“Miami contact,” I say, as though we weren’t having a different conversation a heartbeat ago. “Who is Delgado’s man in Bayonne? Who meets the vans?”
“Manny,” he gasps. “Delgado sometimes, or his cousin Tito. I only heard the names. I swear!”
“What does Manny drive?” I ask him. “And what color is it?”
“W-white van,” he stammers. “One door has a red smear from paint like someone brushed it by accident.”
I press the tarp onto his mouth with my palm until his jugular pulses against the tendons in his neck like it’s going to learn to beat for me. I lift it again when his hands start to go numb and the fingers twitch like white fish.
“Where do they stop between Kearny and Bayonne?” I demand, because nobody drives a van full of guns without a plan for what happens if shit goes sideways.
He’s crying now and trying not to. “Greene Street,” he says. “Abandoned railroad. They think it’s quiet.”
I take the tarp off his head and hold it in my hands for a moment because I can feel Alina’s eyes if I let myself. She isn’t here. She was never meant to spend a second in rooms like this. But I drag her into it anyway in my head, because the version of me that’s kept me alive this long wants her to see the worst and stay.
I imagine walking back upstairs and telling her I put a bag over a boy’s head until he remembered the names of the men he swore his loyalty to. I imagine the way her lips would press together, and her pretty green eyes would heat in anger. And I hate that the thought doesn’t even push her farther away. She’ll look at me anyway. She’ll choose me anyway. It makes me want to make a bigger mess. It makes me want to be better. I’m not fucking built to be both.
“Again,” I say to prove that I can. “Who holds the keys? Who holds the codes? Who makes the call to go south?”
Kyle answers. He gives me names already floating in my men’s mouths and one we didn’t have yet. He gives up the time the drunk in the sedan would change shifts—1 a.m., 4 a.m. He tells me the color of the tarp—blue—that cover the pallets and the way it smells like mildew because somebody stored it wet last month. He gives me the container number the Miami buyer likes to use when he wants to pretend this is legitimate. He offers memore information I don’t need out of the simple human desire to keep all the pieces of his body attached to itself.
When he runs out of details worth hearing, I put the tarp away and choose a different instrument. I grab up the pliers and take his left hand again, rolling the fingers between my own like I am counting prayer beads.
“Last thing,” I say. “The address of the bar where Popeye goes to pay men who don’t ask him for receipts?”
He shakes his head because he thinks this information on the president is a holy thing. I put the pliers on his ring finger and watch the way his chest closes around the word no and wrestles it to the floor. I squeeze slowly until he screams once and then bites it off because he still wants to be a man.
“Redline!” he blurts, voice shredded. “A bar in…Jersey City. Neon sign. The letters burn out, so it reads ‘Re-line’ on Tuesdays if it’s clear of cops and anyone suspicious. That’s where Popeye meets up with AK.”
“AK?” I repeat, already certain I know who those initials belong to.
“Archer Kent,” Kyle chokes.
I let the pliers sit there, pressure notched into a promise, and look at him for a long breath that hurts my ribs.
“Where he ‘meets’ Archer? As in Popeye’s had multiple meetings with Archer?” I ask.
“Yes. Monthly. Sometimes every other week.”
“For how many months?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“Five or six. I don’t know. I think it’s six!” he says in a rush.
So, Archer’s betrayal wasn’t a onetime stunt. I’m not fucking surprised. I am, however, sick to my stomach that every new lie of his nudges Alina a step farther from me. This hits deeper than the bullet ever did.
I set the tool down because even I like a world where a young man with his whole life ahead of him keeps ten fingers when hehelps. His intel on Archer is worth almost as much as the rest put together.
“Petrov,” I say.
“Got it,” he answers, already typing, already sending men.
“Renat, keep an eye on him. Feed him water and enough bites of food to keep him breathing while we verify.”
“Yes, sir,” Renat says.
Kyle starts crying like he’s won something he isn’t sure he wanted. I take his leather jacket off the nail by the door and hold it up where he can see it.
“If what you’ve told me is true, then you may leave here alive. But you don’t get this or your patch back. If you’re smart, you’ll leave the city, the state, hell, the country, when we’re done with you. Understood?”
