Games of the Heart (71 page)

Rivera sat back. “Yeah. My girl was fifteen and found a kid who’d walk through fire for her and do it smilin’, I’d be where you are now, brother.”

The way Mike saw Rivera be with his own kids, he had no doubt.

Mike stood, grabbing his blazer off the back of his chair, saying, “We got enough time to pick up a Mimi’s before the meeting. Coffees are good. But her cookies, brownies, anything in the case is only one step down from Hilligoss and it’s a narrow step.”

Rivera stood, replying, “Wasn’t sure about a vacation in Hoosierland but you Indiana folk know how to eat. After a while, I’d miss my barbeque and Tex-Mex but that’d be a long while.”

He shrugged on his blazer as they moved to and down the stairs together, Mike returning, “You get home, don’t tell anyone or we’ll have to send the crew out to cut out your tongue. Most folk think Indiana’s a state to drive right through. They took a minute to eat our food, experience our hospitality, understand the depth of our loyalty and they did it in fall when the trees are in color, no one would ever leave.”

“I’m sensing this,” Rivera muttered.

Walking past Kath at the reception desk, jerking up his chin and getting a finger wave in return which made him smile, Mike muttered back, “Sense it all you like. It’s the God’s honest truth.”

Rivera pushed open the door, grinning at him. Mike walked through grinning at his boots.

They hit Mimi’s and got coffees. While there Rivera proved irrefutably that he was a good husband and Dad when he bought a shitload of cookies and brownies for his wife and kids. Both of them carrying white, paper coffee cups with cardboard sleeves and Rivera a big white bag, they walked out of Mimi’s, one door down and into the door that led to Tanner’s offices.

They went up the steps and Mike didn’t bother knocking or announcing them when he opened the door at the top, strode through and held it for Rivera. This was because Tanner had cameras and already knew they were there.

And Mike would know why the bullpen was empty when they walked through Tanner’s reception area. He did this smiling at Tanner’s Mom, Vera who was on the phone behind the receptionist’s desk. But in his office were Colt, Sully and Merry along with Ryker, Tanner and, fuck him, Cal and Tanner’s go-to guy, ex-CIA agent and currently certifiable Devin Glover.

“Jesus, holy fuck,” Rivera murmured, coming to a quick halt and looking up at the tall, hulking, tattoo-sleeved Ryker. “Boy, what’d your Mama feed you growin’ up?” he asked.

“Newborn babies,” Ryker answered, scowling down at Rivera.

“I see this. Totally,” Rivera replied.

Ryker frowned.

Then he asked Mike while still frowning at Rivera, “Who’s the new guy?”

Mike stepped in and performed introductions not just to Ryker but all around.

Then he looked at Tanner and noted, “I wasn’t aware this was a party.”

“I made some calls,” Tanner pointed out the obvious.

“Seems the new guy brought party treats,” Ryker remarked, his eyes on Rivera’s white Mimi’s bag.

“Go for them, I’ll cut off your hand. These are for my woman and kids,” Rivera returned and Ryker’s eyes went from the bag to Rivera.

Then he smiled his scary Ryker smile.

“A throw down with me so you can give your woman and kids brownies. Don’t know if that’s stupid or crazy,” Ryker mused out loud.

“Don’t give much of a shit what you think it is,” Rivera shot back.

“Blood’s a pain in the ass to clean up and no one here has time to do it. Can you two stand down so we can have this powwow and get on with our days?” Merry cut in.

“Yeah, and suddenly I got a hankerin’ for Mimi’s,” Sully murmured then looked at Colt. “Why didn’t we stop by before we came in?”

“’Cause if we did, Ryker would have been up in our shit about it and if we do it after, he won’t be around so he won’t,” Colt replied.

 
“Right,” Sully said on a grin.

“Reminder,” Mike put in. “I got a situation I need to see to so maybe we can get this started.” His eyes went through Colt, Sully, Merry, Cal and Devin. “You wanna tell me what you all are doin’ here?”

“Well, I, for one, didn’t haul my ass up those steps to watch The Ryker and The New Guy Show,” Devin noted cantankerously.

“So why’d you haul your ass up the steps?” Mike asked and Devin’s sharp eyes came to him.

“Before I spill, I hear Ryker’s gettin’ cake. I want one too,” Devin demanded.

Jesus.

“Dusty’ll make you a cake,” Mike agreed. “Now talk.”

Devin opened his mouth to speak but Ryker got there before him.

“Mine’s twelve layers,” he declared and Mike looked at him.

“Pardon?”

“I been workin’ this a while. My cake is twelve layers. That asshole just threw in. He don’t get one that’s twelve layers. At most, six.”

Devin’s eyes narrowed. “Half? Are you shittin’ me? I got more than you in a week ‘cause you’ve had your thumb up your ass.”

Ryker crossed his arms on his chest and stared down his nose at Devin as he contradicted, “I been nosin’ around.”

“Hardly,” Devin returned then looked at Mike. “I want a twelve layer one too.”

Mike had never done it but he wondered if counting to ten actually worked.

He didn’t get the chance to start.

“Fuck me, shut the fuck up,” Cal entered the conversation, glaring at both Ryker and Devin. “Cakes. Jesus. Seriously? Are we talkin’ about cakes?”

“Easy for you to say, you got a woman who makes ‘em,” Devin shot back.

“I heard that!” Vera shouted from the other room and Mike watched Tanner slowly close his eyes.

Tanner had allowed what all of them knew they never should allow – his partner to become romantically involved with a family member. Usually it was your sister you shielded from that shit. With Vera hooking up with Devin, it was Tanner’s mother.

“You did, then bake me a cake every once in a while,” Devin called through the door.

“Um…
excuse me?
” she asked with a snap.

“Right. Focus,” Mike clipped. “I got a boy who’s turned seventeen today and I’d like to celebrate that with him tonight. Not be in the tank for assault.”

“Jonas is seventeen?” Sully asked. “How’d I miss that? Tell him Uncle Sul says happy birthday and I’ll get Raine on sendin’ him a card with some green in it.”

Mike looked up at the ceiling but he still heard Rivera mutter, “Brownsburg. Every year. Spring break. I fuckin’
love
this place.”

“How ‘bout I start?” Cal asked without even attempting to conceal his impatience and Mike stopped looking at the ceiling and looked to him. “Got a bud who’s got a bud who works for McGrath. This bud of his has been vocal about shit that goes down on McGrath’s sites. And by this I mean the fact that McGrath isn’t real concerned his building are up to code. Problem is, the guy’ll talk while he’s hammered but since McGrath signs his paycheck, he won’t do it official. So I found this shit out, I punted it to Colt.”

That was when Colt spoke. “Cal told me that, I started diggin’ and all his builds passed every inspection. So either this guy is the only male on the planet who lies when he’s shitfaced or McGrath has someone in his pocket. Didn’t have to look too far to find out that McGrath’s wife’s, second-cousin’s husband has got his signature on all the documents. First off, as a member of the family, no matter how loose, he’s got no business inspecting McGrath’s builds. But he’s a building inspector, his wife grooms poodles and they live in a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar house with an in ground pool all that sittin’ on five acres.”

“Payoffs,” Mike said.

“My guess, yes,” Colt replied. “No proof though.”

“Yet,” Sully added.

Mike looked at Ryker and stated, “That’s worth twelve layers. You got anything at all?”

Ryker opened his mouth but Devin spoke.

“What I got is they got a pre-nup,” he announced. “But I also got more. See, Mrs. McGrath’s father is a preacher and Mrs. McGrath lost her Momma when she was nine. Mrs. McGrath’s Momma was loaded and that’s with a capital ‘L’. All held in trust until she turned twenty-one. McGrath married her when she was twenty-one. I seen the woman. I know why. And it isn’t that she looks pretty in sundresses. She’s a Jesus Freak who could play defensive end for the Colts. It was her money that bankrolled the business. But she isn’t stupid. She mighta jumped at the chance at love seein’ as she wasn’t gonna get a lotta offers but that marriage goes sour, she walks away with seventy-five percent of everything.”

“Jesus,” Mike whispered.

“No shit, Jesus, Mary
and
Joseph,” Devin agreed. “Suffice it to say, she’ll frown on her beloved doin’ some bitch on his desk. The sanctity of marriage is God’s will. I don’t know, she finds out, she’ll get shot of his ass or ride it until kingdom come since I heard word God isn’t too hot on divorce. I do know she’s got a rep as a ball breaker which means McGrath has got a type, seein’ as your woman’s sister’s got the same. So, she finds out he’s bangin’ the sister, odds are, she’ll lose her mind and find some way to make him pay. Oh and by the way,” he began to sum up, “it was McGrath who spread those rumors his startup money had scary ties. In the beginning, he had no muscle, just ambition. He needed land and wanted fear on his side gettin’ it so he made that shit up. It was later, when he could afford muscle, he got it but kept those rumors flowin’ because they were doin’ the job.”

“So we got two avenues,” Mike noted.

“Or you could come at it a different direction,” Merry put in and Mike looked at him. “Went to the Academy with a guy who moved to Baltimore. I reached out seein’ as he’s got friends on The Force in DC. Asked him to ask around and he has. Seein’ as Debbie Holliday is a defense attorney, she’s already not their favorite person. Seein’ as she’s a successful one, they like her even less. But she’s a
very
successful one. So successful, there’s rumblin’s as to how she does as well as she does.”

“And these rumblings are?” Mike asked.

“Talk is judges in her pocket but my friend’s friend thinks it’s something else.”

“And that would be?” Tanner cut in to ask.

“Not bribes. She’s got shit on them,” Merry answered. “At least two of them. And he thinks this because he’s seen her in the presence of a PI and that is a private investigator. Not an investigator that works for her firm. Whatever this is all happens outside the firm and this PI doesn’t have a great reputation. Debbie’s rep also includes bein’ scary ambitious and no one would be surprised she went the extra mile to ramp up her win rate which would ramp up her hourly rate. She made partner at the youngest age of anyone in that firm. That firm’s been around for forty-five years and when I say anyone, I mean anyone, male or female. And that firm bein’ around that long was known as a boy’s club. Now, it’s not.”

“This is all in DC, Merry. How do we get the shit Debbie has on those judges?” Mike asked

“You get your woman to bake me a twelve layer cake, I use my frequent flier miles and I poke around DC. That’s how you get it,” Devin answered and Mike’s eyes went to him.

“You get me dirt on Debbie, Dusty’ll make you a twelve layer cake and I’ll buy you a bottle of twenty year old Scotch,” Mike stated.

“Then I better get my woman to pull up the airlines on the internet and get my ass on a plane,” Devin muttered while wandering out the door and when Mike lost sight of him, he heard, “And I like chocolate cake!”

They had something to shut Debbie down, now and forever, Dusty would grow the fucking cocoa beans.

Mike didn’t share that.

Instead he looked through the room and said, “We need proof on the code violations then I’m goin’ to McGrath with that as well as providing him the knowledge he doesn’t stand down from the farm, his wife gets a head’s up about his extramarital activities. We need someone at Fire and Building Safety to nose around.”

“On that,” Colt said. “Know a coupla guys. Already made the calls.”

“Seems Dusty’s gonna be busy bakin’,” Mike muttered.

“You haven’t heard what I got,” Ryker put in and Mike looked to him.

“You got somethin’, share it.”

“Old lady Molder,” Ryker announced and Mike’s gaze cut through Merry, Colt and Sully.

Old lady Molder sat on fallow fields for ten years waiting for her grandson to be old enough to work them. Her son had died in a drunk driving accident, him being the one who was drunk. He was good for nothing, found himself a good for nothing woman who left when her kid was two and never looked back then found himself wrapped around a telephone pole. The kid was five.

Old lady Molder’s land had been in her family for six generations. It was one of the first farms to operate in The ‘Burg. She had members of her family march in The ‘Burg’s Centennial Parade, its Sesquicentennial Parade and its Bicentennial Parade. She was ‘Burg Farmer Royalty, roots so deep no one ever thought they’d be dug up.

Now her farm was where The Station restaurant, its parking lot and the shops surrounding it sat. When that happened, The ‘Burg rocked. No one thought old lady Molder would sell her land. She’d stake herself to it before leaving it. And it was when old lady Molder sold that the cops got curious but without any complaints or obvious violations, there was nothing they could do.