“Waking you,” Cloister said. He smiled wryly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Being a jerk. When I get back, if you still want to tell me about—”
“No,” Javi interrupted. He never actuallywantedto tell Cloister. He just thought he should. It could wait. “Wrap this case up. Then we can talk about Phoenix.”
Cloister tilted his head and gave him a crooked smile. The dim light blurred the dimples it cut in his cheeks, but it still lit that just-about-handsome face into something lovely. His chest was bare, the ink and bruises on his side blurred into one monochrome patch against the golden skin.
“I’ve told you, Merlo,” he said. “I like you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He finally gave in to the nudge of Bourneville’s nose against his knee and left.
“Wanna bet?” Javi asked the space where he had been.
FOUR HOURSlater Javi took a coffee from Sean and sat back on the private investigator’s soft leather couch. He took a sip of the bitter black brew as he waited for Sean to fold his lean, suit-clad body into the seat opposite.
“I should probably have asked this before I made the coffee,” he said. “Do I need to call my lawyer?”
“Unless something has changed since I left the office yesterday,” Javi said, “you’re not under suspicion for anything right now.”
Sean nodded and took a drink of coffee. “I saw Frome on TV this morning.” He leaned forward and set down the coffee on a torn envelope that, from the coffee ring stains on it, had been used as a coaster before. “He identified the shooter at the hospital yesterday. Andrew Macintosh. Ten years, and no one’s thought about the man. Now all of a sudden I can’t get away from him. Does this have something to do with Tommy?”
“Not exactly,” Javi said. “How well did you know the family?”
“I didn’t,” Sean said.
“You knew them well enough to think Tommy Macintosh needed your number to call for help.”
Sean slouched back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps strained against the fitted cotton as they tensed. “Yeah, well, you’ll have to excuse me. The last time the FBI came around to ask about how I did my job? I lost my badge. I’ve also lost my husband, half my house, and all my friends. You can understand that I’m not eager to put anything else on the line.”
“Did you kill the Macintosh family?” Javi asked.
“No.” Sean sat up straight in his chair. “Jesus, no. Nothing like that.”
“Then I don’t care,” Javi said.
Sean reached for the coffee, studied Javi over the chipped rim as he took a drink, and was apparently convinced by what he saw.
“I didn’t break any laws,” Sean said. He tapped his thumbnail against the side of the cup. “But when you’re one of, maybe, three cops who can say that in the station? It doesn’t do you any favors. When everything went down with Macintosh, I didn’t want my name attached to that. It would have given my captain the reason he’d been looking for to bust me down to traffic… or just get rid of me altogether.”
“And what does that have to do with my question?” he asked.
Sean stood up, walked over to the office’s narrow window, and looked out, one hand shoved into the pocket of his trousers. The silence lasted long enough that Javi thought he wasn’t going to answer, but just as he was about to ask again, Sean cleared his throat.
“Macintosh had plenty of guys with fewer qualms than me to do his dirty work for cases,” Sean said. “I knew that. Everyone knew that. So I should have known what he was up to when he offered me that first job.”
“To follow his ex.”
Sean nodded. “He said it was about spousal support, that she’d basically moved in with some guy, and he’d get his payments cut if he took it to court. That when I testified in one of his cases, against one of his clients who assaulted a hooker for saying no, he’d been impressed with my integrity. Except it turned out he just wanted creeper photos of his ex on the treadmill. It turned out that all the jobs he had me do for him were like that—petty, nasty. I worked it out eventually. I made him look bad in court, called his client pathetic, and he wanted to make sure I got it.”
“That he could buy you.”
Sean nodded and lifted his coffee mug in a sardonic toast. “And he was right. I needed the money. I always needed the money back then, and he never asked me to break the law. So it was easy enough to justify. He’d get someone else to do it, after all. The photos would get taken, so why not put the money in my pocket? At least I didn’t get off on it.”
Technically Sean still hadn’t answered Javi’s question, but the pieces were all there.
“He had you follow his wife.”
“Mostly,” Sean said.
“Did he think she was cheating on him?”
