Evan Arden 05 Irrevocable (19 page)

“Not too long ago.”  We both get in and start toward the warehouse.

Nick runs his fingers over the controls on the dash, admiring everything about the car.  I didn’t realize he was such a fan of old classics, but he has a lot to say about it.  It makes the drive quick, and I almost forget I’m running on empty.

“I need gas and smokes,” I say as I pull into a service station.  “You want anything?”

“I’m good.”  Nick leans back in the leather seat.

“Back in a minute.”

I fill up the tank and then head inside.  I need to take a piss, so I get the key to the bathroom from the lady at the counter and head around the side of the building.  When I come out of the bathroom, I recognize the homeless guy rummaging through the dumpster nearby.

“Hey, dude!” I call out.

He looks up and narrows his eyes at me, immediately defensive.

“You need some food?” I ask him.  I don’t like the idea of him going through the fucking garbage, and there aren’t any hotels in the near vicinity.  He’s thin, and he still doesn’t have any decent clothes for the weather.

I get him to agree to wait for me, and I run back inside for a sandwich and coffee to bring to him.  When I get back out, he’s made a bit of a nest out of all his plastic shopping bags, and he’s sitting in the middle of it.

“There’s shrapnel in my leg,” he says as I approach.  His eyes are dim and confused.  “They couldn’t get it all out.  There was a nurse there though.  She was a looker, too.”

He’s babbling, but I still get it all.  I start to smile, but I can’t.  It’s all too familiar.

“I bet you were all over her.”  I hand him the sandwich, and he tears into it immediately.  “What hospital?”

“Some place in Virginia,” he says with a shrug.  “I don’t remember the name.”

“That’s where they took me.  The nurses there were hot.”

“You were in ‘Nam?”

“No, sir,” I say, shaking my head.  “Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“You Army?”

“Marine.”

“Fuck the Marines,” he says, but he’s smiling when he says it.  “You fuckers never showed up until us infantry already made it through.”

I’m not about to argue with him.  I knew enough Army guys back in the day to have heard it all before.  All the branches poked fun at the others, but in the end, we were in it together.

“How long were you MIA?”

He blinks a couple of times, and his eyes glaze over a bit.  I reach out and touch his arm, but he flinches away.

“I was gone eighteen months,” I say.  “Spent most of the time in a hole, wishing they’d taken me out along with the rest of my unit.”

He focuses on me for a minute and then grabs my hand.

“Two years,” he says quietly.  “They had me for two years.  The only guy left in my unit got cancer from that Agent Orange shit.  He’s been gone a while now.  They had to leave the shrapnel in my leg.  Too much tissue had grown around it, they said.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Sergeant Donald Hansen,” he says.

“Lieutenant Evan Arden.”  I squeeze his fingers in some semblance of a handshake.

“Marine officer!” Donald says with a snort.  “You took me to that hotel.”

“Yes, I did.”

“That was a nice place.  They had really good food.”

“I’m glad you liked it.  Where are you staying now?”

“The shelter on North Sangamon.  I got a few days left.”

“I’m gonna give you my phone number,” I tell him.  “If they kick you out, you call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

He produces a pen and paper from one of his plastic bags, and I scribble my number down for him.  I have no idea if he’ll use it, but I want him to have the option.

“You need anything else before I go?”

“Key to the john?” He points to the one I got from the woman inside.  I hadn’t returned it when I bought the sandwich.  “They won’t let me have it.”

“Sure.”  I hand it over to him and then make my way back to the Camaro.

“I thought you got lost,” Nick says as I get in.

“Had to take a shit.”  I don’t know why I’m reluctant to mention Donald, but I don’t tell Nick about him.

Nick glances at me out of the corner of his eye.  He must not believe me, because there’s something off about his look, and he’s got his hand balled up on his thigh.  He’s holding it tight enough for his knuckles to go white.  I don’t know what he thinks I was doing, but I decide it doesn’t matter.  Let him wonder.

We meet Jonathan at the warehouse and go over some of what he has found.  Everything he’s telling me is superficial, and I can tell he’s holding back.  Assuming it must be Nick’s presence, I give him the keys to the Camaro and send him out for pizza.

He can’t resist the combination.

Once Nick is out of the way, Jonathan opens up.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Nick.”

“I figured as much.  What did you find?”

“Quite a bit.”  Jonathan turns his laptop toward me and places his phone beside it.  The phone is running his new security system.  “I’m actually pretty pissed off.  I should have noticed this before.”

“What is it?”

“Someone created a backdoor into the app,” he says.  “That wasn’t a false alarm or some electrical trouble the other day.  Someone activated the system to get me out of the way.”

“It was a little too coincidental.  Who could have created it?”

“There are only a handful of people who ever had enough access to do something like this.  Beni is one of them.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.  Who else?”

“Nick is another.  I’m not sure he knows enough about computers to do this, though.”

“But Beni does?”

“Just enough.”

“Anyone else?”

“Becca was on the system early on,” Jonathan tells me.  “She had some accounting thing she wanted added to it, but it didn’t work properly and got put on the back burner.  Paulie had access as well, but that dude can’t even figure out Candy Crush.”

“Paulie is dumb, but he’s not a rat.”  I smirk and shake my head.

“You punched him out.”

“He deserved it.  If he was part of some conspiracy, he wouldn’t have risked flipping me off in the first place.”

“Good point.”

“Beni’s at the top of the list.  We need eyes on him.”

“Agreed.”  Jonathan nods.  “Who should watch him?”

“I don’t know who to trust yet,” I say.  “Something is going on with him and Lucia, but if I can’t be sure about her, I can’t use her to dig into it.”

“You think Lucia would betray her dad?”

“Honestly, no.  She’s got her ambitions though.  She might be using Beni to get herself ahead.  I can’t trust her not to say something to him about our investigation, so I can’t risk telling her.”

“Makes sense.  Paulie then?”

“No.  I want him staying close to Rinaldo at all times.”

“Who’s left?”

“Of people I trust?”  I shake my head.  “No one.  I’ll do it myself so you can keep digging.  You’re better at that shit than I am anyway.”

“Anything else about Felisa?”

I debate telling him what Rinaldo revealed to me, but I don’t.  If Rinaldo wanted Jonathan to know, he would tell him personally.  If Jonathan went digging, he’d probably figure it out on his own, assuming he hasn’t already.

“Only what we already know.  I’ll focus on that and Beni.  You see if you can locate Joshua Taylor.  He may very well lead us to Stark.”

“Got it.”

I tap my fingers against my leg for a minute, considering.

“Can you check out one more person for me?” I ask.

“Sure.  Who is it?”

“Her name’s Alina.  She’s a hooker.”

“This the whore of the week for you?”

“Something like that.”  I take a deep breath.  “I really want you to find her father.  I’m pretty sure he’s in the city somewhere.  I want to know where I can find him.”

Jonathan eyes me.

“Don’t ask.”

“Right.”  He taps on the laptop keyboard for a few seconds.  “You got a last name?”

“Nope.”

“Lotsa help you are.”

“Good thing you are so good at what you do.”

“Who’s her pimp?” he asks as he continues to type away.

“Don’t know.”

“Well, what do you know that might actually help me out here?”

I point out where I pick her up and give him Loretta’s name as her roommate.  I really don’t know much of anything else about her, but he seems to think it’s enough to go on.

Nick returns with a pizza, smelling of weed.

“You better not have smoked that shit in my car,” I tell him, “or I’ll kill you right where you stand.”

“Nah, just outside the door.”  He refuses to make eye contact, and I wonder if he’s lying to me.  “What did you guys figure out?”

“A couple of leads but nothing concrete.  Jonathan and I can take it from here.”

I expect him to be disappointed that I don’t actually have anything for him to do or research, but he seems relieved instead.  I find it odd because he was so gung-ho to join me earlier, but now he’s dancing back and forth like he does when he’s nervous.  I’m not sure why.  I wonder if he thinks we suspect him, but he really isn’t in my list of top candidates.  He seeks his father’s approval far too much to do anything outright against the family.  It would go against his character, and that’s a very rare thing indeed.

Nick quickly scarfs down a couple of slices and says he’s getting a ride home with Cody.  He glances at me once more as he leaves the warehouse.  There’s something about the look he gives me that should have made me realize something was off.

It should have, but it didn’t.

I leave Jonathan to his research and head off to find Alina.

I really hope I don’t have to search too long.

The glow from my laptop bathes my hands as I type quickly.  I feel like I’m on the verge of figuring something out, but there’s still something missing—something that shouldn’t have escaped me.  I click through a few more documents and then zoom in on one of them.

It’s a little past four in the morning, and Alina is sleeping in the other room.  My mind is too cranked up for sleep, so I waited until she dozed off to get back to work.  I’ve spent two days digging into anything and everything that is Beni Segreti, and I don’t care for what I’ve found.

There is no doubt in my mind that he’s tied to Seattle.  I just can’t figure out exactly how.  I’ve got pictures of him with Justin Taylor going back five years, long before Beni was supposed to be in this country at all, but nothing of him with Landon Stark, Joseph Franks, or the southern gangs.

I have to be missing something.

Beni’s too smart for an obvious liaison with another outfit.  Joshua Taylor has to be the go-between, but he’s an elusive one.  Other than the two pictures Jonathan has of Joshua, there have been no signs of him anywhere in Chicago since he first arrived.

Someone has to be hiding him.

I go back to the shot Jonathan found of Joshua and Beni.  The place where they met isn’t in the south, but right off the Magnificent Mile.  He could be staying somewhere close by.  I make a mental note to have Jonathan check out all the security cameras in the area to see if we can spot him.

I hear a little creak behind me and turn to see Alina in the hallway.  She walks up to me, and I quickly close the laptop.

“Everything all right?” she asks.

“Just some work I need to catch up on,” I respond.

“Have you slept at all?”  She reaches out and runs her hand over my head.  “You look tired.”

“Not really, but I’m all right.  Too much going on in my head to sleep.”

I open my arms, and Alina straddles my lap.  She kisses me softly as she runs her fingers over the back of my neck.  I tilt my head back toward the pressure.

“Every time you do that, I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a week.”

“I know.”  Alina chuckles softly.

“Doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Acupressure.  It helps you relax.”

I think about all the times she has pressed her fingertips against my skin.  It did usually calm me down; I can’t deny that.  I hadn’t realized she was doing it intentionally.

“Manipulating me, are you?”  I reach down and cup her ass with my hands.

“It’s like the lavender,” she explains, “just something to help you get what you want anyway.  If I were going to try to manipulate you, I’d grab your cock.”

“That works, too.”

She kisses me again but doesn’t deepen it.  Instead, she leans back and looks at me for a long moment while her hand continues to massage my neck.

“Where did you learn all that stuff?”

“The acupressure I learned from a friend who took classes in it,” she tells me.  “The aromatherapy I got out of Cosmo.”

“Ha!  Why doesn’t that surprise me?  That magazine is like a manual for hookers.”

“There’s a lot of good information in there.” Alina shrugs.  “You don’t seem to have any complaints.

I hum in response as I reach up and run my hands through her hair.  It’s soft from the shower we shared before going to bed, and I can still smell my shampoo in it.  I gather her hair in one hand and hold it out of the way as I lean forward and press my lips to the side of her neck.

I make my way up to her ear, kissing and sucking at her skin.  Releasing her hair, I wrap my arms around her back and pull her closer.

“I don’t want to keep you from your work,” Alina says.

I pause, kissing her twice more before pulling back.  I should continue my investigation—I feel like I’m close—but my dick disagrees.

“Your work is more fun.”  I pull her down against my anxious cock and run one hand up to cup her breast.  “Maybe we should just go back to bed.”

“If that’s what you want.”  She tilts her head and smiles at me, but it doesn’t meet her eyes.

“What is it?” I ask as I run my hand up to her cheek.  “You want to just go to sleep?”

“It’s nothing.”  She shakes her head dismissively, but she isn’t convincing.

“Tell me.”

“I was just remembering something,” she says.  “That’s all.”

“What were you remembering?”

“A friend from a long time ago.”  She looks away for a moment.

I raise an eyebrow.

“You remind me of him,” she says softly.  She licks her lips and then trails her fingers down from my temple to my jawline.  She scratches at the stubble on my face, which is far more than I usually have.  I’ve been busy and bad about keeping up with shaving.

“He always needed a shave?”

Alina chuckles and shakes her head.  She tilts her head the other direction before leaning in and kissing me, deeper this time.  I lean back, letting her take the lead as her tongue slides between my lips.  She reaches down and slips her hands under my shirt, running them up my sides and making my skin tingle.

Without breaking the kiss, I stand, carrying her with me.  She wraps her arms and legs around my body and holds on as I take her back into the bedroom and lay her down in the center of the bed.

Work can wait.  I want her now.

*****

“This is exactly what we’ve been looking for.”  I drop a thumb drive next to Jonathan’s laptop and fold my arms across my chest as he inserts it and starts checking over the contents.

Despite the lack of sleep, my mind is alert and active.  Maybe the multiple rounds of sex with Alina last night contributed to how good I feel right now, but it mostly has to do with finally making a breakthrough.

“These are the accounts we were checking out,” Jonathan says as he browses, “the ones that had all the discrepancies.”

“Correct.”

“We found these accounts before.  We were trying to tie them back to Landon Stark.”

“Right, but we couldn’t figure out where the money was landing in the end and couldn’t find a trace of Stark anywhere on them.  Keep looking.”

I tap my foot in nervous anticipation.  I can see his eyes light up when he sees what I found.

“Movement,” Jonathan mutters.  “Over to the Caymans, then to China, UK, then wired back to the Caymans.”  He taps on the keyboard for a minute.  “Wow, that’s a lot of dough. What’s Greyter Sailor Incorporated?”

“Agriculture and fishing company,” I tell him.  “Lots of land owned in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Vancouver.”

“What the hell do you grow out there?”

“Nothing.  They do have an actual fleet of shrimp boats, but they haven’t left dock in sixteen months.”

“Does Stark own it?”

“Nope.”

“Who then?”  Jonathan leans back and looks at me.

“It’s an anagram.”

“No shit!  Of what?”

“I took the letters of a couple of names and rearranged them into something else.”  I lean over the laptop and point to the company logo.  “Greyter Sailor can be repositioned to spell Taylor and Segreti.”

“Ho-lee shit.  That’s custom.”

“Exactly.”

“Beni Segreti and Joshua Taylor have a company together?”

“I looked into it.  Beni and Justin actually got it started.  I think when Justin was eliminated, Beni pulled Joshua on board.  They also have an office building in Seattle.”

“He needed someone on the outside to cover his tracks.”

“And Joshua is glad to help eliminate the man who killed his brother.”

“But Rinaldo didn’t order Justin’s hit.  That was all you.”

“He doesn’t know that,” I say.

“But Beni does.”

“Beni wants to be on top.  He needs funds to get himself there as well.  Joshua is the ideal answer.  He’s got motive to get back at the family and is the perfect liaison between Beni and the southern gangs.  He has no other Chicago affiliations and would also work as the perfect scapegoat if it comes to that.  More importantly, Beni needs Rinaldo out of the way, and Joshua is happy to help out.”

“Joshua is the one working with the gangs; we know that.”

“We need to figure out where he’s hiding,” I say, “and how he’s getting information to the gangs.”

“Do you think they’re still in it?”

“They at least started that way.  Even after Marcello was eliminated, they still held some of our guns.”

“Like the one used to kill Felisa.”

“Just like that one.”  I nod slowly as I stare at the screen, not meeting his eyes.

“We should bring this all to Rinaldo.”

“Not yet.”  I shake my head.  “We have to tread lightly.  If Rinaldo thinks Beni has something to do with Felisa’s death, he’ll act immediately.  We need to flush out anyone else involved.”

“You don’t think he could hold off?”

“Not with the funeral still ahead of us.”

“Point taken.”

“I do need to give Rinaldo something though.”  I step back and take a deep breath.  “I’ll tell him about the connection with Joshua.  As long as we don’t know where he is, there isn’t a whole lot of action Rinaldo can take.”

“Makes sense.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“I’ll keep going through the security cameras until I find a sign of Joshua.  Now that we have more account information, I can also try to track him through access.”

“It’s a plan.”  I start to gather up my stuff to leave when Jonathan speaks again.

“I got something else for ya.”  Jonathan taps at the keyboard and spins the laptop around so I can see the screen.  “James Marino.”

“Who’s that?”

“Your whore’s father.”

The picture on the screen is a mugshot from several years ago.  James Marino was picked up for running a prostitution ring of teen girls, but someone screwed up legal procedure, and he ended up walking.  Turns out he did a year for narcotics possession, but the other charges were dropped.

“Where is he now?” I ask as I try to keep my hands from shaking.

“Oak Park.”

“Is he still fucking little girls?”

Jonathan glances at me, and I’m certain he knows exactly what’s going on in my head.

“You getting attached to this hooker?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter.”  I look at him and await his answer.

“He hasn’t had any other convictions,” Jonathan said.  “Looks like he got put out of business when people caught on to what was happening.”

“You have an address?”

Jonathan hands me a piece of paper with an address on it.  The place actually sounds familiar, and I realize it’s only a couple of blocks from the apartment Lia was living in while I was serving time.

I stare at the paper for a while as a plan begins to form in my head.  I might need a little assistance to get it all together.

“Where’s Paulie?”

“He’s at the hospital.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Still watching over Rinaldo.  I think Lele’s there, too.”

“Rinaldo was supposed to be discharged yesterday.”

“They’re running more tests on him,” Jonathan says.  “He’s going to be there a few more days.”

“What tests?  How long?”  I hadn’t heard any of this.

“That’s all I know.”

I don’t like the sound of it.  Forgetting James Marino for a moment, I immediately head for the hospital.

Rinaldo isn’t in the same room, and I have to harass someone at the nurses’ station to figure out where he’s been moved.  Once I find him, Paulie is standing outside the door.

“What’s going on? “ I ask.  “He was supposed to be home by now.”

“Beats me,” Paulie says with a shrug.  “I just know they moved him here yesterday.  Something about some tests.”

I open the door slowly and peek inside.  Lele’s sitting on a chair near Rinaldo’s bed, and he’s sitting up and shoveling manicotti in his mouth.

“Come in, Evan.”  Rinaldo raises his fork in the air and uses it to motion me forward.  I enter, closing the door behind me.

“Lele, a moment please.”  His voice is deadpan, and Lele just nods and walks out.  Her eyes are red, and I assume he’s told her about Felisa.

I stand at the foot of his bed with my hands clasped behind my back.  He takes a couple more mouthfuls of the meal Lele must have smuggled in for him and then finishes with a long drink of water.

“Lucia is going to handle the rest of the funeral arrangements for Felisa.  Lele’s going to help her out.”

I nod and bow my head.

“How is your investigation going?”

“Found some ties between the accounts that have missing money and Joshua Taylor,” I tell him.  “We definitely have him linked with Marcello’s gang but can’t locate Taylor anywhere.  I’ve got a few leads I still need to follow up on.  Now that we have account numbers, Jonathan’s trying to trace him through those.”