Rigged (19 page)

Perez sat back in the low-seated wooden bar chair that almost demanded a slouch. He slowly turned his bottle of Dos Equis beer on its coaster and stared at the dull reflection of neon bar lights as they glinted off the green glass. It was Elsa’s favorite beer, and she’d converted him rather quickly after they met.

Nikki sat across from him with her lowball of rum and Diet Coke. She looked more tired than usual and had pulled her hair free from its ponytail to let it hang in front of her shoulders. Normally, she got plenty of attention from other cops in the place, but at that moment, neither looked like they were all that interested in company.

“Why do we do it?” Perez asked, his fingernail peeling at the beer label, leaving tiny flecks of it on the tabletop.

Nikki sipped her drink and thought about it. “To protect and serve.” Simple, generic recitation.

Perez nodded absentmindedly. “Yeah, there’s always that—except how much are we really protecting anyone these days? Dead bodies and explosions all over the place isn’t exactly service.”

“Everyone has bad days, Boss.”

“Bad
weeks
,” Perez corrected.

“We do what we can to stop the bad guys.”

Perez emptied what was left in his bottle with a gulp and a sigh. “Yeah, what we can. In the end, we’re just a cleanup crew, digging through someone else’s doing to find out about the damage after it’s already been done. Do we ever really stop bad guys from doing bad things?”

“Bad guys are gonna do bad things regardless. That’s why they’re bad guys, and we can’t scare the bad seeds straight. We just gotta keep the good people from crossing that line.”

Perez nodded again and raised his bottle to the bartender, gesturing for another round. “I suppose there’s always that.”

The waitress came over and set another beer in front of Perez.

He held the cold bottle in his hand but didn’t take a drink right away. 

“You know that this isn’t normal stuff going on, right?” Nikki asked. “It’s not like this kind of thing happens every day, at least not around here.”

“Yeah,” Perez said, “but when it does happen, especially in a place like this, it kind of puts things into perspective.”

Nikki sipped the last of her drink through the tiny cocktail straw. “What perspective is that?”

Perez looked at her. She might have been tired, but she somehow remained optimistic. He found that frustrating at times, but at other times, he was grateful for it; he wondered if she was all that kept him from sinking into the abyss. Between his wife, the job, and this Charlie Kelly, his life hadn’t made all that much sense recently and had felt completely devoid of rhyme or reason. “We follow the rules. We get warrants, file the paperwork, and enforce laws. We’re the only ones abiding by any guidelines. Guys like Damon know our procedures. They’ve learned too much on
CSI
and
Law and Order
in cop movies, and they’ve been in the system long enough to stay a step ahead of us. Guys like this Charlie character are immersed even deeper in the system, and he’s gone maniac, a trained killer with a tumor in his head and a vendetta. He’s got nothing to lose. How do we fight that? How do we stop either of them? Right now, we’ve got no idea where Charlie is or what he’s planning. Hell, we can’t pin anything on him anyway. What are we gonna arrest him for? Being pissed at meth dealers because his sister was an addict? All we have is the word of your military friends and a lot of facts that don’t make for a straight line in court.”

“
If
this is Charlie,” Nikki pointed out.

“Yeah, if. We don’t even have the resources to push any harder or dig any deeper. We don’t even have a crime lab here, and we have to send all our stuff to Bismark just to have it processed. Who’s to say they give it any kind of priority? Hell, we might as well be sending stuff on the damn Pony Express. It could take weeks to get results back on that trailer explosion.”

“It’s all part of the job,” Nikki said, then asked the passing waitress for another lowball.

“And that doesn’t frustrate you?” Perez asked.

Nikki offered a placating smile. “Boss, I know you came here from Chicago, and you used to be a cog in a very big wheel, a big force equipped with plentiful resources. I bet it pisses you off how slow things are to get done around here, but that’s just how things are. You wanna know how I deal with it?”

“Do tell,” Perez said and took a sip of beer.

“I get through it every day by reminding myself that we’re the ones who keep this place going. There are a lot of drugs and a lot of money out there, now more than ever. If we weren’t out here doing what we do, if we weren’t out there working the scenes and talking to people, this place would eat itself alive. We’re the keepers of the peace in Bluff Falls, whatever that’s worth for the few people who live here and raise their kids here and work here and appreciate it.”

Perez enjoyed her little speech, which wasn’t the least bit condescending, and it didn’t sound like bullshit. It came straight from her heart; it was how Nikki really felt inside, and he respected her for that. He realized, thanks to her wise assessment, that some justice was better than no justice at all, but it was street justice that concerned him most. “So, young Sergeant, how do  you suggest we make sure there are no more trailer mishaps around here, with the limited resources we have?”

Nikki shook her head. “We have no way of guaranteeing that. We just need to do our jobs the best we can with what we’ve got, trying to make sure the bad guys get put away.”

“And what about the bad guys we can’t put away?”

Nikki thought on that a moment as the waitress set her cocktail down. “Maybe, if we’re lucky and there’s some kind of divine eye watching out for cops, those bad guys will take care of each other, and the good people will only have to hear about it on the news.”

Chapter 21

Like it or not, Charlie felt resigned to giving The Baker a slap across the face. He’d been out for nearly a half-hour, probably from shock and exhaustion. Charlie knew it couldn’t have been the knock on the head he’d taken when Charlie had pushed him past the two meth-heads with guns.

“Come on. Up and at ‘em,” Charlie said, landing progressively stronger slaps on The Baker’s cheek.

Slowly, The Baker’s head started to loll up and down, and unfocused eyes looked up at Charlie, then around with that sudden shock of a man who didn’t realize where he was or how he’d gotten there—a feeling Charlie was very familiar with. “Wh-where am I,” he asked, his voice slightly slurred.

“A ways away. I hope you don’t mind, but I had to borrow your truck to get here. You might need to have a little work done on the steering column, as I couldn’t find your keys and was in a bit of a hurry.”

The Baker’s head moved back and forth in slow motion. “What happened?” he asked.

“Our little chat was…rudely interrupted,” Charlie said as he walked over to the side of the room and pulled a turned-over chair right side up and sat down across from The Baker.

It was a large room, a lot like the one back at Drumlins’, though it was empty of all but a table and a few crates against the wall. The Baker’s truck was parked at the side of the long space, just inside a loading dock-type door. Plaster has peeled and piled along the edges of the room, and the whole place smelled of mildew.

“You got a first name?”

“Kevin,” he said after a moment of thought.

“Well, Kevin, it’s really important that you realize sooner rather than later how serious I am and what kind of a timeline I’m working under. I know you guys have a big deal going on right now. What I don’t know—and need to—is where the product is and where the deal is supposed to go down.”

Kevin showed a forced smile.

“Is that a cooperative smile or some maniacal little grin to tell me to do bad things to myself?” Charlie pulled out a cigarillo and took his time lighting it. He hadn’t had a smoke in a couple days, and it felt good to have something of a crutch in his system, even if for just a few minutes. He knew it would calm him while he made Kevin talk. The man was either in love with or terrified of Damon, and for all Charlie knew, Kevin still thought he was all talk. The guys with the guns back at the warehouse should have influenced Kevin to the gravity of the situation, but Charlie knew that some people just couldn’t take a hint. 

“You might as well just kill me,” Kevin said, “because I’m not talking.”

Charlie took a puff and blew it out over his head. “Heard that before.  You went to college, I assume, Kev? Can I call you Kev?”

Kevin struggled a little against the duct tape that bound his wrists together at his lap and his body against the chair. “Yes, I did…and no, you can’t.”

“It’s weird. The toughest guys I’ve come across usually didn’t make it out of high school. Something about college must make a man soft. Maybe it’s the liberal agenda, or maybe it’s that somewhere inside, college students realize they’re really lucky to be in the position to get an education. Something in that makes them more inclined to protect what they have instead of fighting against an oppressive force.”

“You being that oppressive force?” Kevin asked.

“Touché. But, yeah, I can’t say it’s a role I’m familiar with. I like to think I tend to liberate more than oppress, but maybe that’s just me trying to justify my own existence. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that while you might be scared of Damon, he’s not here…and I am.”

“I’m not telling you shit,” Kevin said.

Charlie shook his head. He was surprised that Kevin’s stones had grown since he’d first crashed down through the vent and startled him, but Charlie was in no mood for big-boy pants. “I think the only ones willing to fight against oppression are those who haven’t been truly oppressed.” Charlie took another drag from his cigarillo. “In case you aren’t following my euphemisms, I’m suggesting that you’re only acting tough with me because I haven’t started torturing you yet. You don’t really know the consequences of noncompliance. Few white college boys with fancy little chemistry degrees have been taught that lesson. For all I know, you might be the first.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, and Charlie watched Kevin’s jaw shift as he tried to suppress a nervous gulp. “Wh-what do you mean by torture?”

The idea so often seemed more painful than the reality, at least in the minds of those who hadn’t yet been tortured. “We’ll get to that,” Charlie said and pointed over his shoulder toward the pickup truck with the bed covered. “I borrowed a few things from your lab. Hope you don’t mind.”

Kevin started to sweat and struggled a little more against his restraints, though it looked like he was trying to be subtle about it.

Charlie had to give the kid credit for staying relatively calm. Maybe Damon really was that scary of a guy. Maybe he’s got info he could use against poor little Kevin
.
“How about we start with a few getting-to-know-you questions?” Charlie took a puff off the end of his cigarillo, nice and long to make the ember glow just a bit extra. He looked at it for a considerably long time before holding it above Kevin’s bound hands.

Kevin yanked them away.

“Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “I’m not gonna burn you yet. All that would do would be to make you mad and make you feel like you need to fight just to show me how tough you are. I just want you to know that if you decide you don’t want to help me, the scars I’ll give you
will never heal
. Now that you know that, Kevin, let’s start simple. How did you and Damon first meet?”

“Through a friend.”

Charlie smiled a wide grin. He really did appreciate not having to burn Kevin, at least not right away. “You probably know this,” Charlie said as he slid back in his chair, “but the guy the Nobel prize was named after invented dynamite. The claim was that because he found a stable way to transport nitroglycerine, he saved thousands of lives, mostly Oriental indentured servants, who’d been brought over to dig tunnels and lay the railroad.” Charlie paused. “Wait…is it politically incorrect to call them Orientals? Seems to me somebody once said that’s only for rugs. Anyway, then came World War I, and his invention was used to kill tens of thousands. Funny how the world works, huh?”

“So what?” Kevin said, his voice trembling.

Charlie walked over to the table near the wall and began to pull things out of milk crates. “Just saying that even the best intentions can lead to explosive results.” Charlie turned and looked back at Kevin. “Sorry. Even I think that one was in bad taste.” Charlie faced the table again and set an electric burner up, then plugged it into the outlet at the back of the table. “Did you see
Fight Club
?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember that scene where they’re talking about making nitro? They had to leave some of it out of the script, though, or there’d be nuts out there making bombs out of soap, thanks to Hollywood. I hear the author spills a little more in the book, but I don’t read as much as I see movies. Blame it on public schooling, I guess.” Charlie pulled out a bucket and set it next to the burner. “Of course, there’s always more than one way to make a bomb. Did they teach that kind of thing in college?”

Kevin didn’t say anything, just as Charlie expected. Kevin was a smart guy, but he was in deep trouble. Meth 101 wasn’t exactly offered at colleges, so Charlie assumed he was self-taught, but he was smart enough to improve the quality and the recipe, and that made him invaluable to a guy like Damon, someone who was willing to take the time to set up shop right, hoping to make the big score.

“How’d you learn to cook?” Charlie asked as he took out a teapot and set it on the burner.

“Um, I kind of had to learn fast,” Kevin said.

Charlie turned to look over his shoulder. “Indentured servant looking to save his own life, huh? Alfred Nobel would be proud. Don’t worry. I have no intention of prying into your dark secrets.” Charlie grabbed a white bucket from the corner of the room and walked back to the table, watching Kevin’s eyes move around the objects he was setting up; the man was desperately trying to figure out what his captor was doing. “How long have you been working with Damon?” Charlie asked.