Page 91

THE GANG SAT Trilling and me at a folding table. We were told to put our hands palms down on the table in plain sight. No one said anything else as our firearms were taken away. When I started to ask a question, a big burly guy said, “Shut up. This ain’t court. You don’t get to argue your case.”

So we sat there in silence. I should’ve been scared. Maybe even terrified. Instead, I was more embarrassed than anything else that I’d let a moron like Jaime Nantes trick me into getting captured by drug dealers. I hoped this didn’t get out and spread around the department. I’d never live it down.

I was impressed with Trilling. He kept his cool. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I liked how he kept looking around the room. I knew he was marking exits in his head and searching for weaknesses.

The gang was sharper than I’d expected. Two men stood at opposite corners of the room with their MP5 submachine guns pointed at us.

A little less than an hour into our detention, I heard the door at the front of the warehouse open. Then I heard voices. Some were speaking Spanish and some English.

A group of men, including Antonio Deason, stepped into the room where we were being held. Deason was dressed like he worked on Wall Street. The red power tie against the blue shirt and jacket didn’t fit in with the warehouse decor. He just stood there shaking his head.

He came closer to the table and said, “You guys don’t give up. First you think I’m gonna be dumb enough to talk to you. Then you make a few amateur attempts to follow me. Why?”

The guy who seemed to be in charge put his arm around Nantes’s shoulder. “Jaime here used his head. He got these two assholes to come directly to us. You said you wanted to see how tough we were. How about we kill these two cops as a present for you.”

I felt Trilling tense next to me.

Deason looked annoyed. He shook his head. “I got a much better idea. Me and my boys are going to deal with these two, and no one will ever connect us to their bodies.” He made a show of looking at each man in the room. “But no one can ever say a word about it after today. No one.” He looked around to make sure everyone understood. “If you killed these two, the cops would never stop coming after you. And eventually me. But if I make it look like some kind of accident, or put the blame on someone else, it’s a different story.”

I said, “You’ve had some practice doing things that way.”

Deason glared at me but didn’t say anything. He looked at the men gathered around him and said, “When this is over, you’ll owe me a favor.” Then he glanced at Trilling and added, “Make that two favors.”

Someone slapped handcuffs on me and Trilling and led us out to a blue SUV, where we were buckled into seat belts with our hands still cuffed behind us. We sat in the middle row, with Deason’s people positioned in front of and behind us in the SUV. Then Deason jumped into the front passenger seat.

I said, “If you don’t mind, you could just drop me at my office.”

No one in the car thought it was funny.