Fair Trade Page 5

  Unfolding his arms, Ringer steps to the side, sliding in on the bench seat of the pre-fab picnic table. Galvanized steel coated in rubber, it was designed for someone half his size, the rigid construction biting into his legs.

  He doesn’t react in any way. With luck, he’ll be gone before it even matters.

  “What happened to the lady with all the sand I met yesterday?” Ringer asks.

  “That lady was there to offer a business proposal,” Teller says. “Now that we have come to an agreement, I figured somewhere a bit more neutral would be in order.”

  His eyes hidden behind thick sunglasses, Ringer casts a glance to the window. In it, he can see their reflection, aware of how odd the pairing might look, the perfect cover for what she is describing.

  A day before, she had shown up with a hand shoved into her purse, gripping a handgun the entire time. Now, she is protected by the masses, tons of curious onlookers with cameras and phones and whatever else on hand.

  “We ran into a problem,” Ringer opens. Even as he says the words, he hates the way they taste, even more how they sound.

  “How bad?” she asks.

  Exhaling slowly, Ringer says, “My guys went to Ogo’s last night. Somebody else was there, and it got ugly.”

  If the woman is surprised in the least, she offers nothing to give it away. What can be seen of her features remain neutral, her voice even. “Deaths?”

  “No,” Ringer says, “but the old woman is in the wind.”

  Offering nothing for several seconds, Teller reaches up and slides her sunglasses halfway down her nose. She looks over the edge of them at Ringer, letting her disbelief show plainly. “I’m sorry, one old woman was able to get past you guys?”

  Ringer’s hands curl up into fists at the statement, oversized ham hocks lying in the center of the table. Veins stand out the length of his arms, jutting beneath tanned skin and heavy ink.

  Leaving them there, he says, “No. She wasn’t alone, which is why I called you.”

  The sunglasses remain perched on the bridge of Teller’s nose. “She wasn’t alone, so you called me?”

  It is clear the woman is just messing with him, trying to get under his skin. Under any other circumstances, he would reach across the table. He would wrap his hand around her delicate neck, grinding his fingers and thumb down into the nerves on either side of it.

  And once she was out, he would have some fun.

  “There were two of them,” he says. “One big and heavy. Soft, like a lawyer or something.”

  Her eyebrows twitch slightly at this, though she says nothing.

  “The other smaller, in shape, a good fighter. May or may not be a veteran. You know anybody like that?”

  The entire conversation is so far beneath Ringer, he can barely contain his ire to sit through it. Sitting and staring at the woman, he hates that his guys messed up, even more that he’s now forced to go through this charade as a result.

  At this point, though, one of his members is likely dead and another got beaten badly. There is no walking away from this, no task that is too great to bear.

  Using her middle finger, Teller slides her glasses back into position. She rises from her seat, collects her purse, and looks down at Ringer. “Let me make some calls. I’ll get back to you.”

  Glancing to the empty table between them, Ringer’s brows come together slightly. “What, that’s it? You’re not even going to eat?”

  “Here?” she replies, her head rocking back slightly with a smirk. “No way in hell I’m waiting in that line. It’s just a damn burger.”

  The decision to have surgery wasn’t really much of a decision. Not if I ever wanted to have a pain-free existence, not having to worry about aches or clicking or any of an assortment of ailments that baseball players experience later in their lives. And certainly not if I ever wanted to resume playing baseball again.

  The official diagnosis was a dislocated shoulder with a torn rotator cuff, which was the polite way of saying that I had basically destroyed any sort of connective tissue in one of the most important joints in my body. Time and again I had tried to discuss other options – whether they be acupuncture, therapy, or Chinese medicine – with the doctor, but after my fifth or sixth inquiry he finally shut me down.

  Forget playing baseball. If ever I wanted to have a fully-functional, twenty-three-year-old shoulder again, I had no choice but to go under the knife.

  But that didn’t make it any easier.

  Sitting in the small holding area, my left leg rocked incessantly. Extended out before me on the hospital bed I was sitting on, it was bare from the mid-thigh down, the paper gown I was given not nearly long enough for my frame.

  On my left side, a nurse fussed about, inserting a main line IV into the crook of my arm. Older and dowdy, her lips were pursed into a permanent frown, her brows close together behind her wire rimmed glasses.

  To my opposite side was my mama, her purse in her lap, both hands clasped atop it. Trying hard not to let me see her nerves, she watched the nurse work before turning her attention my way.

  “Did you hear from Mira?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied, trying to ignore the repeated jabs the nurse was plunging into my veins, “she called before I left this morning.”

  “Really?” she asked. “That must have been...”

  “One in the morning there,” I said, having already done the math. “Poor girl sounded groggy as hell. I think she set an alarm to wake her for the call.”

  A thin smile crossed her face as she thought on it, before saying, “I kind of thought she would come out.”

  “She wanted to, and even tried to pull a few strings,” I said, “but she’s training with the national racquetball team in L.A. right now. If she’d have left...”

  Mama nodded in understanding. “Right. Might never have gotten another shot.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And for what? To sit and stare at me all laid up? No, thanks.”

  I could tell there was a great many things she wanted to say in response, some of them even making it as far as her mouth dipping open, before she thought better of it. Clamping her jaw shut, she extended a hand, patting me on the forearm.

  “Well, I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to do all that. Hopefully even get to hear you complain. Bring you food whenever you demand it. The works.”

  Beside me, the nursed snorted, a sharp, phlegmy sound that rocked her head back an inch. Hearing it, the right corner of my mouth turned up into a smile, mama’s acerbic humor once again cutting the tension in the room.

  Too bad it couldn’t repair tendons and ligaments.

  “Okay, how are you doing this morning?” a voice called, the question arriving before the asker. An instant later, the curtain separating us from others in the pre-op area was peeled back, a heavy-set man with glasses and a walrus moustache sweeping into the room.

  Already dressed in scrubs, he looked like he’d been up for hours, fully-caffeinated and ready to go to work.

  “Are we ready to get that shoulder fixed up?”

  Chapter Eleven

  I’m so charged as I step out of the Central District precinct, I can barely keep a thought in my head. Exiting the front door, I turn to the left, making it three full strides before realizing I’m parked in the opposite direction. Turning on a heel, I head back toward it, not sure how exactly I’m going to manage to drive, but thinking I have to anyway.

  If for no other reason than to put distance between myself and the building. To keep Marsh from finding a window somewhere and watching my every move, trying to gauge it for what he feels is a proper reaction.

  Slowing my pace, drawing in a deep breath, I head back toward my car. Using the fob, I slide inside and start the engine, sitting for a moment, feeling the vents blow warm air against my skin.

  The inclusion of the name Mike Lincoln was no doubt a mistake. The second Marsh gets done watching me, he’ll turn his attention to giving Tinley an ass chewing, letting
it be known that disclosing such details in an active investigation isn’t acceptable, even to family members.

  If not for his immediate reaction at the table, I would almost feel like the admission had been planted just to see what I did next.

  Starting the car, I ease away from the curb and out into traffic, looping away from the precinct. Like I told Valerie earlier, I have a next stop in the progression, the next place I plan to swing by and visit, but right now I’m still busy rolling around what I just found out in my head.

  His name alone means nothing in terms of the man himself. Already I have found and eliminated that problem, leaving his body to be found by any hungry animal looking for a quick meal.

  In terms of how he could relate to whatever larger scheme the Ogo’s are a part of, how that all ties to my Mira, it is another big piece to what I’m looking for.

  People with names have addresses. And addresses have all sorts of things in them, such as correspondence or telephone bills or anything else that might help me.

  Just like these bastards tore my house apart looking for anything that might help them.

  Heading toward the I-5, I don’t jump on the freeway as originally planned. Instead I shoot past it, moving toward downtown, my next destination unplanned, but still highly vital.

  If this were a movie, I would now call up some tech-savvy nerd in a bunker somewhere. I would give him the information I just found out, add in what I already knew, and let him go to work using his massive hand-built computer system. By the time I arrived an hour later, he would have a full working file for me, ready to pass off an information dump, acting supremely bored the entire time.

  If I wasn’t worried about Marsh potentially subpoenaing phones and computers at some point, I might even call one of my friends and ask them to look, or pull off the side of the road and use my own device to do some digging myself.

  None of those are options, so I am going with the next best thing I can manage. Entering the financial district, I turn and head south, using the skyline as my map. Easing ahead, I keep going until I spot what I am looking for, the enormous glass and steel dome as recognizable as Petco Park or the convention center where Comic Con takes place each summer.

  Hooking a right, I pull into the parking lot for the Central Library, hub of the San Diego system. Knowing that somewhere inside is a computer room the size of a lecture hall, I jump from the car and head toward the front door, barely able to keep myself to a jog.

  I have Mike Lincoln’s name. It’s time to do some research.

  Chapter Twelve

  Detective Malcolm Marsh is still stewing. He hadn’t held a great deal of hope for the meeting with Kyle Clady, but he was certainly expecting more than what came to pass.

  Namely, that his side of the table would be the one to garner something of merit, rather than the other way around.

  Seated behind his desk, he waits with his fingers laced over his stomach. The pads of his thumbs come together, tapping in a steady rhythm, his gaze focused on the door. Judging by the sounds of conversation going on out in the bullpen, the object of his ire is steadily moving his way.

  Heaven forbid the guy ever make a simple trip to the bathroom without talking to every single person in the office along the way.

  Felling his impatience rise with each passing moment, Marsh sits and waits. Time and again he replays the events of the meeting in his mind, each pass through only ratcheting the agitation he feels, so much so that by the time his partner swings into the room, it is all he can do not to leap to his feet and begin yelling.

  He won’t, because that would be unprofessional. It would cause a scene. It would be something that coworkers would notice and remember, maybe even making it into his file as a footnote.

  And someone with career aspirations can’t afford footnotes.

  But that doesn’t mean they can’t get good and pissed, just the same.

  “Close the door,” Marsh says the instant Tinley crosses the threshold into the room.

  Thinking nothing of it, the younger man turns and swings the door shut, the heavy wood connecting firmly with the frame. Turning back, he wears a smile on his face, a lingering remnant of whatever his last conversation was before arriving.

  Marsh is in no mood for it.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he asks. His voice is low and measured, enough of an edge to get his point across.

  On cue, Tinley stops where he is standing, a statue frozen in the center of the narrow strip of space between their respective desks. His mouth forms into a circle, his eyes going wide, though he says nothing.

  From the look on his face, he isn’t quite sure exactly what Marsh is referring to.

  “When do we ever – ever – give away information like that to family?” Marsh asks. Unlacing his hands, he leans forward, his chair squeaking slightly. Resting his elbows on the front edge of his desk, he adds, “Especially before we’ve had a chance to vet it ourselves?”

  The response comes in two distinct parts, the first nothing more than the visual register of what he was saying, Tinley finally putting things in place. The second was for heat to come to the surface, a rosy tinge rising to his tanned face.

  “Apologies,” he says. “I knew the second I said it I shouldn’t have.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t have,” Marsh agrees.

  “I was so used to talking about it with you at that point, I didn’t realize...”

  Remaining rigid, Marsh sits and stares at Tinley. Some of the angst he was feeling previously has already started to dissolve, expecting more of a fight from the younger man.

  Acknowledging and apologizing isn’t what he was expecting, a ploy that cut things off before they really got heated. Which is probably a good thing, making sure the conversation stayed civil, a point made without the potential charring of a bridge.

  Leaning back, Marsh grunts. He nods softly, signaling they are good. They aren’t quite, and he’ll be much more guarded with the access he grants Tinley moving forward, but the young man doesn’t need to know all that just yet.

  Working with him has been an excellent exercise in what he’ll undoubtedly face hundreds of times in the future. Bringing people along, molding them into what he wants and needs, is going to be a part of where he’s headed.

  The better he gets at it now, the easier it will be in the future.

  Especially considering he still hasn’t decided if Tinley will be a part of that future. His loose lips are a problem, but his appearance and affable nature could more than make up for it.

  Extending a hand toward Tinley’s chair, Marsh waits as the young man takes a seat.

  “What kind of read did you get on Clady?”

  Settling down onto his chair, Tinley raises a hand to his scalp, his fingers digging in above his ear. He ponders it a moment before replying, “Hard to say. I hadn’t met him before, so I didn’t see how he acted in the wake of what happened. He seems like a guy that just lost his wife, is still trying to figure out how to cope with that.”

  He pauses, then adds, “That being said, I don’t buy that shit about his hands and face for a second.”

  By and large, Marsh concurs with the assessment. He met Clady right after his wife was shot, and again the next day. Each time, he carried himself with the mix of anger and arrogance most Navy guys seem to possess. Besides that, there is no denying the other strong emotional presence Tinley referred to, the man clearly in a bad state in the wake of tragedy.

  And just like his partner, he doesn’t believe in the slightest that his newfound wounds have anything to do with an inability to sleep or some time spent on base in the evenings. What they do point to, he can’t yet ascertain.

  “Right,” Marsh agrees, playing it through his head once more before lifting his gaze to Tinley. “So what next?”

  He already knows what is next, and likely the move or two after that, but after scolding his partner earlier, he needs to throw him a softball.

  Tear him do
wn to build him back up, or some such cliché.

  “Head out and knock on Mike Lincoln’s door?”

  Not a bad call, but considering what they have, there is a much more efficient way to handle things.

  “Close,” Marsh replies. “Since we have a photo ID and a witness confirmation, I called and requested a full search warrant. Judge Nagatsuka granted it a little bit ago. Should be here any minute.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After spending more than a decade in the SEALS, I’ve been privy to pretty much every form of training available. Weapons, physical combat, medical, even some comms work. In the elements, there aren’t a lot of people better with maximizing whatever the environment has made available.

  On the other end of that spectrum is my experience with modern technology, my cellphone about the most sophisticated piece of civilian equipment I’ve used with any amount of regularity. Trying to work an iPad inevitably ended with me handing it back to Mira or asking her a dozen questions along the way. My time on Facebook lasted about a week. Twitter was never even considered.

  Just not my thing.

  Even at that, it takes me less than twenty minutes of digging around on the internet to find what I am looking for. Armed with Mike Lincoln’s name and a rough understanding of where he lives, what he does, and who he rides with, it doesn’t take much more than a half-dozen websites to come up with an address.

  Logging out of the online session, I watch as any history of my browsing is erased forever, grunting in satisfaction as a plain blue screen appears before me. Rising from my seat, I turn and head back in the same direction I just came from, nothing more than a couple of glances following me as I go.

  Heading for my car, I slide out my cellphone and thumb down through my address book, finding the name I am looking for and hitting send. Sliding into the front seat, I turn the engine on and set the air conditioner to low, not bothering to pull out just yet.