“I probably shouldn’t even know about it, but the sheriff’s guys were at the station last week and I was right there when they were briefing our chief.” Pride in his voice now, the satisfaction of a man who’d been in the right place at the right time and wanted credit for it. “They’re being realcareful with this one. Deep cover, from what I gathered. Months, maybe longer.”
“Damn. What kind of business is the guy running?” Everybody at the table was obviously interested. Why wouldn’t they be? This was exciting stuff.
And could also get the county confidential informant hurt or killed if it happened to get in the wrong hands.
“I don’t know exactly. Something commercial. Out past the highway.” He paused, and I could almost hear him weighing whether the next part was worth the reaction it would get. It was. “Point is, there’s almost always something going on in my line of work.”
I looked at Donovan. He was already looking at me, and what I saw on his face wasn’t anger. It was dread. The cold, specific dread of watching a disaster unfold that you can hear but can’t reach.
“He just gave them enough.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “County, type of business, location, time frame. Anyone with a phone and ten minutes could start narrowing that down.”
The conversation moved on. Someone called a bet, while telling a story about his dog, and the table’s attention swung back to cards. Martinez laughed at something and asked who was dealing. The CI talk faded into the general noise of the game as if it had never happened.
But ithadhappened. The details were already out in the room—specific enough to act on, casual enough that nobody at that table understood what they’d just been handed.
Still one hundred percent reckless on Martinez’s part.
“We need to get him out of there,” I said. “Before the conversation circles back to work and he gives them even more. What if he’s done shit like this every single time he’s played?”
Donovan pressed his palm against the dashboard. “Whatif the department doesn’t have a dirty cop? Not in the way we’ve been looking.”
I nodded. “What if they have a cop with a drinking problem and no filter, and it was enough to keep the drug syndicate ahead of the department?”
The words hung in the frozen air between us. I could see Donovan’s breath, could feel my own pulse in my temples. Because the theory wasn’t just possible. It was elegant in the worst way: a kind of corruption that didn’t require bribes or dead drops or any of the mechanisms we’d been hunting for.
“Someone who knows Martinez goes to these games,” Donovan said slowly. “Knows he talks when he drinks. Sits back and collects whatever falls off the table. Martinez would never even know it was happening.”
“He’d walk out every week thinking he’d had a fun night playing cards.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “We have to get him out of there. I’m calling Rawlings. He needs to know what’s going on.”
He answered on the third ring. Alert despite the hour.
“Garrison. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a situation.” I didn’t ease into it. “Martinez is at an underground poker game on the east side of town. We’ve been listening for over two hours.”
“Go on.”
“He’s drunk, and he’s been talking all night. Active cases, suspects, evidence, surveillance details, staffing patterns. Bad enough on its own. But in the last few minutes, he disclosed the existence of a confidential informant working with the neighboring county’s sheriff’s department. Didn’t name the CI, but he gave the county, the type of business, the general location, and the time frame. Six or seven civilians heard every word.”
Rawlings was quiet for three seconds.
“Shit. Okay, I’ll send a team,” he said. “We arrest everyone.The gambling gives us grounds, but I want Martinez away from that table before he says anything else. You and Hughes stay clear. You’re contractors, not police. If either of you is anywhere near this when it goes down, it compromises the larger investigation.”
“Understood. We’ll keep the feed running until your team is in position.”
“If he says anything else about that CI before they arrive, call me back.”
The line went dead.
I set the phone on the console. Through the windshield, the building looked the same as it had two hours ago. Dark walls, flat roof, one yellow window behind a drawn shade.
Donovan hadn’t moved. The audio from the phone continued, the sounds of the game carrying on as if the world hadn’t shifted around it.
“This is going to end him,” Donovan said. “At the very least, he’s going to lose his job.”
I shrugged. “Once he put a CI’s life at risk, we didn’t have a choice.”
“I know we didn’t.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Doesn’t make it feel like the right thing.”
