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"Then you wouldn’t be interested to know that Jake Rollins body was found last night. He was shot, once in the head with a heavy caliber weapon. At fairly close range."
"Has anyone informed my client?"
"Somebody is taking care of that as we speak."
At least I didn’t have to be the one to tell Mrs. Childers that I was a fool. Or at the very least, I was a lousy detective. Yesterday I told her that her brother was alive and hiding somewhere from her husband. Now the cops were there to tell her he’s dead. She’s probably screaming Chilly did it right now.
Maybe I was just kidding myself into thinking I could be a detective. I had to start facing the reality that I’m not a detective. I’m a trained killer, that’s what I am.
If it wasn’t for Reggie, I would have never have found Felicia, and I wouldn’t know anything about this whole synthetic crack thing. "Where was the body found?"
"Behind a dumpster at a restaurant on Third Ave. The body had been there awhile."
"You know how long?"
"Not yet. Few days at least. People at the restaurant said they’d smelled it for days before they finally checked it out. Here’s what makes this whole thing a little more interesting. It seems that Rollins worked for the same company as another body we found three days ago with his throat slit from ear to ear."
"Coincidence?" I said nonchalantly. As far as I was concerned, I was out of it.
"I don’t think so. They were both chemists, working for the same company. They didn’t work together, but still, I’d say that was a bit more than just a coincidence. Wouldn’t you say so, Nick?"
"Maybe." The shit was starting to get deep now. The other guy was probably this Rodrigez guy that Chilly’s Peruvian friend, Diego Estabon, was supposed to have taken care of. If that was the case, maybe Chilly did take care of his, as promised, in a couple of days. I began to consider the possibility that maybe Chilly had found and killed Jake days ago and he was just setting me up to be part of his alibi.
"You ever seen this guy before, Simmons?" Richards asked.
He walked up to the table and handed me a picture of the dead man. "His name is Norman Vogel."
My heart stopped.
"We fished him out of the East River near Pier 17."
The shit just went from deep, to fucked up. If Rodrigez and Norman Vogel were the same person, then Felix had us deliver him gift wrapped to the Peruvians. And if that was the case, we were in this up to our necks. I picked up the picture as causally as I could. "No, never seen him before." I dropped the picture. "You finished with me?"
"No, Nick, we’re just getting started," Kirk said.
"You think I killed them?"
"Not necessarily. But I’m not ruling you out. I’ll tell you what I do think though. I think you know exactly what’s goin’ on here."
"What makes you say that?" I tried to laugh it off, but he was right. I knew exactly what was goin’ on here. I just wasn’t about to tell him.
"These are your people, Nick. Scum bags and drug dealers, all of them. So let’s start with what happened to your face?"
For the next hour, Kirk and Richards asked me questions that I knew the answer to, but refused to tell them. Anything I said at this point would lead right back to my front door. So my answer to every question was the same. "I don’t know anything about it." I knew they had nothing to hold me on, not yet anyway. The only thing that was on my mind at that point was Felix.
As soon as the police released me, I called Monika. "Monika, this is Nick."
"No need to be so formal, Nick. How you doin’?"
"Not good. I’m on my way over there now. Call Jett and tell him to meet us there as fast as he can."
"My house? What’s goin’ on, Nick?"
"We have a problem. Jake is dead. Police just found the body."
"Good for them. How is that a problem for us?"
"I’ll explain everything when I get there. Just call Jett. I’ll be there in about twenty-five minutes." I must have been driving faster than I thought, ’cause I was there in fifteen minutes. Jett was there when I got there, which would save me the trouble of telling the story twice.