"Change of plans?"

He got around to the driver's side and looked at me. "That's right. Change of plans. That okay with you?"

Charlie trusts me.

"Whatever," I said. I got into his car.

60.

I WOULD FOLLOW CHARLIE'S LEAD. HE DIDN'T SPEAK, so neither did I. It wasn't hard to figure out where he was taking me. We were going to his club, presumably for another game of racquetball. For another chance to strip-search me without strip-searching me.

It hadn't been that hard to foresee. Tucker and I had discussed it. We'd gone back and forth in Suite 410 earlier today about the F-Bird. We finally decided against it. As much as we wanted Charlie on tape, confessing to the murder of Greg Connolly, there was too large a risk that Charlie would search me for a listening device. If he had even the tiniest lingering doubt about my loyalties, the day after Greg's murder would be the time to test me.

Charlie's expression was tight. Controlled. He had a lot of worries at the moment. He knew the feds had been looking at someone-presumably him included-and he didn't know what the shakeout of Greg Connolly's murder would be.

We went through the same routine as previously. An attendant gave me clothes and a racquet, and I left my clothes in an unlocked locker. Once again, I had dodged a bullet with the decision to leave the F-Bird at home.

"What the hell, Charlie?" I said to him when we were on the racquetball court. It was an isolated court, but my voice echoed. It hardly seemed the place for this conversation. And he hadn't received confirmation yet from whoever it was who was going through my clothes, searching for an F-Bird.

"Let's just play," he said. So play we did. Each of us, in different ways, had a lot of steam to vent, and this was the perfect setting. I was sore at first for obvious reasons, but the flow of adrenaline helped, and soon enough I was playing like my life depended on it. I felt sorry for the little blue racquetball and for Charlie, if he had any pride in how he played, because I showed him no mercy whatsoever. The first game was over in less than twenty minutes. The second, less than fifteen.

Charlie was grabbing his knees. His gray shirt was stuck to his body with perspiration. I had to admit, I wouldn't have minded if he'd keeled over right there, but justice wouldn't work that way. In the end, I think it was good for him, the workout. "Three out of five," he suggested.

I was just getting loose. I shut him out in the third game.

He grumbled about it, but he had weightier issues on his mind than a racquetball game. We retired to the same parlor area for juice. He excused himself, presumably to meet with the person who had searched my clothes in the locker, and who would give me a clean bill of health. Probably Leather Jacket was not that person this time, or if he was, he wouldn't want me to see him.

When Charlie returned, it seemed that his load had been lightened slightly. Once again, I had won his trust. I wondered how many more times I would need to do that.

"Christ, this thing," he said to me, considering a glass of grapefruit juice. "You understand, it wasn't something I enjoyed doing. I mean, can we get past this? You wanna punch me in the face to make us even or something?"

"What, this thing that happened?" I asked. Never say it outright. A code of the corrupt-say it out loud as little as possible.

"Not something I enjoyed," Charlie said again. "I wish it hadn't happened."

"Hey, Charlie," I said, tapping him on the shoulder. I leaned into him. "First of all, just to reiterate a thought from last night: Fuck you. Second thing: Fuck you again. You do that to me again, you better kill me. Okay, glad that's settled." I took a breath. "I don't give a shit about some snitch. Greg made his bed. I just want to know what he told them. Is someone going to be knocking on my door?"

Charlie didn't smile-it was hardly the occasion-but I sensed that he liked my remarks. He didn't want me playing ethical watchdog or getting cold feet. I had reassured him on both counts.

"I think it's okay." He said it so quietly that the F-Bird wouldn't have picked it up even had I been wearing it.

"Put my mind at ease," I said.

"What Greg could offer the feds would be earlier stuff." Our heads were almost touching. "Mostly before you showed up. And then that stuff you did with us, early on. Before you and I branched out. Those few contracts with the buses and the prisons, that stuff."

I pondered that for a moment, then nodded. "The stuff you did with me, you can say I signed off. The lawyer signed off. What about the stuff before I came aboard?"

Charlie paused. "Don't worry about what happened before you came aboard."

"I'm worrying," I said.

"Don't."

I didn't think I was going to get what I wanted, but I took a shot, anyway. "Who else knows about what happened to Greg?"

"Nobody," he said. "Nobody knows."

"I need to know, Charlie. I need to know who to worry about."

"Worry about yourself. We'll be fine." He evened a hand over the table. "We lay low for now. Slow down our operation."

That much made sense. He wasn't going to give me any more information. I wasn't in a position to bargain.

"Until we see where this is going," he added. "You hear anything, you let me know."

"Okay."

"Let's hope you don't," he said.

What he didn't know is that I'd be hearing from the U.S. attorney's office very soon.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in my office, eating aspirin and doing not much of anything. Joel Lightner called me near five with some news.

"I found your good friend Kiko," he said.

61.

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER WORK, I MET JOEL LIGHTNER for drinks. Note my use of the plural. It's never just one with Joel. The stated purpose was that Joel claimed to have some information for me. I'd asked him for two things. One was to find where Federico Hurtado-Kiko-laid his head every night. And the other was to give me the home address and marital status of Delroy Bailey, the owner and operator of Starlight Catering.

But Joel had added one reason for the conversation. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. He wanted to know why I needed this information. He said he wouldn't give me the information until I did so. I'd kept Joel at a distance out of an abundance of caution, not wanting him to get on the federal government's radar. And I found his paternalism annoying, however well-intentioned. But I was growing weary of all the deception, and I thought I could use Joel's perspective. That's how I explained it to myself, at least. It was also fair to say that I needed someone on whom I could unload all of this information.

He ordered a Maker's Mark, and I ordered a dirty martini. And I talked. He listened. I went through the whole thing. We went through two rounds of drinks before I had finished.

"So the Cannibals had nothing to do with Wozniak's murder," he said. "It was the Latin Lords. It was this guy Kiko who you're so interested in."

"Yeah."

"And I was wrong about Ernesto Ramirez," Joel said. "You were right. He did have some information. He and this friend of his, you called him Scarface? They'd heard from Kiko that Wozniak got whacked to 'cover up a connection to Delroy.' And they took that to mean Joey Espinoza."

"Right," I agreed.

"Joey Espinoza pulled strings at this state board, and he got his ex-brother-in-law Delroy a beverage contract over Wozniak's company. Wozniak was making noise. And so Joey needed to cover the thing up by having Wozniak killed. Joey covered up his connection to Delroy."

"Correct."

"And you figure, since Joey was already under Chris Moody's thumb when Wozniak was taken out, he must have had a partner. Someone else talked to Kiko."

"Right. You disagree?"

"No," he said. "You're probably right. Especially because then Ernesto got whacked, too, and it's hard to believe that was Joey Espinoza, with the feds watching his every move. So, okay, there was someone else. And you like this guy Charlie Cimino?"

"He seems like the best fit," I said. "But I'm not sold."

"You're not sold because of what happened to you the other night. When Charlie's crew did a little Guantnamo Bay routine on you."

"Right. The point being, I don't think they were Charlie's crew. I think someone else was in charge. Someone higher than Charlie."

"But the other night was all about rooting out snitches," said Joel. "It wasn't about Adalbert Wozniak or Ernesto Ramirez. Why do you put those things together?"

I shook my head. "Something tells me they're all related, Joel. I mean, someone in that group is willing to kill. There can't be that many people who fit that description. Plus, everything seems to revolve around that state board, the PCB. Charlie Cimino was asking me about my interest in Starlight Catering. The goons who interrogated me asked the same thing. That's the company the PCB gave the contract to over Wozniak. And Ernesto, the information he had was about Starlight, about its owner Delroy. And Greg Connolly was the chair of that board, even back when Starlight got that contract. No," I decided, "they're related. All roads lead to the same place. Whoever killed Greg Connolly killed Ernesto and Wozniak."

"And it's someone higher than Charlie," Joel said.

"I think so."

"Okay," he said, "so who's higher than Charlie?"

That was the thing. I could only think of two people who outranked Charlie Cimino. One was the chief of staff, Madison Koehler. The other was Governor Carlton Snow.

Both of them made some sense, I guess. I didn't know much about how the governor did business, but the chief of staff-Madison-was typically in the loop on everything. And it was hard to believe that the people who murdered one of the governor's oldest friends, Greg Connolly, would have done so without the big guy's consent.

Still, all of this was hard to believe. We weren't talking about hardball politics here. We were talking about murder.

"Someone in the inner circle," I said, keeping it vague.

"And now you're going into that inner circle."

"Now I am."

"Knowing that someone in that group is a killer. Having narrowly escaped being killed once, already."

"Well-"

"And if you aren't taking enough risks," Joel said, growing angry, "you also want to have a nice, friendly chat with the most hard-core assassin from the most hard-core street gang in the city."

"Maybe he's misunderstood, Joel. Maybe behind that assassin's veneer there's a sweet, cuddly kid just dying for a hug."

"Yeah, maybe you two could go for ice cream." The third round of drinks arrived. Joel took a healthy swallow of his scotch. I was on my third martini, and I'd been out of practice. My head and neck were beginning to feel pretty good.

We didn't talk for a while. Joel, on some level, had to be feeling a little bad about all of this. He'd been the Almundo investigator and he'd missed some things. I couldn't really blame him. It would have been very hard to catch this stuff with the information we had. But that would be little consolation to him. He prided himself on catching everything.

"So," he said, "you're doing all this-what-for Adalbert Wozniak?"

"No, I'm doing this for Ernesto Ramirez. He's dead because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I made someone nervous and he paid the price. A very sweet woman is now a widow, and two little kids are without their father, because I tried to force information out of him and made him a threat to someone."

Joel shook his head.

"And maybe I'm doing this because whoever killed Greg Connolly should face the music. I mean, Greg knew about me. He knew I was a fellow informant. But he didn't give me up. They tortured him, and he didn't give me up. I owe him, Joel. And anyway, I'm not letting those assholes get away with it."

Joel played around with this before reaching his conclusion. "You," he pronounced, "are fucking nuts."

"You aren't the first to say that."

"Kiko is the worst of the worst, J."

"I worked gang crimes, Joel. I know all about the guy."

He downed the remainder of his Maker's Mark. "You're just going to knock on his door and introduce yourself and tell him, 'I know you killed two people, and I know Joey was a part of it, but could you please tell me who Joey's partner was?' Yeah, that's a helluva plan you got there. You'll be dead before you say hello."

"Life is full of risk."

"Life is full of risk? Life is full of risk," Joel said to the waitress, who had noticed Joel's empty glass and stopped by. "I think Riley and I are going to have to do an intervention on you."

"You're overreacting," I said.

"Maybe I am," he agreed. "But you know what I'm not doing? I'm not giving you Kiko's fucking address."

Not wanting Joel to feel awkward about outpacing me in the alcohol department, which would be rude of me, I made quick work of my martini.

"Joel, I have to make this right. This guy's death is on me."

"No, it's not. You were just doing your job."

"Give me Kiko's address, Lightner. Don't make me dance on your face."

Lightner went quiet. His eyes narrowed, evidence of critical appraisal. I'd seen that look before. I didn't like that look.

"Jason, I don't know how else to say this."

"How about you say it after I've left the bar? I just need an address, Joel. I don't need a lecture."

"Yes, you do, my friend. You're not right. Okay? Take it from me. You are not right. It's like you're looking for trouble. Like you're looking-" He didn't finish the thought. He didn't need to.

"Oh, I'm suicidal now?"

"You know what? Maybe you are. I mean, this shit you're doing-this is for law enforcement. This is for people with badges-"