An email from J.J. Diggs directing him to funnel all further communications with the Hartleys through him. It ended with an allusion to their onetime fuck that was so veiled Javi wasn’t sure if it was a threat or an invitation. A text from Frome telling him that Reed would be available for an interview tomorrow afternoon at four, which would take some schedule reshuffling. He tapped over the screen and fired off a quick email to Debi to do that once she got in at eight, and he stepped into the main room.
He looked up and frowned as he hit send. The room was empty, the sex-smeared window wiped down, and the bedding he tossed to Cloister the night before neatly folded on a side table. No wonder the place was quiet. Apparently Cloister liked to get his walk of shame over with early.
“Son of a bitch,” Javi muttered.
It took him twenty minutes to shower and get dressed. He shrugged his suit jacket on and ignored the drawling memory of Cloister admiring his body. The bedding and the crumpled-up towel he found under the TV—covered with dog fluff and slobber—he tossed in the laundry basket for the housekeeper.
On the way down to his car, he called Frome.
“Pull the case files on the Utkin disappearance for me?” he said when Frome answered. Frome had that “awake but low on coffee” scrape to his voice that meant he was either up early or up late. A less hot version of Cloister’s rasp.
“Utkin? Why?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“Okay. I’ll have them sent to your office.”
“I’ll pick them up this afternoon,” Javi said.
Frome grunted his agreement, and Javi hung up. He hesitated with the phone in his hand and wrestled over whether or not to call Cloister. He needed to talk to him and make sure they were on the same page about last night. But he also needed to get on the road if he was going to get to RJD Correctional Facility and back in time to look over the Utkin files.
He also didn’twantto have an awkward conversation. So the phone went in his pocket, and he got in the car and switched the engine on with a touch of a button. The radio beeped gently as it synced with his phone, and his driving playlist queued itself up automatically. Javi canceled it midsong, glanced over his shoulder briefly as he pulled out of the space, and put the phone into dictation mode.
It was two and half hours to the State prison on a good day. Throw in at least one traffic jam, and Javi would have time to narrate most of the reports he’d put on a back burner during the week.
PRISONS ALWAYSsmelled foul. It was a mixture of body fluids, boiled grease, and misery. The prisoners probably had more pressing issues to worry about, but it caught in Javi’s nose whenever he had to visit.
He sat on the hard metal chair in the interview room with Branko Nemac’s file open on the table in front of him as he flicked through it. The photo attached was of a smiling, middle-aged man with a nicely starched collar and a sharply trimmed beard standing in for an actual chin. The leader of a local Albanian gang, Nemac thought he was untouchable until Saul linked the murder of a young waitress to the outwardly affable gangster.
He killed her because he thought she spat in his food.
There were plenty of criminals with a reason to have a grudge against Agent Saul Lee, but Nemac was the only one with a grudge and the resources to do something about it. He wasn’t the boss these days. That hostile takeover had left three people dead and Nemac short half a lung, but he still had contacts. More importantly, or so the FBI believed, he still had access to a significant amount of money he’d skimmed off the top over the years. In his circles the money meant more than the loyalty.
The shuffle-rattle of chains in the hallway distracted Javi from the file. He flipped the cover shut as he looked up and kept his face composed as the door opened and Nemac shuffled into the room.
The meticulously barbered beard was scruffier, and the affability had worn off. Otherwise Nemac hadn’t changed. He still smiled too much.
“Agent Merlo. The pretty boy,” he said. “I’d heard you stepped into Lee’s shoes. Who’d have thought he had a heart, eh?”
The guards shoved him into a chair and cuffed his hands securely to the table. He went along with it genially and tapped his fingertips absently on the scuffed Formica. Job done, the guards gave Javi the usual list of rules and told him to yell if he needed help.
Javi waited until they left the room, and then he raised his eyebrows at Nemac.
“It sounds like you’re still holding a grudge against Agent Lee,” he said.
“Me?” Nemac asked. “He’s dead. I’m not. I win.”
“You’re still in here.”
Nemac shrugged. “And he’s in the dirt. I still win.”
“Winning seems very important to you,” Javi noted.
Contempt twisted Nemac’s face. “That’s because I’m a winner.” He slapped his cuffed hand on the table. “You know who says winning isn’t important? People who don’t win.”
“So when Agent Lee arrested you, that must have been a blow.”
A humorless smile folded Nemac’s mouth. “Don’t think anyone fucking enjoys it.”
