codaselli said. “The money that my son borrowed from me, they claimed it was owed to them by the girl. They came to shake me down.”

“Bad move,” I said.

The corner of Codaselli’s mouth turned upward. “Very. I did not take kindly to their attitude nor their demands. Nor their threats toward my son.”

I didn’t say anything.

“John was able to convince them that they’d made an egregious error in judgment,” he said, the half-smile still on his face. “Isn’t that right, John?”

“Yes, sir,” John said from the conference table.

“John was able to persuade them that they needed to
…
amend their goals.”

“Amend their goals?”

“We changed their employment status,” he said. “A quick call to their employer and they were seemingly happy to come work for me.”

I nodded. “Got it. And what are they doing now for you?”

“Looking for Marc,” he said. “I’ve told them that if they fail to find him, it will be extremely difficult for them to find new jobs. Because they will be dead.”

I glanced at Isabel, then back to Codaselli. “Stevie and Boyd.”

“Are those their names, John?” Codaselli asked over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir.”

“There you go,” Codaselli said. “You’re apparently familiar with them.”

“We are.”

“Are they looking for Marc?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Not sure how competent they are, though.”

“Stevie’s competent,” John said. “Boyd is not. He’s expendable.”

Codaselli raised an eyebrow. “Fair assessment?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“So, perhaps our interests have dovetailed here,” Codaselli said. “And perhaps you may be more competent than our new employees.”

I had no doubt that Isabel and I were more competent than Stevie and Boyd, but I wasn’t sure that meant we needed to align ourselves with Codaselli, especially if Marc didn’t want to be found by his father. As an adult, he had the right to not be found and I wouldn’t force anything on him.

“I’d like to let Stevie know that we’ve met with you,” I said. “And that he needs to share any info he has.”

“John will ensure that is not a problem,” he said.

John nodded behind him.

“But I can’t promise the return of your son,” I said. “He’s an adult. I can’t compel him in any way to return home.”

“I understand that,” Codaselli said. “If you locate him, I’d just like you to relay the
…
information.”

“About your illness.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “And that I don’t care that he took the money or that he won’t take over.” He cleared his throat, stared at me with clear eyes. “I’d just like to see him before I die.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“What the hell just happened in there?” Isabel asked incredulously.

“What do you mean?”

We were back in her car, headed back toward Linden Hills.

“I mean, did we just agree to help that guy?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Not really.”

“Sounded like it.”

“I told him we couldn’t promise to get Marc back to him. He’s a legal adult. Marc doesn’t wanna go back, he doesn’t have to.”

She shifted her hands on the steering wheel. “You think he won’t try to get him to come back?”

“I don’t know what he’ll try to do. We’re trying to find Marc and that’s all I’m worried about.”

“You don’t care what happens to Marc if we find him?”

“I care, but there’s not much I can do about it,” I said. “I won’t force him to do anything. He has to make his own choices. But you want to find him to make sure he’s okay. Right?”

She hesitated. “Yeah.”

“Because if you don’t, then we can drop it right now,” I said. “I’m helping you. Not Marc’s father. You don’t want to find him? Then we can stop right now. But I get the sense that you’re worried about him. So, I’m looking for him to help you because I said I would.”

“I am worried about him,” she said, sighing. “He’s not terribly savvy. I don’t think he inherited his father’s
…
whatever.”

I nodded. “Okay. Then we’ll look for him. It’s not going to be difficult.”

“No?”

I shook my head. “No. We’ve got two things now we didn’t have before.”

“What two things?”

“We know he’s with a girl and we know Stevie and Boyd aren’t a threat. To him or us. And we can use them.”

She hit the blinker and glanced in her rearview window. “I guess.”

“Not I guess. You need to start asking the kids on the street that you’re tight with what they know. Tonight. Don’t wait. It’s a small world. Someone will know something.”

“They don’t like being questioned.”

“They trust you,” I said. “Get them to talk.”

“I don’t like exploiting them like that.”

I shook my head and rapped my knuckles on the window. “Leverage.”

“What?”

“Use what you have,” I said. “You have their trust. You aren’t exploiting them. Get off the high horse. You need information and they can probably give it to you. You aren’t using it to hurt them. You’re using it to help Marc. You need to realize that you need to focus when you’re looking for someone. If people’s feelings get hurt? Oh well. Is that worth making sure Marc is okay? I’d say yes.”

Isabel’s mouth set in a firm line and we drove back to the apartment in silence. I knew she was irritated with me—thought I didn’t understand. Her problem was that she didn’t get that I understood better than anyone she’d probably ever meet. I understood that people’s feelings got hurt. I understood that leveraging someone wasn’t always the most comfortable feeling in the world. But I also understood what it was like to not find answers.

I knew which was worse.

She pulled into the parking lot at the apartments and cut the engine. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll ask around tonight,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Good.”

“But you can’t be there,” she said. “They won’t talk if you’re there. Doesn’t matter that they’ve seen you with me. They’ll clam up and disappear.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “I wasn’t planning on being there with you anyway.”

“You weren’t?”

I shook my head.

“Where are you going to be?”

“Talking with our new friends,” I said. “I’ll need Stevie’s number.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Stevie and Boyd showed up at the diner exactly at eight. The snow was falling again, but lighter than the previous night and it blew around on the streets like baby powder. I sat in a booth near the back and they both approached, tentatively.

Stevie lifted his chin and pulled off his knit cap, exposing thick curly brown hair. “Hey.”

I nodded. “Hey.” I motioned to the other side of the booth. “Sit.”

Stevie slid in first and shed his wool coat as he did so. Boyd piled into the booth after him, his ugly face frowning at me.

“First rule,” I said, pointing at Boyd. “You don’t speak unless I speak to you.”

“Hey, man, I don’t
…
” he said, his face screwing up with irritation.

“You’re already breaking the rule,” I said, cutting him off. “You wanna know how Codaselli described you today?”

He squinted at me.

“Expendable,” I said. “Which means that scary fucker Anchor will waste you in a heartbeat. You really wanna give me a reason to call him and tell him you’re being a pain in the ass?”

Boyd’s mouth closed and his shoulders sagged.

“That’s better,” I said.

“Am I expendable, too?” Stevie asked.

“You let me worry about that,” I said, choosing not to share the truth with him. I didn’t want him to relax.

He ran a hand through his thick hair, then nodded.

The waitress brought a pot of coffee, asked if we wanted food, and I declined for all of us.

I refilled my mug. “First thing you need to know is that if we find Marc, I think he’ll let you both walk clean. I honestly don’t think he gives a crap about either of you. I might be wrong, but it didn’t seem that way to me.”

They both exhaled.

“But we gotta find him to make that happen,” I said, looking at Stevie. “So, I wanna know everything. From the beginning.”

Stevie reached for the pot and filled his mug. “Alright. We work for a guy named Gino Miller. Used to, anyway. Marc borrowed money from him.”

“He’s a loan shark or something?”

Stevie shrugged. “Or something. He does a lot of crap, but yeah. He does a lot of that. Decent terms, but you gotta pay him back. On time.”

“Or?”

“Or shit happens.”

I sipped at the coffee, the steam rising into my nose.

“So, Marc borrowed and missed his payment,” Stevie said. “Gino went nuts, told us to go find him.”

“You guys are his muscle?”

Boyd shifted in the booth, folding his arms across his chest.

Stevie shrugged. “I guess. He tells us to do stuff, we do it. It’s a job.”

I remembered Isabel telling me that she’d helped them both, but that they were almost always up to no good. They were like a lot of runaways. They didn’t believe in themselves, didn’t believe they had any other skills than the ones they’d used to survive on the streets. Getting help didn’t necessarily mean getting out.

“So, you went looking and couldn’t find him,” I said.

Stevie nodded. “Right. Checked the usual spots, asked around. No luck. Then Boyd found out who he was.”

I looked at Boyd. “From who?”

Boyd squirmed. “Just some guy. I’d seen Marc with him a month or so ago. He told me his last name.”

“So, you guys didn’t know that before?”

They both shook their heads.

“Then what?” I asked.

“We were idiots,” Stevie said. “I didn’t even check with Gino, thought we’d pull it off, look like heroes. We went to see Mr. Codaselli.”

“You didn’t know who he was?”

Both shook their heads again.

“So, you go to shake him down, bribe him, whatever. What happened?”

Stevie took a long drink of the coffee, wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Anchor put a gun in Boyd’s mouth.”

Boyd flushed.

“Fun,” I said.

“Mr. Codaselli said I should tell him who we worked for,” Stevie said, biting on his upper lip for a moment. “If I didn’t, Anchor was gonna shoot Boyd, then put the gun in my mouth. Sorta realized we’d screwed up at that point.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I told him about Gino,” Stevie said. “Anchor pulls out a cellphone and calls Gino. Had him on speed dial. And he kept the gun in Boyd’s mouth the whole time.”