Private Deceptions (17 page)

Mrs. Childers dropped me off at my apartment about two in the morning. She was nervous during the ride about what Chilly might do if he were home when she got there.

I had drunk my share of Hennessy and could feel the makings of a serious hangover coming. I popped a couple of aspirins, took a shower, and crawled into bed. I went to sleep thinking, not only about what I just did with Mrs. Childers in the shower and in just about every room in the house. But I thought about Felicia mostly. Although I found Gee
, now it felt funny saying it
, very attractive, I missed Felicia. I just had sex with Gee and it was great, but in some strange kind of way, Gee’s sex made me long for Felicia’s touch even more. I wanted to see her face, hear her voice, to see her smile and be excited by her touch. I rolled over, I didn’t understand it and I was too buzzed to try.

The sound of somebody’s fist making contact with my door, or maybe it was their foot, I’m not sure which, woke me from my sleep around eight the next morning. "Stop fuckin’ bangin’, I’m coming!"

I dragged myself out of bed and made my way toward the door. What I found was two uniformed cops informing me that Detective Kirkland wanted to see me at the station right away. Once I got through cursing them out for makin’ all that noise so early in the morning, I told them to wait, and I would be right out. I gave some thought to getting back in the bed. But that would only make them bang on the door some more. Still, I took my time about getting ready.

An hour later, I found myself sitting alone in an interrogation room waiting for Kirk to show up. But as luck would have it, Richards walked through the door.

"What happened to you, Simmons?" Detective Richards asked.

"I walked into a door?"

"Yeah, right. Looks to me like that door worked you over pretty fuckin’ good, Simmons."

I didn’t see any point in commenting, so I didn’t. Richards was an idiot anyway. Finally Kirk came in and slammed the door behind him. "Sorry to keep you waiting." He stopped in his tracks when he saw me. "Shit, what happened to your face? No wait. Let me guess, you cut yourself shaving."

"No, he walked into a door." Richards laughed.

"Had to be one or the other." Kirk said, and took a seat next to me. "Anyway, Nick, I had you brought down here to see if you found out anything more about Jake Rollins."

"Why do you want to know, Kirk? What do you care about my missing persons case?"

"Because your missing persons case may be tied to several drug cases and a murder."

"I know about the drugs. What murder are you talking about?"

"Pamela Hendricks," Kirk said.

"Wasn’t that one of the people who you told me died of this mysterious drug overdose?"

"That was our first impression." Richards chimed in.

"Why are you calling it murder now?"

"Nick, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re the police. That means we investigate." I guess Kirk was trying to be funny, but he wasn’t successful. "That investigation has led us to come to a different conclusion."

"What brought you to that conclusion?"

"As near as we can tell, this Hendricks woman didn’t use drugs." Kirk asserted. "There were signs of a struggle in the general area where the body was found. So, I’ll ask you again, what have you found out about Rollins?"

"Nothing really. I’ve been working on another case. The more I talk to you guys, the more I’m convinced that I don’t want any parts of this. As a matter of fact, just last night, I told my client that I don’t think Jake wants to be found."

"You can say that." Richards laughed, and Kirk shot him a look. The more he talked the more the sound of his voice annoyed the shit out of me. Maybe Kirk felt the same way. "Your client thinks her husband, Chilly, is involved, doesn’t she?"

"I’m not at liberty to say."

Richards jumped out of his seat. "You’re startin’ to piss me off with that privilege shit, Simmons."

"So."

Kirk looked at him and shook his head. "Sit down, Richards."

"Like I said, Kirk, that’s all I know."

"What about Felicia Hardy?" Kirk asked.

"That’s the roommate, ain’t it? Wasn’t she a cop?"

"Yeah, you talk to her?"

"No."

"What were you doing in California?"

"I told you, I have another case. Why, is she in Cali?"

"We think so," Kirk said. "Her and the Hendricks woman grew up there. I think maybe she went back there."

"Hmm. Sorry I can’t be any more help to you, Kirk. But like I said, I backed off of this."

"Then you wouldn’t be interested to know that Jake Rollins body was found last night. He was shot, once in the head with a heavy caliber weapon. At fairly close range."

"Has anyone informed my client?"

"Somebody is taking care of that as we speak."

At least I didn’t have to be the one to tell Mrs. Childers that I was a fool. Or at the very least, I was a lousy detective. Yesterday I told her that her brother was alive and hiding somewhere from her husband. Now the cops were there to tell her he’s dead. She’s probably screaming Chilly did it right now.

Maybe I was just kidding myself into thinking I could be a detective. I had to start facing the reality that I’m not a detective. I’m a trained killer, that’s what I am.

If it wasn’t for Reggie, I would have never have found Felicia, and I wouldn’t know anything about this whole synthetic crack thing. "Where was the body found?"

"Behind a dumpster at a restaurant on Third Ave. The body had been there awhile."

"You know how long?"

"Not yet. Few days at least. People at the restaurant said they’d smelled it for days before they finally checked it out. Here’s what makes this whole thing a little more interesting. It seems that Rollins worked for the same company as another body we found three days ago with his throat slit from ear to ear."

"Coincidence?" I said nonchalantly. As far as I was concerned, I was out of it.

"I don’t think so. They were both chemists, working for the same company. They didn’t work together, but still, I’d say that was a bit more than just a coincidence. Wouldn’t you say so, Nick?"

"Maybe." The shit was starting to get deep now. The other guy was probably this Rodrigez guy that Chilly’s Peruvian friend, Diego Estabon, was supposed to have taken care of. If that was the case, maybe Chilly did take care of his, as promised, in a couple of days. I began to consider the possibility that maybe Chilly had found and killed Jake days ago and he was just setting me up to be part of his alibi.

"You ever seen this guy before, Simmons?" Richards asked.

He walked up to the table and handed me a picture of the dead man. "His name is Norman Vogel."

My heart stopped.

"We fished him out of the East River near Pier 17."

The shit just went from deep, to fucked up. If Rodrigez and Norman Vogel were the same person, then Felix had us deliver him gift wrapped to the Peruvians. And if that was the case, we were in this up to our necks. I picked up the picture as causally as I could. "No, never seen him before." I dropped the picture. "You finished with me?"

"No, Nick, we’re just getting started," Kirk said.

"You think I killed them?"

"Not necessarily. But I’m not ruling you out. I’ll tell you what I do think though. I think you know exactly what’s goin’ on here."

"What makes you say that?" I tried to laugh it off, but he was right. I knew exactly what was goin’ on here. I just wasn’t about to tell him.

"These are your people, Nick. Scum bags and drug dealers, all of them. So let’s start with what happened to your face?"

For the next hour, Kirk and Richards asked me questions that I knew the answer to, but refused to tell them. Anything I said at this point would lead right back to my front door. So my answer to every question was the same. "I don’t know anything about it." I knew they had nothing to hold me on, not yet anyway. The only thing that was on my mind at that point was Felix.

As soon as the police released me, I called Monika. "Monika, this is Nick."

"No need to be so formal, Nick. How you doin’?"

"Not good. I’m on my way over there now. Call Jett and tell him to meet us there as fast as he can."

"My house? What’s goin’ on, Nick?"

"We have a problem. Jake is dead. Police just found the body."

"Good for them. How is that a problem for us?"

"I’ll explain everything when I get there. Just call Jett. I’ll be there in about twenty-five minutes." I must have been driving faster than I thought, ’cause I was there in fifteen minutes. Jett was there when I got there, which would save me the trouble of telling the story twice.

"Are you sure it’s the same guy?" Jett asked pacing back and forth around the living room.

"Yeah, I’m sure. It’s too much of a coincidence not to be."

"Something ain’t right about this. It’s too messy, too public. The police can tie this back to us. Felix should never have put us in this position," Monika said.

"Have you tried to call Felix?" Jett inquired. "Find out what the fuck is goin’ on?"

"Not yet. And if I did, what’s he gonna say? I don’t know anything about it, this shouldn’t have happened. Best he doesn’t know that we even suspect he had any part of this."

"If the cops connect us to Vogel, the shit is over. Fuck Felix. He set us up to take this fall," Monika said.

"We don’t know that," Jett said.

"The hell we don’t, who else could it be? I never did trust Felix," Monika said as she got up and looked out the window. "I mean what do we know about him anyway?"

"It all goes back to that last mission."

"What are you talking about, Nick?" she asked.

"The way the whole thing went down. I mean, what were we really doin’ down there?"

There was silence.

"We’ve all thought about it. I know I have. There we were in South America killing drug dealers, blowing up drug plants and seizing their financial records. We were small teams, each working independently. But all of a sudden, the entire unit is needed to take out one plant. Then boom, everybody dies."

"Except us." Monika asserted.

"And we’d be dead too if you didn’t fall on approach and break your ankle."

"I never will forget searching the area for survivors," Jett said. I looked over at Jett; he looked like he was in another world, sitting there in the middle of the floor. "Knowing that there wouldn’t be any," Jett continued. "But the whole time I’m thinkin’, Nick. I’m thinkin’, something ain’t right. Something in the milk ain’t clean."

"I hate it when you say shit like that, Jett. Like white milk is so pure, so clean that—"

"Give it a rest for now, Monika. Okay! We pick up the whole black, white thing at 0700 tomorrow," Jett said and bounced up from the floor. I had to agree. This wasn’t the time.

Jett resumed his pacing routine. "Then the way they got us out of there. Quick and quiet. Like we were down there doin’ somethin’ we didn’t have no business doin’. But shit went wrong and everyone died but us. Well shit, we don’t know what we know, so what could we tell anybody. And who’s gonna ask? You have to know what was goin’ on to even ask the damn questions."

What he said was confusing at first, then I realized just how right he was.

"Then we get processed out. And the very next day there’s Uncle Felix. But the money’s been good so I ain’t sayin’ nothin’."

"Imagine if we had told Felix no," Monika said.

"Like I said, it’s not like all of us haven’t thought about it. But that’s the case with any of the shit we’ve done, in or out. If we become expendable, we die. More so now."

"We don’t know who the fuck Felix is. He never identified himself as a representative of — shit, anything!" Monika exclaimed. "We all just went along with it for the money. The fact of the matter is that we’re mercenaries."

"She’s right Nick."

"Don’t you think I know that? We aren’t some kinda high-powered secret government agents. They didn’t recruit us into the CIA or any shit like that. They pushed us out and threw some bones our way to keep us happy and quiet."

"I need a drink." Monika picked up a bottle of gin. "What do we do now?"

"Make it two." Jett got up and followed Monika to the kitchen. She poured herself and Jett a glass. "You want one Nick?"

"Hell no. I don’t know how y’all drink that shit anyway."

"Like this!" they both said almost at the same time and drained their glasses. "I got some Johnnie Black for you, Nick."

"Thanks."

Monika handed me a glass. "So what are we gonna do?" she asked.

"For the time being I need to stay as far away from this as possible."

"You a suspect, Nick?" Jett asked.

"And I quote, ‘I’m not ruling you out’."

"That’s not good, Nick," Monika said.

"Jett, start diggin’ into Felix. Find out everything you can about him, bank records, property he owns, the whole nine."

"I’ll crawl up his ass with a microscope."

"That’s disgusting gray boy," Monika said.

"We got to start covering our tracks. But first we need to be sure that Vogel is the one that Estabon was talking about."

"How we gonna do that?"

"Monika, I want you to talk to Chilly, see if you can’t get him to confirm that Rodrigez and Vogel are the same person."

"Why me? What makes you think Chilly will tell me anything? Why can’t Jett go?"

"We can’t send Jett."

"That’s right, Monika, he won’t tell this gray boy nothing." Jett laughed. "But you, on the other hand, with all them lips, and tits and hips you got. Shit, he might confess to murdering 2Pac and Biggie Smalls."

"So what are you trying to say?"