Heat Wave, page 13
Caine held the man’s gaze. “If you are, Ken…we’ll catch you. You know how good my team is.”
Slowly, LaRussa nodded. “That only benefits me, Horatio…because I’m innocent.”
“You know…I believe you.”
Hope flared in the attorney’s eyes.
Caine raised a forefinger. “And if you’re telling the truth, and my instincts are right…then I just know you’re going to want to cooperate fully with me and my people.”
LaRussa thought about that. “Listen, Horatio…I’m also an attorney. And I know I have my rights—”
“Sure you do.” Caine shrugged. “I just kinda thought you’d want to help us clear your name…you know, before this gets to the media.”
“Are you threatening to leak—”
“No. We don’t play that game. But as you said yourself, we work in big buildings in a big city. We need to move discreetly…and quickly.”
Swallowing, La Russa sat forward again. “I’m ready to cooperate, Horatio. What do you need?”
“To start with, a list of all the guards from the evidence room…and all the videotapes, for those periods when guards aren’t on duty.”
LaRussa sighed. “What else?”
“I need to have the perimeter guards from those off times interviewed. They might have seen something without even realizing it.”
LaRussa’s eyes again widened. “Going to take some time to get all that together.”
“I suggest making that happen within the next twenty-four hours,” Caine said. “Oh yes—we’ll also need a complete inventory of the weapons in the evidence room.”
“That’s against policy, about six ways—”
Caine smiled placidly. “Do we really care, Ken? Consider this—someone not only smuggled a gun out of here, they smuggled it back in, too. What better place to find a weapon than in among a thousand others—and what better place to hide it?”
“You have a point,” LaRussa said. He looked about ten years older than when Caine had entered the office. “Horatio, just how screwed am I?”
“Well, if you’re lying to me, and you’re behind this thing—you’re lethal-injection screwed.”
“Please….”
“If you didn’t do this…and I don’t think you did…you’ve just been incompetent in one phase of your job, meaning you’ll likely get a slap on the wrist from your boss.”
“What about the media?”
“Out of my control. But nobody hears anything about this from us.”
LaRussa laughed suddenly—a hollow laugh. “You know, that AK-47 is downstairs right now. How do you know, Horatio, that I won’t destroy that evidence? Throw that damn thing in the ocean?”
“I think we have enough, even if you did. But I really don’t think you’re guilty, Ken.”
The lawyer seemed slightly heartened by that. “Why not, Horatio?”
“You’re not Dirty Harry; you wouldn’t go around shooting up the bad guys. You want to put the gangbangers behind bars so you can make a name for yourself and become a senator. You’re not a criminal, Ken—just a politician.”
LaRussa laughed again, a grunt. “Thanks for that much, anyway.”
“Hey, criminal, politician. It’s a fine line.”
And this time when Caine left LaRussa’s office, the state’s attorney did not offer to shake hands.
Little Haiti had encompassed some of the older Miami areas—Little River, Lemon City, Buena Vista East, and Edison Center—to become a thriving part of the south Florida metro area.
Home to nearly 34,000 residents, the area teemed with the verve, music, and bright colors of its Caribbean namesake. Though centered around Northeast Fifty-fourth Street, roughly between North Miami Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard, Little Haiti ran further north up around Northeast Third Avenue and 80th Terrace—a neighborhood with a different rhythm, more muted colors, and the sweaty desperation that came from fighting a war twenty-four-seven.
This was the territory of the Faucones, the fiefdom of Andrew Chevalier, and Speedle and Tripp had been driving around that fiefdom most of the afternoon with no success. Little Haiti was little in name only, and they weren’t having any luck finding the Faucone leader.
Plus, their unmarked police car couldn’t have yelled “Cop” any louder if it had been a blue and white; and no one in this part of the city liked or wanted to talk to the police.
They were getting ready to hang it up for the day when Speed’s cell phone chirped. He jerked it off his belt and punched a button. “Speedle.”
“Horatio.”
“Sorry, H—we’re not having any luck finding Chevalier. We checked out three of his supposed cribs, and nada.”
“That’s because he’s not in Little Haiti.”
“Where is he, then?”
“Apartment house near the airport. Says he wants to meet.”
Speedle’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled. “Turning himself in, is he?”
“Not sure. I didn’t get the call, dispatcher did. Meet him, will you? You’re closer than I am…. And Speed? Gun in hand.”
Caine gave him the address, and before long Tripp was parking the unmarked car in front of a low-slung two-story stucco building painted the color of orange sherbet. Hands on hips, Speedle appraised the place, estimating eight apartments total.
Speedle pointed. “H said Chevalier’s in number eight, second floor, back left.”
“Well,” Tripp said, removing his sidearm from its hip holster, “let’s go see what this fine concerned citizen wants to talk about.”
“Let’s,” Speed said with a smirk, getting his own weapon out.
They entered through a flimsy door, walked up stairs whose carpeting was so frayed that one could easily hook a toe and trip. On the second floor, the ratty carpet continued as they went down the hall past the muffled sounds of crying kids and soap operas and game shows, stopping at the last door on the left—apartment eight.
The hallway smelled of fried food, but Speed couldn’t tell if the aroma came from number eight or the apartment across the way. Neither of them stood directly in front of the door. Instead, guns in hand, they each took a side. Tripp gave Speedle a look, then he knocked on the door.
A moment later, the door cracked open and an African-American woman showed them half her face, a sullenly attractive half a face at that.
“Miami-Dade police,” Tripp said, his free hand indicating the badge on his sportcoat pocket. “I’m Detective Tripp, this is CSI Speedle. We understand Mr. Chevalier wants to talk.”
“You won’t need the guns.”
Tripp and Speedle exchanged glances and holstered their guns. But both kept their hands on the holstered butts.
She said, “Better,” in her thick Carribbean accent, then closed the door. They could hear the chain lock being taken off.
The woman opened the door again, and Speedle saw that the half face he’d seen through the open door did not lie. The woman was really something—tall and thin, Tyra Banks with a short, choppy Afro, wearing a Cabrerra University Hurricanes T-shirt and very short denim shorts, with a slow way of moving that made him think that every single action was a bother to her.
They entered a living room decorated in what Speed thought of as Early Trailer Park—a TV on a stand in a corner surrounded by a garage sale sofa and two heavy armchairs, possibly salvaged from an out-of-business beachfront hotel. The dining alcove to their right featured an aluminum card table and four folding chairs.
“Where’s Andrew Chevalier?” Tripp asked.
The woman curled a finger and led them down the hall.
Tripp went first, his hand still on the holstered weapon. Speed watched as Tripp glanced into the bathroom without fully moving in front of the door, then turned and did the same thing with a bedroom on the left; Speedle noted the clean but minuscule bathroom and a tiny empty bedroom.
Their hostess stopped at a door on the right at the end of the hall. She knocked lightly, then went in, closing the door on them, leaving them in the hall.
They’d caught a glimpse of a darkened room, but more significantly, a stench rolled out and caused Tripp to turn away, toward Speedle, gagging.
“What the hell is that smell?” he asked.
Speedle said, “Chicken blood.”
The detective gave Speedle a Say-what? look.
“Voodoo healing spell.”
“Voodoo? Like in sticking pins in dolls?”
“Voodoo,” Speedle said, “like in Haiti. Chevalier’s birthplace. A lot of people believe Haiti is also the birthplace of voodoo in this hemisphere.”
“Do tell.”
“It was, in fact, recognized as a legal religion there this past spring.”
“Yeah, well, remind me to subscribe to the Discovery Channel.”
Speedle shrugged. “You might like it.”
The woman opened the door and nodded for them to enter.
They gave each other what-the-hell expressions and followed her into the darkness. This time, Speedle took the lead, careful to step over the trail of chicken blood just inside the door.
The walls were a dusky gray, the only light filtering in through partially closed venetian blinds. The room was dominated by a huge king-size bed that barely left room to walk around. Speedle noticed that the trail of chicken blood circumnavigated the room and that dead chickens, their necks wrung, their feathers wilting toward the floor, were hung in each of the corners and in front of the room’s only window.
In the bed, naked, a sheet haphazardly thrown over his loins, lay a large black man with flowing dreadlocks: Andrew Chevalier.
The drug dealer was easily recognizable to Speedle, even though the massive man’s face was masked by blood-soaked bandages. Other bandages covered wounds to both arms, one leg, and a spot about even with his pelvic bone on the left side.
The CSI had seen enough gunshot injuries, in his time on the job to know that the numerous and serious wounds that Andrew Chevalier had suffered were unlikely to be overcome by voodoo magic.
8
Murder Suite
THE MOODILY ATTRACTIVE African-American woman slipped onto the bed beside the wounded Chevalier, his facial bandages like a bizarre blood-spotted blindfold. She used a wet cloth she’d taken from a tiny nightstand to wipe his fevered brow.
“Call nine-one-one now,” Speedle said to Tripp.
But Tripp already had his cell phone out.
A raspy breath racked the drug dealer, his massive torso shuddering. Then a very small, hoarse whisper for so big a man found its way out. “Who are you? Who’s there?”
“I’m Tim Speedle, CSI. With me’s Detective Frank Tripp.”
“Homicide,” Tripp said.
The faintest smile appeared on the sweat-beaded, bandaged mahogany face. “You’re just…a bit…early.”
Tripp said nothing; he had 911 on the line. He stepped back into the hall to finish the call, while Speedle maintained vigil and the lovely nurse in denim short shorts soothed the big blind man’s brow.
“Help’s on the way,” Speedle said.
Another ragged breath preceded, “You…you sound like a boy. I called for…Horatio Caine.”
“I’m a big boy,” Speedle said. “I work for Caine. He’s kind of tied up trying to stop this gang war.”
“So…so was I…”
Speedle sat on the edge of the bed and leaned closer. “Is that what you were doing at the Archer?”
“It…was. And look…look what happened to me.”
“It’s not the Nobel Peace Prize,” Speedle admitted.
The woman frowned at Speedle. “You strainin’ him. Easy, now.”
Speedle said to her, “We’ll get him to a hospital.”
But it was Chevalier who answered, with something that was half laugh, half death rattle. “Too late for that…we both know that. Tim, is it?”
“It’s Tim. Look, man, we’re gonna try. You’re talking to me. You’re still alive. You hold on.”
Chevalier made a movement, probably intended to be a shrug, though it was more like another shudder. “If I die here…I die in the safety…the arms…of my people. You understand? Why that…appeals?”
“Sure,” Speedle said.
“If you…you get me to the hospital…and they patch me up? Well enough for, what…another twenty-four hours?” He grabbed a wheezing breath. Then he went on. “Don’t you think…they come back, and finish the job?”
Tripp stepped back into the room and nodded to Speedle as he took out his notebook.
Time was not on their side, and as much as Speed didn’t like to push a dying man, he had an interview that needed doing…which was in the dying man’s interests, after all, since helping find who killed him was about all Chevalier had left.
“Mister Chevalier—who did this to you?”
The big man didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t know, damnit. Don’t know. Mendoza maybe…Wallace’s people, could be…somebody who found out about our plan.”
“What plan?”
Chevalier made a slight gesture with his head, looking blindly toward his pretty nurse, who understood and lifted a glass of water from the nightstand, held it out with one hand, and steadied a straw with the other as the big man sipped.
Swallowing appeared to be painful, and it took the Faucones leader a moment before he was ready to speak again. Speed didn’t feel like rushing the dying man, though every second now meant so much.
“Sir,” Speed said.
“It…it was my plan, really. I think, if I can get the Faucones, Mitus, Trenches, and Culebras together…to sit down…we could stop this war. Governor declares martial law, all of us lose.”
“But somebody turned the peace talk into a hit.”
The ganglord managed a brief nod; his wheezing breath grew ever louder.
Speed asked, “Where’s your friend Jean-Claude? His fingerprints were at the Archer too.”
Chevalier turned his head slightly toward the woman. “Ou le Jean-Claude est?”
“Dans le Hummer.”
The hooded, bleary eyes trained themselves on Speedle again. “There’s a row of four garages…behind the building…. My Hummer, it will be inside one. Jean-Claude will be inside it.”
“Is your friend dead?” Speedle asked.
“Very…. I was blinded…but Jean-Claude, he got me out of there…back to the car. We escaped, but I could tell…by his breathing? He was wounded, too…could not talk. I ask him to take me here…. Sareena is a friend. I knew she would help.”
The woman, whose sullenness Speedle now read as sorrow, patted her patient’s forehead with the cloth again.
The CSI asked, “Are you up to telling how it went down?”
After another signal from Chevalier, the woman gave him a drink again. Sipping, then swallowing hard, he coughed, in that death-rattle way, and Speedle wondered if the big man had crossed the finish line.
But a moment later, the drug dealer’s breathing calmed to a wheeze.
“I negotiate all day, with the other three—we agree to meet at the Archer. Place was closed, didn’t think nobody would think we’d go there.”
“Somebody did,” Speedle pointed out.
“Somebody…. Jean-Claude and me, we get there first. It was, after all, my idea for all of us to meet. Jean-Claude checked the main floor, the bar, the lobby, found no one. No sign anybody broke in and got there before us.”
“What about upstairs? The empty hotel rooms?”
“We…we all agreed we’d each bring only one…one aide. I didn’t feel comfortable, having Jean-Claude upstairs while I was on the first floor alone.”
“Why didn’t you go up with him?”
“I…I’m a big man…. Elevators were down…I don’t like the stairs. Trouble breathing.”
Not like the trouble breathing Chevalier would have any second now, Speedle thought, then asked, “Who was next to arrive?”
“Shakespeare…him and his man, they come in next. While the Trench and me, we stay downstairs, Jean-Claude and Shakespeare’s guy do the quick sweep, upstairs. I know they did the second floor…don’t know if they made it to the third.”
“So Manny Calisto was the last to arrive?”
“Oui. He come in, sit down, and before one damn word gets spoken…the shit hit the fan.”
“Then Mendoza never made it to the party?”
“No. He…miss the fun.”
“Or started it,” Speedle said.
“He could have. He set the time, the place.”
“Why?”
“Different parts of the arrangements, these we split up…for…” His laugh hurt him. “…safety sake.”
Chevalier’s breathing became more labored, and it was obvious that the end wasn’t that far away.
“What about Wallace’s group?”
“They weren’t invited. They’re in too much…what’s the word?”
“Flux?”
“Yes. Flux. But his men, too. Oui, they could have done this thing. ’Specially if they think Calisto is behind the shooting of their boss.”
“So, they came in blazing. How many of them were there?”
Chevalier held up two fingers.
“Two?”
“Oui.”
Speedle and Tripp exchanged glances.
“There were six of you,” Tripp said. “They musta been good.”
With a feeble nod, the big man agreed. He accepted another sip from his nurse, coughed once, then said, “They jump into the bar from the back.”
Speedle knew this meant the hit squad could’ve come through the back door, the kitchen way, or down the rear stairway from the upper floors of hotel rooms.
Chevalier was saying, “One went to the right, one the left, and before you know it, Calisto and his man—dead. I don’t think they even knew the assassins were there. Too fast. Too fast.”
“But you saw them?”
“Yes…. Jean-Claude, he try to leap in front of me, but we are both hit, and go down.”
“Did you see Shakespeare get it?”
“Oui, but at least his man got his gun out and fired one round before he was killed.”
“Did he hit either of the shooters?” Speedle asked.
“I don’t think so…but I couldn’t see. Jean-Claude’s body was on top of me by then, and…the bullets, one cuts across my face, blinds me.”
Slowly, LaRussa nodded. “That only benefits me, Horatio…because I’m innocent.”
“You know…I believe you.”
Hope flared in the attorney’s eyes.
Caine raised a forefinger. “And if you’re telling the truth, and my instincts are right…then I just know you’re going to want to cooperate fully with me and my people.”
LaRussa thought about that. “Listen, Horatio…I’m also an attorney. And I know I have my rights—”
“Sure you do.” Caine shrugged. “I just kinda thought you’d want to help us clear your name…you know, before this gets to the media.”
“Are you threatening to leak—”
“No. We don’t play that game. But as you said yourself, we work in big buildings in a big city. We need to move discreetly…and quickly.”
Swallowing, La Russa sat forward again. “I’m ready to cooperate, Horatio. What do you need?”
“To start with, a list of all the guards from the evidence room…and all the videotapes, for those periods when guards aren’t on duty.”
LaRussa sighed. “What else?”
“I need to have the perimeter guards from those off times interviewed. They might have seen something without even realizing it.”
LaRussa’s eyes again widened. “Going to take some time to get all that together.”
“I suggest making that happen within the next twenty-four hours,” Caine said. “Oh yes—we’ll also need a complete inventory of the weapons in the evidence room.”
“That’s against policy, about six ways—”
Caine smiled placidly. “Do we really care, Ken? Consider this—someone not only smuggled a gun out of here, they smuggled it back in, too. What better place to find a weapon than in among a thousand others—and what better place to hide it?”
“You have a point,” LaRussa said. He looked about ten years older than when Caine had entered the office. “Horatio, just how screwed am I?”
“Well, if you’re lying to me, and you’re behind this thing—you’re lethal-injection screwed.”
“Please….”
“If you didn’t do this…and I don’t think you did…you’ve just been incompetent in one phase of your job, meaning you’ll likely get a slap on the wrist from your boss.”
“What about the media?”
“Out of my control. But nobody hears anything about this from us.”
LaRussa laughed suddenly—a hollow laugh. “You know, that AK-47 is downstairs right now. How do you know, Horatio, that I won’t destroy that evidence? Throw that damn thing in the ocean?”
“I think we have enough, even if you did. But I really don’t think you’re guilty, Ken.”
The lawyer seemed slightly heartened by that. “Why not, Horatio?”
“You’re not Dirty Harry; you wouldn’t go around shooting up the bad guys. You want to put the gangbangers behind bars so you can make a name for yourself and become a senator. You’re not a criminal, Ken—just a politician.”
LaRussa laughed again, a grunt. “Thanks for that much, anyway.”
“Hey, criminal, politician. It’s a fine line.”
And this time when Caine left LaRussa’s office, the state’s attorney did not offer to shake hands.
Little Haiti had encompassed some of the older Miami areas—Little River, Lemon City, Buena Vista East, and Edison Center—to become a thriving part of the south Florida metro area.
Home to nearly 34,000 residents, the area teemed with the verve, music, and bright colors of its Caribbean namesake. Though centered around Northeast Fifty-fourth Street, roughly between North Miami Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard, Little Haiti ran further north up around Northeast Third Avenue and 80th Terrace—a neighborhood with a different rhythm, more muted colors, and the sweaty desperation that came from fighting a war twenty-four-seven.
This was the territory of the Faucones, the fiefdom of Andrew Chevalier, and Speedle and Tripp had been driving around that fiefdom most of the afternoon with no success. Little Haiti was little in name only, and they weren’t having any luck finding the Faucone leader.
Plus, their unmarked police car couldn’t have yelled “Cop” any louder if it had been a blue and white; and no one in this part of the city liked or wanted to talk to the police.
They were getting ready to hang it up for the day when Speed’s cell phone chirped. He jerked it off his belt and punched a button. “Speedle.”
“Horatio.”
“Sorry, H—we’re not having any luck finding Chevalier. We checked out three of his supposed cribs, and nada.”
“That’s because he’s not in Little Haiti.”
“Where is he, then?”
“Apartment house near the airport. Says he wants to meet.”
Speedle’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled. “Turning himself in, is he?”
“Not sure. I didn’t get the call, dispatcher did. Meet him, will you? You’re closer than I am…. And Speed? Gun in hand.”
Caine gave him the address, and before long Tripp was parking the unmarked car in front of a low-slung two-story stucco building painted the color of orange sherbet. Hands on hips, Speedle appraised the place, estimating eight apartments total.
Speedle pointed. “H said Chevalier’s in number eight, second floor, back left.”
“Well,” Tripp said, removing his sidearm from its hip holster, “let’s go see what this fine concerned citizen wants to talk about.”
“Let’s,” Speed said with a smirk, getting his own weapon out.
They entered through a flimsy door, walked up stairs whose carpeting was so frayed that one could easily hook a toe and trip. On the second floor, the ratty carpet continued as they went down the hall past the muffled sounds of crying kids and soap operas and game shows, stopping at the last door on the left—apartment eight.
The hallway smelled of fried food, but Speed couldn’t tell if the aroma came from number eight or the apartment across the way. Neither of them stood directly in front of the door. Instead, guns in hand, they each took a side. Tripp gave Speedle a look, then he knocked on the door.
A moment later, the door cracked open and an African-American woman showed them half her face, a sullenly attractive half a face at that.
“Miami-Dade police,” Tripp said, his free hand indicating the badge on his sportcoat pocket. “I’m Detective Tripp, this is CSI Speedle. We understand Mr. Chevalier wants to talk.”
“You won’t need the guns.”
Tripp and Speedle exchanged glances and holstered their guns. But both kept their hands on the holstered butts.
She said, “Better,” in her thick Carribbean accent, then closed the door. They could hear the chain lock being taken off.
The woman opened the door again, and Speedle saw that the half face he’d seen through the open door did not lie. The woman was really something—tall and thin, Tyra Banks with a short, choppy Afro, wearing a Cabrerra University Hurricanes T-shirt and very short denim shorts, with a slow way of moving that made him think that every single action was a bother to her.
They entered a living room decorated in what Speed thought of as Early Trailer Park—a TV on a stand in a corner surrounded by a garage sale sofa and two heavy armchairs, possibly salvaged from an out-of-business beachfront hotel. The dining alcove to their right featured an aluminum card table and four folding chairs.
“Where’s Andrew Chevalier?” Tripp asked.
The woman curled a finger and led them down the hall.
Tripp went first, his hand still on the holstered weapon. Speed watched as Tripp glanced into the bathroom without fully moving in front of the door, then turned and did the same thing with a bedroom on the left; Speedle noted the clean but minuscule bathroom and a tiny empty bedroom.
Their hostess stopped at a door on the right at the end of the hall. She knocked lightly, then went in, closing the door on them, leaving them in the hall.
They’d caught a glimpse of a darkened room, but more significantly, a stench rolled out and caused Tripp to turn away, toward Speedle, gagging.
“What the hell is that smell?” he asked.
Speedle said, “Chicken blood.”
The detective gave Speedle a Say-what? look.
“Voodoo healing spell.”
“Voodoo? Like in sticking pins in dolls?”
“Voodoo,” Speedle said, “like in Haiti. Chevalier’s birthplace. A lot of people believe Haiti is also the birthplace of voodoo in this hemisphere.”
“Do tell.”
“It was, in fact, recognized as a legal religion there this past spring.”
“Yeah, well, remind me to subscribe to the Discovery Channel.”
Speedle shrugged. “You might like it.”
The woman opened the door and nodded for them to enter.
They gave each other what-the-hell expressions and followed her into the darkness. This time, Speedle took the lead, careful to step over the trail of chicken blood just inside the door.
The walls were a dusky gray, the only light filtering in through partially closed venetian blinds. The room was dominated by a huge king-size bed that barely left room to walk around. Speedle noticed that the trail of chicken blood circumnavigated the room and that dead chickens, their necks wrung, their feathers wilting toward the floor, were hung in each of the corners and in front of the room’s only window.
In the bed, naked, a sheet haphazardly thrown over his loins, lay a large black man with flowing dreadlocks: Andrew Chevalier.
The drug dealer was easily recognizable to Speedle, even though the massive man’s face was masked by blood-soaked bandages. Other bandages covered wounds to both arms, one leg, and a spot about even with his pelvic bone on the left side.
The CSI had seen enough gunshot injuries, in his time on the job to know that the numerous and serious wounds that Andrew Chevalier had suffered were unlikely to be overcome by voodoo magic.
8
Murder Suite
THE MOODILY ATTRACTIVE African-American woman slipped onto the bed beside the wounded Chevalier, his facial bandages like a bizarre blood-spotted blindfold. She used a wet cloth she’d taken from a tiny nightstand to wipe his fevered brow.
“Call nine-one-one now,” Speedle said to Tripp.
But Tripp already had his cell phone out.
A raspy breath racked the drug dealer, his massive torso shuddering. Then a very small, hoarse whisper for so big a man found its way out. “Who are you? Who’s there?”
“I’m Tim Speedle, CSI. With me’s Detective Frank Tripp.”
“Homicide,” Tripp said.
The faintest smile appeared on the sweat-beaded, bandaged mahogany face. “You’re just…a bit…early.”
Tripp said nothing; he had 911 on the line. He stepped back into the hall to finish the call, while Speedle maintained vigil and the lovely nurse in denim short shorts soothed the big blind man’s brow.
“Help’s on the way,” Speedle said.
Another ragged breath preceded, “You…you sound like a boy. I called for…Horatio Caine.”
“I’m a big boy,” Speedle said. “I work for Caine. He’s kind of tied up trying to stop this gang war.”
“So…so was I…”
Speedle sat on the edge of the bed and leaned closer. “Is that what you were doing at the Archer?”
“It…was. And look…look what happened to me.”
“It’s not the Nobel Peace Prize,” Speedle admitted.
The woman frowned at Speedle. “You strainin’ him. Easy, now.”
Speedle said to her, “We’ll get him to a hospital.”
But it was Chevalier who answered, with something that was half laugh, half death rattle. “Too late for that…we both know that. Tim, is it?”
“It’s Tim. Look, man, we’re gonna try. You’re talking to me. You’re still alive. You hold on.”
Chevalier made a movement, probably intended to be a shrug, though it was more like another shudder. “If I die here…I die in the safety…the arms…of my people. You understand? Why that…appeals?”
“Sure,” Speedle said.
“If you…you get me to the hospital…and they patch me up? Well enough for, what…another twenty-four hours?” He grabbed a wheezing breath. Then he went on. “Don’t you think…they come back, and finish the job?”
Tripp stepped back into the room and nodded to Speedle as he took out his notebook.
Time was not on their side, and as much as Speed didn’t like to push a dying man, he had an interview that needed doing…which was in the dying man’s interests, after all, since helping find who killed him was about all Chevalier had left.
“Mister Chevalier—who did this to you?”
The big man didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t know, damnit. Don’t know. Mendoza maybe…Wallace’s people, could be…somebody who found out about our plan.”
“What plan?”
Chevalier made a slight gesture with his head, looking blindly toward his pretty nurse, who understood and lifted a glass of water from the nightstand, held it out with one hand, and steadied a straw with the other as the big man sipped.
Swallowing appeared to be painful, and it took the Faucones leader a moment before he was ready to speak again. Speed didn’t feel like rushing the dying man, though every second now meant so much.
“Sir,” Speed said.
“It…it was my plan, really. I think, if I can get the Faucones, Mitus, Trenches, and Culebras together…to sit down…we could stop this war. Governor declares martial law, all of us lose.”
“But somebody turned the peace talk into a hit.”
The ganglord managed a brief nod; his wheezing breath grew ever louder.
Speed asked, “Where’s your friend Jean-Claude? His fingerprints were at the Archer too.”
Chevalier turned his head slightly toward the woman. “Ou le Jean-Claude est?”
“Dans le Hummer.”
The hooded, bleary eyes trained themselves on Speedle again. “There’s a row of four garages…behind the building…. My Hummer, it will be inside one. Jean-Claude will be inside it.”
“Is your friend dead?” Speedle asked.
“Very…. I was blinded…but Jean-Claude, he got me out of there…back to the car. We escaped, but I could tell…by his breathing? He was wounded, too…could not talk. I ask him to take me here…. Sareena is a friend. I knew she would help.”
The woman, whose sullenness Speedle now read as sorrow, patted her patient’s forehead with the cloth again.
The CSI asked, “Are you up to telling how it went down?”
After another signal from Chevalier, the woman gave him a drink again. Sipping, then swallowing hard, he coughed, in that death-rattle way, and Speedle wondered if the big man had crossed the finish line.
But a moment later, the drug dealer’s breathing calmed to a wheeze.
“I negotiate all day, with the other three—we agree to meet at the Archer. Place was closed, didn’t think nobody would think we’d go there.”
“Somebody did,” Speedle pointed out.
“Somebody…. Jean-Claude and me, we get there first. It was, after all, my idea for all of us to meet. Jean-Claude checked the main floor, the bar, the lobby, found no one. No sign anybody broke in and got there before us.”
“What about upstairs? The empty hotel rooms?”
“We…we all agreed we’d each bring only one…one aide. I didn’t feel comfortable, having Jean-Claude upstairs while I was on the first floor alone.”
“Why didn’t you go up with him?”
“I…I’m a big man…. Elevators were down…I don’t like the stairs. Trouble breathing.”
Not like the trouble breathing Chevalier would have any second now, Speedle thought, then asked, “Who was next to arrive?”
“Shakespeare…him and his man, they come in next. While the Trench and me, we stay downstairs, Jean-Claude and Shakespeare’s guy do the quick sweep, upstairs. I know they did the second floor…don’t know if they made it to the third.”
“So Manny Calisto was the last to arrive?”
“Oui. He come in, sit down, and before one damn word gets spoken…the shit hit the fan.”
“Then Mendoza never made it to the party?”
“No. He…miss the fun.”
“Or started it,” Speedle said.
“He could have. He set the time, the place.”
“Why?”
“Different parts of the arrangements, these we split up…for…” His laugh hurt him. “…safety sake.”
Chevalier’s breathing became more labored, and it was obvious that the end wasn’t that far away.
“What about Wallace’s group?”
“They weren’t invited. They’re in too much…what’s the word?”
“Flux?”
“Yes. Flux. But his men, too. Oui, they could have done this thing. ’Specially if they think Calisto is behind the shooting of their boss.”
“So, they came in blazing. How many of them were there?”
Chevalier held up two fingers.
“Two?”
“Oui.”
Speedle and Tripp exchanged glances.
“There were six of you,” Tripp said. “They musta been good.”
With a feeble nod, the big man agreed. He accepted another sip from his nurse, coughed once, then said, “They jump into the bar from the back.”
Speedle knew this meant the hit squad could’ve come through the back door, the kitchen way, or down the rear stairway from the upper floors of hotel rooms.
Chevalier was saying, “One went to the right, one the left, and before you know it, Calisto and his man—dead. I don’t think they even knew the assassins were there. Too fast. Too fast.”
“But you saw them?”
“Yes…. Jean-Claude, he try to leap in front of me, but we are both hit, and go down.”
“Did you see Shakespeare get it?”
“Oui, but at least his man got his gun out and fired one round before he was killed.”
“Did he hit either of the shooters?” Speedle asked.
“I don’t think so…but I couldn’t see. Jean-Claude’s body was on top of me by then, and…the bullets, one cuts across my face, blinds me.”
