Brass in Pocket (29 page)

“If I were you, Dawson Upson,” Nick interrupted, wanting to make sure this case went to trial with no complications, “I would keep my mouth shut until I had a lawyer present. You ever hear of the Miranda warning? Because you're about to become very familiar with it. You have the right to remain silent…”

A
N ANGRY BUZZ
, like giant wasps defending a hive, emanated from the Clark County Raceway. Crowds of people flocked from the parking lot into the stands. Inside, at ground level, the noise was almost unbearable, as race cars ran practice laps, pit crews used pneumatic tools, and people shouted at one another just to be heard over the general din. Heat waves rising off the black pavement of the track shimmered the air, lending it a thick, liquid quality that partially obscured the cars on the far straightaway. The air was tinged with oil and racing fuel, burnt rubber and tobacco and spilled beer. No wonder Victor Whendt's wife, with her sensitive nose, didn't like it here.

Catherine wasn't crazy about it, either. But Desert Palm Hospital had already released Greg, and Nick and Riley had brought in Dawson Upson and returned Melinda Spence to her grateful family, so it
was going to take a lot more than some stinky air and unpleasantly loud noise to ruin her mood.

Emil Blago stood on the tarmac just outside his team's pit area. He was a short, heavyset man, with silver-streaked black hair that curled around his collar and receded from the top of his head at the same time, as if it had always been the same length but was shifting down under the pull of gravity. Sun blasted down on his scalp, where a deep tan didn't hide the age spots. He wore a white tracksuit with red and green stripes, white sneakers, and wraparound shades, and he stood with his feet spread apart, his hands clasped behind his back, like he expected a gust of wind to try to knock him over. His attention was riveted on the cars speeding past him.

Catherine Willows and Jim Brass badged their way onto the track. As they made for Blago, a couple of bruisers blocked them, big guys who could have worn refrigerator cartons for coats, and who looked about as intellectually proficient as the cardboard that made up those cartons.

“Where you going?” one of them asked. The smaller of the two, he wasn't much taller than a mature oak tree, and probably weighed marginally less. He had lost most of his teeth along the road of life, and many of those remaining were clad in gold.

“To see Blago,” Brass said. “Not that it's any of your business.”

“Nobody bothers Mr. Blago on the track.”

“And anything that happens here is our business,” the bigger one said.

“I'm not nobody,” Brass said. He showed his
badge. Catherine did the same. “And I will bother him. You can watch me if you want. From a distance.”

“No,” the bigger guy said. Trying to keep both of his shoulders in view at the same time was like trying to watch a tennis game. He had more teeth than his smaller friend, but adolescent acne had left his cheeks patchworked with black scars. Catherine wasn't sure which thug was less pleasing to the eye.
Sometimes life gives us hard choices
, she thought.

“Yes,” Brass countered. “You see these badges? They're like all-access passes. We go anywhere we want, and people who try to interfere with us only go one place.”

“He means prison,” Catherine said, because it didn't look like the two men understood and she didn't want them to strain themselves trying to figure it out. She was pretty sure neither one was the attorney that Paul the estate manager had mentioned.

“Maybe you can see Mr. Blago after the race. He don't like to be disturbed before, while he's concentrating.”

“We'll see him now, thanks,” Brass said. He offered one of the least sincere smiles Catherine had ever seen and put away his badge. As he did, he flapped his jacket back and showed his gun. “I don't think he's driving today, anyway.” He started toward Blago.

The smaller giant reached a meaty paw toward Brass's chest. Brass put up a warning hand, blocking him. “You're going to want to think long and hard
before you lay a hand on me,” he said. “Because if you touch me, I'll consider it assault. And once you're in the system—I'm guessing not for the first time—then we'll turn over every rock you ever stepped on and we'll see what else we can find out about you. My guess is you'll be back on the street by the time you're ninety, so maybe you're not too worried about it. Ninety's the new eighty, from what I hear.”

The huge hand hovered for another moment, then fell away. Brass smiled again, this time almost seeming to mean it.

The giants stepped aside. As Brass and Catherine passed between them, Catherine thought she knew how the followers of Moses felt walking on the floor of the just-parted Red Sea.

“Mr. Blago!” Brass shouted.

Blago turned around. The wraparounds were pitch-black, but those parts of his face Catherine could see were without expression except for the slightest jutting of his lower lip. He didn't speak.

“I'm Captain Jim Brass, Las Vegas Police Department,” Brass said. “This is CSI Supervisor Catherine Willows. We need a minute of your time.”

“I don't even know why you bother with a badge,” Blago said. “An infant would know you were a cop with a single glance. A blind infant, at that. You
smell
like a cop.” He eyed Catherine; she could feel the laser beam of his eyes even through the shades. “You, not so much.” He returned his attention to Brass. Catherine already wanted a steaming shower, in spite of the day's increasing warmth. “Me, I'm always happy to meet law enforcement officers
of any sort,” Blago continued. “What can I do for you folks?”

“I need to talk to you about Antoinette,” Brass said.

“My wife? Have you met her? She's lovely.”

“I know. I
have
met her.”

Blago's lips parted and a wedge of pink tongue swept across them. “I got it. So you're the guy.”

“Which guy is that?”

“The one who got away.”

“That's not exactly how I'd put it.”

“It's how she makes it sound. You'd be amazed how it makes a guy feel to hear his wife constantly saying, ‘If I had only stayed with James, things would be so different.'”

“That doesn't sound much like the Antoinette I knew.”

“Maybe.” Blago did the tongue thing again. “But you knew her a long time ago, right? People change.”

“I've heard that. I don't see much evidence of it in my line of work. Once a scumbag, always a scumbag, that's my experience.”

A couple of race cars, one red and one black, roared up the straightaway toward them, and Blago raised his voice. “I feel like we're getting kind of personal here!”

“We definitely are,” Brass replied. “And we're going to get more so!”

“Maybe we should go into my office.”

The cars disappeared around the first turn, and the noise level dropped again. “I think we're fine right here,” Brass said.

“Have it your way. Why don't you tell me what you want?”

“Right to the point,” Brass replied. “I like that. Here's the thing. Antoinette's leaving you. She's already gone. You will never see her again.”

“Should I be calling my lawyer?” Blago asked. “Alienation of affection or something like that. I can sue you for that, right? In civil court? All I have to do is show that you moved back into her life with your badge and scooped her right into the sack.”

“I'm not sleeping with her, Blago. That's not what this is about.”

Blago grinned. “I thought you knew Antoinette, but maybe not. If it's not about sex, then what the hell is it about?”

Brass moved closer to him, so their heads were inches apart, and lowered his voice. Blago had to strain to hear. “It's about frying pans. It's about decades of abuse and suffering. It's about a troubled but decent woman finding herself married to a dirtbag loser with a defective cerebral cortex and no moral compass.”

Blago licked his lips again, and when he spoke, spittle flecked his chin. “You're calling me a loser, Mr. Can't-Wait-for-My-Pension? Remember, I got some rights here. The law is pretty clear about someone coming between a husband and wife—”

Brass raised a hand to Blago's collar, then dropped it again without actually making contact. Catherine could read the tension in his spine, the set of his chin, the edge in his voice. “No. You don't get to claim the protection of the law. You forfeited
that right, Blago. The only thing you need to know about all this is that you'll be getting divorce papers from her lawyer. He won't be a Las Vegas lawyer, he'll be from some other city, but that won't be where she is. You'll sign those papers right away, giving her whatever she asks for, which I assure you won't be unreasonable. You will never appear in court together. And you will never go looking for her. That's a key thing here. You will not search for her, or send anyone else to look for her.”

“I don't know who you think you are, Brass, but I got friends who can—”

“I don't want to hear about your friends. I don't care if you know judges and senators. You probably do. So what? None of that matters here, because we're talking personally, not professionally. Just two guys ironing out a difficult situation.”

The cars had started up the straightaway again, and Brass raised his voice to be heard over their deafening approach. “Those cars go pretty fast! I bet it would hurt a lot to be hit by a car going that fast!”

Blago tore his sunglasses from his head. His eyes were small and squinty. Catherine was reminded of a cartoon mole emerging from his burrow. “Are you threatening me?” he asked as the din faded.

“Not at all, Mr. Blago. If I wanted to threaten you, you wouldn't have to ask. Here's how that would go: It would be something like me describing how if you ever bothered Antoinette in any way, yourself or through any intermediaries, I would hear about it, and then I'd see that your legs were tied to one car heading south and your arms to another
car heading north, and we'd get to see which parts were glued on better.” Brass gave one of his special grins, the ones Catherine expected small fish might see on a shark's face right before becoming breakfast. “Now
that
would be a threat.”

“Hey, you're a cop!” Blago sputtered. “You're a cop too, lady. You're standing right here! He can't just threaten a citizen like that! Aren't you gonna arrest him?”

Catherine shook her head and poked one of her ears with a finger. “Those cars are awfully loud,” she said. “I can't hear a thing you boys are saying.”

Blago put the shades back on, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned to look at the racetrack. “I got a busy day,” he said. “You got no more official business, you need to get off the track.”

“We're going,” Brass said. “You just remember our little talk. And by the way… I'm going to be keeping an eye on you from now on. So you'd better behave yourself—one slip and you'll find out how it feels to live in a cage.”

Blago didn't look at him. He said something but it was lost in the whine of a pneumatic lug wrench from the nearby pits. Catherine didn't imagine it could be very interesting anyway.

Brass was quiet until they reached his car. Once they were settled inside it, seat belts fastened, he looked over at her. “Thanks, Catherine.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn't have missed it. Do you think it'll work? You think he won't go looking for her?”

Brass shrugged. “Who knows? If I understood
how the mind of a guy like that operated, I'd have to give myself a lobotomy just to get to sleep at night. I hope he won't, but there aren't any guarantees. Especially when you're dealing with head cases.”

“But you think scaring him is the best way to go?”

“Well, I can't afford to buy him, and I don't think there are many things his kind responds to. Fear and money are two of the old standbys, though.”

“That's true.”

“Anyway, I appreciate you coming along. Backing me up”—he let that hang in the air for a moment, then added—“and volunteering. I felt like it would be presumptuous to ask you. It's the kind of thing I might have asked Gil to do, but…”

“But I'm a woman. The tender sex.”

Brass didn't say anything.

“Presume away, Jim. We might have different equipment, but Gil and I are alike in a lot of ways. Maybe he's rubbed off on me.”

“What is it you CSIs are always talking about?” Brass asked. “Locard's exchange principle?”

“Any contact between a person and another person, place, or object leaves behind traces,” she summarized.

“That's right. I think maybe it works with people, too. Gil has left traces on all of us.”

So have you
, she thought.
So has everyone I've worked with—Warrick, Sara, Nick, Greg, and the rest of them. They've all left more than traces, but Gil Grissom has left the most
. “Big traces,” she said simply. “And lack of patience for guys like Emil Blago is one of them.
Anyway, he left me in charge, so that makes it my business.” She didn't add that she was glad Brass was still part of her extended crime lab family. She'd had her doubts about him during the night, and probably she shouldn't have. She hadn't had much choice, though. She had to listen to the stories the evidence spun for her. As she had told Lindsey, you couldn't know what was in someone's heart, you could only go by the facts available to you.

The facts had pointed to Brass's involvement in a murder. Now they didn't.

Now they pointed to a soft spot inside a hard man—a spot that would prompt him to put himself on the line for someone who had hurt him, decades before. Someone who had become a stranger to him, but who had once meant something.