Shattered Glass (22 page)

I pulled a glass and started to pour, then paused mid-stream as Peter came in. He took one glance at me, grabbed the bottle from my hand and just kept walking past Luis and into the kitchen. My hand was left clutching…air.

Only about four drops had made it to my glass. Luis had the same number of wrinkles in his brow as he tried to understand what he just saw. And Peter had ten times that volume of recrimination in his glare.

“I was drinking that,” I said mildly.

“And now you’re un-drinking it,” he mimicked.

“I have a hangover.”

“I don’t care,” he replied, tilting the bottle high over the sink and challenging me via maintained eye contact while he dumped the liquid down the drain. I hoped it was the drain, at least, and not my floor.

When did my life become a series of lectures and scoldings from a twenty-year-old whore?

I childishly wanted to grab the bottle of Jaeger in the liquor cabinet. And then drag Peter upstairs and rip off those suspenders he was wearing, tie him up with them and—“You took my car,” I accused.

“I wanted to go see Cai at the jail. And change.” Luis cleared his throat, and we both turned to glower at his intrusion into our exchange. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and stalked into the kitchen. Much as I wanted to slam cabinets, the sharp thud of swords in my brain reminded me to close them softly. After pouring a glass of water and taking a few aspirin—or was it ten?—I joined Luis in the living room, trying to forget that when I had walked by Peter I could smell cinnamon.

I was going to be mature about this. And ignore him.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I said to Luis.

“You didn’t finish telling me about the accounts yesterday,” Luis replied, turning a laptop screen to me. I leaned over to glance at it.

Immediately the idea of working buoyed me, then I remembered Peter could hear us. With a scowl, I looked up at him standing a few paces behind us. The way Peter was staring

at the screen nagged me. “You recognize some of this?” Peter eyed me sideways and nodded. “I recognize the vendor names from when I took over the accounts after Joe died.” “Glass.”

“Which?” I asked, ignoring Luis’s abbreviated warning about sharing case information with Peter. What the hell. I was suspended and off the case anyway.

“Cai,” was all Peter said.

I rubbed a hand over my face and sighed. “I said I can’t do anything. One, I’m suspended. Two, he’s probably guilty, and three—”

“I don’t need you involved. I need you to pay your father’s fees
.”

There wasn’t a juror on earth who would convict me of murder right now. “You’re going to barter information about Iss’s death for money?” Why the fuck was Luis smiling?

“I’ll do whatever I have to.”

“Christ.” I huffed. “My father?”

“Is the best defense attorney in the state.” “Ay, Dios mio.” Luis exhaled noisily. “This can only end well.”

“I’m not on the case.” I pointed out to Luis. “I don’t have to follow the rules.” Shit. Was I really going to do this? How much information did Peter have? More importantly, how much could I trust him? If at all?

“I have records,” Peter said, as if reading my mind.

“Not my father,” I insisted. “I’m not paying my father.” “He’s the best criminal attorney in town. I know. I looked it up.”

“No, he’s not,” I sighed. “Angelica is.” To Peter’s non-vocalized query, I responded, “My ex-fiancée.” Peter nodded at me. “You get her there today. I want him out before the fucking P.D. gets Cai held without bail. I’ll give you more information than you can handle.” Devious, conniving, scheming, deceitful, manipulative… I ran out of synonyms on my way upstairs.

I AM My Own Worst Enemy

Angelica and I had parted on amicable terms, though she had asked me to give her time. I was breaking the promise to stay away by calling her, and not for completely altruistic purposes.

Part of it was that Peter was going to supply information. The other part, the largest part, was Peter’s voice echoing in my head, “
Please
.” That entreaty was so earnest and plaintive, I couldn’t help but be moved. Peter had me so twisted up in him that I wanted to believe the faith in his brother was justified. For both those reasons, I phoned Angelica from the privacy of my bedroom.

“Are you really moving in with a male prostitute?” she asked when Pauline, her secretary, patched me through. There was anger and hurt lurking in her question, but amusement puddled around there as well. Ten years of friendship seemed only warped, not irrevocably broken, by our breakup.

“I would, if I thought it might give my dad an aneurism. Did he seem close to one when he told you?” I asked hopefully.

Her breath was loud in my ear. “Three days is not giving me time, Austin.” All amusement evaporated from her voice.

“I know. But I have a case for you.”

“The last time you gave me a case, it ended up costing the firm twenty thousand dollars.”

“Pro bono cases are good for the image.” I threw in, “Besides, I’m paying for this one,” before she could argue.

“Austin, abuse cases belong with family court attorneys. You can’t keep sending me these types of—” “It’s Baby Capone,” I interrupted with the press’s nickname for Cai. The receiver was silent, then there was a flutter of papers, and what sounded like the TV in her office. She was probably checking for a frenzy of reporters surrounding the courthouse and flashing pictures of Cai.

Almost everyone knew the Baby Capone case—if they were alive at the time and in any way involved in law enforcement.

An eight-year-old boy taking out a mob boss was headline news.

His age made it interesting; his disappearance made it legend.

Rumors were that Nikki’s son—Peter, a kid himself—killed the boy and then also vanished.

Anticipating Angelica’s disbelief I added, “They don’t know they have him. Fingerprints will take time, then they’ll have to put two and two together.” Considering it was Del and Marco on the case, two and two might take longer than the fingerprints.

“Then how do you know?” she asked astutely.

“I may or may not be involved with Nikki’s son.” “The male prostitute?”

Déjà vu. “That would be Peter.”

I imagined Angelica was salivating at the thought of representing this kid. Yet she would still be upset about doing so would be a favor for the man who screwed up our relationship.

Namely, me. Regardless, the importance of the case wouldn’t be

her chief reason for helping. My asking would be, despite all that went on between us. “What else do I need to know?” she asked me. “…Pauline,” she called excitedly to her secretary.

“Bond is decided at three p.m. today,” I answered. “Kid’s processed under the alias Nicholas Cotton. According to the brother, he’s got an IQ out of the stratosphere and is bipolar.

There might be some argument about your being hired by a non-legal guardian, since Peter’s not actually his brother.” “And?” Before I could answer with my brilliance, she began talking to someone else. “…wipe my schedule for today, and get me guardian ad litem papers. Also I need…” I waited until she was done instructing Pauline, and then asked, “And what?”

Her huff made me grin. “What’s he being charged with, Austin?”

“Oh.” My brilliance could be measured in milligrams.

“Murder.”

“Whose?”

“Prisc Alvarado. Brother’s ex-lover, human trafficker on a case Luis and I were working.”

“He do it?” Angelica, when down to business, was short and to the point.

“I thought the kid was half angel when I met him. Story the brother told makes me think he’s got black wings. Still, Peter’s convinced he didn’t do it.”

“Detectives on the case?” More paper shuffling around her muffled voice. She switched me to speaker phone.

“Delmonico and Marco,” I informed her.

“Can you hustle me through to Nicholas?”

“He goes by Cai. And, no. I’m suspended.” “Because of the prostitute?” I heard disappointment in her sigh.

“Because I threatened to shove my foot up a fellow detective’s ass in front of half the station.” “You are your own worst enemy, Austin. What about Luis?

Can he get me in?”

“He’s working another angle of the case. They’d have his badge if he started consorting with the defense attorney.” “Okay. Then I have to go if I want to have any time to talk to Cai before the bond hearing.”

“Angel?”

“You’re welcome.”

I smiled into the phone after she hung up.

Monty Python could have made a full-length movie on the amount of awkward that was Luis and Peter in my living room.

When I reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs, they both turned to me in hopeful relief; Peter from the wall dividing the kitchen from the main room, and Luis six feet from him on the sofa.

“I see you two have made progress since I’ve been gone.” I went with sarcasm to break the quiet. Grabbing the bottle of Jaeger I’d rejected earlier, I took a seat next to Luis. “Angelica is on her way to Cai. Your part of the bargain is waiting.” I nodded Peter toward the laptop on the coffee table in front of Luis.

“A boca de borracho, oídos de cantinero,” Luis replied.

“English. I speak
English
, Luis.”

Peter failed to hide a small smile. “It’s a Mexican proverb. It means don’t listen to the drunk guy, all you’ll hear is the bar.” Before I could do my Bogart-Casablanca impression, Peter seized my Jaeger. I was going to get really tired of his parenting.

As soon as he didn’t smell like cinnamon, and his thigh didn’t press quite so closely to mine. Why did he have to sit directly next to me? Wait, I knew that answer—Manipulation 101.

Fucker.

“That one,” Peter leaned over my lap, finger almost reaching the computer screen, “is one of our food suppliers. And that one, laundry services. Payroll company. Garbage pickup.” Luis scrolled down, and Peter quickly pointed again to another row in the spreadsheet. “That one is the company that leases the diner.”

Peter’s arm nestling against my stomach
could
be explained by the way he had to lean across me in order to point. I
maybe
could reason the hand on my thigh was bracing him. I
possibly
could rationalize that the gentle squeeze of his fingers was supposed to be reassuring. But when his hand moved up the inside of my thigh, then quickly back to my knee, I ran out of excuses.

“That’s his auto body shop and this one here, that’s Leila’s sister’s hair salon.”

“What are you doing, Peter?” I asked agitatedly. Or thought I had asked. When no one responded to my question, I realized the lack of air in my lungs made speech impossible.

I found my voice when Peter removed his hand and sat back against the opposite arm of the sofa. Pointing to the spreadsheet, I cleared my throat and asked, ”How are you recognizing these abbreviations?” Did I sound as hoarse to Luis

as I did to my own ears? His furrowed brows could be interpreted as deep thought, or a result of the hitch in my breathing.

“Cai worked last summer at the auto body and Darryl gets his hair done at the hair salon. As for the others, I tried to take over the accounting when Joe died because I didn’t want Iss around. I couldn’t make the figures work, so I had to call him anyway.” Looking over the list of abbreviated names, I thought of something else. That was a lot of businesses for someone like Alvarado. “Did Iss own all those businesses or have a piece in them?”

Peter shook his head and shrugged. “No way he owned anything of Leila’s. But she owned some of his. Once Leila got her Green card, it was just business between them. And most of the vendors on that list are owned by cops.” Luis’s jerked his head up from studying the laptop and turned to Peter. “Cops? How do you know that?” “Joe told me. I don’t know which cops, but he always said he kept the business in the blue. ‘Cops is always better than regular peeps, Pete’. Think I heard that about a hundred times.” My eyes met Luis’s and both of us understood the implications of that. We knew there was a cop involved, but cops? Plural? Were they all laundering money? It seemed likely since there was no way a simple cleaning service charged a small diner five grand a month. But according to the books, the cleaning service which contracted with the diner got paid that much the previous month. And I’d seen Colorado’s Finest Diner, what the fuck could they have been cleaning? Certainly not tablecloths.

“That explains the cash at Alvarado’s house. Dench died and Alvarado didn’t have access to the diner to launder it,” I said and immediately shook my head. He should not have had that much cash in his house. There was no way I could make that work in my head. Alvarado was a piece of shit, but he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t keep evidence around. “But if he was taking care of the diner accounts again, why didn’t he funnel that money in? And those passports? Why did he keep all of that shit at his house?”

“He didn’t.” We both turned to Peter as he continued, “I…

put those in his house.”

That statement effectively slapped me back to my senses.

“You set him up?” The guy didn’t even seem guilt-ridden as he shrugged nonchalantly.

“I thought they were Iss’s. I found them in a safety deposit box that Joe got for me. I think I signed for it about three years ago. Joe had fixed up an identity for me. He was doing the same for Cai and Darryl. I figured that was what was going to be in the box. Instead, I found that stuff.” “Could be bullshit. Alvarado said this kid intro’d him to a cop on the take,” Luis interjected.