That complicated things. Scared men can be more dangerous than cruel ones. They act fast, then regret slow.
Detective Ramos arrived with the fire crew. He took one look at Charlie, then at me.
“Do not do anything stupid.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything involving you, Maurice Parker, and no witnesses.”
“Then give me something useful.”
He hesitated. Rain dotted the shoulders of his coat.
“We raided one storage unit from the flash drive. Found guns and fentanyl. Two arrests. Maurice wasn’t there.”
“He knew.”
“Maybe. Or he got lucky.”
“No. Maurice doesn’t get lucky this often.”
Ramos looked away.
That tiny movement told me more than he meant to.
“You have a leak.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Micah stepped closer, voice soft. “Detective, if someone in your house is feeding Parker, then every legal move we make tells him where to hit next.”
Ramos’s jaw flexed. “I know.”
There was the new battlefield. Not just gang members. Not just threats. Information itself had holes in it.
At four in the morning, I sat in the ruined bar while water dripped from the ceiling into buckets. The place smelled like smoke and wet wood. My father’s old beer sign had melted at the edges. The wall photo of Jacob holding his first Little League trophy was smoke-stained but intact.
Micah set two coffees on the bar.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we stop giving police clean targets and start giving Maurice dirty ones?”
He smiled without humor. “There’s my boy.”
I did not smile back.
“Charlie said the kid looked scared. We find him first.”
Danny lived in a tired apartment building above a check-cashing place. We did not kick doors. We watched. At seven fifteen, an older woman in scrubs left the building carrying a lunch bag and moving like her feet hurt. Danny appeared ten minutes later on the fire escape, smoking with both hands shaking.
He was maybe twenty. Baby fat still in his face. Los Muertos ink fresh on his neck, the skin around it irritated red.
When I stepped into the alley, he nearly fell backward.
“Relax,” I said.
He looked at Micah, then me. “I didn’t know anyone was inside.”
“But someone was.”
“I told them! I said the old guy was there. Enrique said do it anyway.”
Enrique. Maurice’s right hand.
Danny’s eyes filled with panic. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not the disease. You’re a symptom.”
He blinked like he did not understand.
Micah held up a small recorder. “Tell us what Enrique told you.”
Danny stared at it. Then at the apartment window above him.
