Chapter 24
I DON’T THINK I moved a muscle all night. I opened my eyes around seven thirty, rolled over, and put a pillow over my head to block out the sunlight.
Dozing dreams are the most real, don’t you think? I do. On the edge of consciousness, my mind conjured a scene from my childhood. I lay on the grass, screaming in agony while Tommy laughed because I’d broken my wrist trying to skateboard as well as he did. I played college football, but that had more to do with my tenacity; my brother was always the gifted one athletically.
My dreams mutated and I found myself lost in some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption populated by the people who had gathered in the mayor’s office in response to the No Prisoners killings.
“Find him, Jack,” Mayor Wills said, sounding like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. “Stop him.”
“By any means necessary,” Chief Fescoe said.
“We’ll work with and parallel to you,” said District Attorney Billy Blaze, who strangely wore a button with Tommy’s ten-year-old face on it.
“But we don’t want to know a thing about your tactics,” added Sheriff Cammarata. “Are we clear on that, Morgan?”
In my dreams, it had all seemed perfectly clear. Find and capture No Prisoners, then turn him over, Private’s role a complete secret to everyone but a select inner circle. But when my cell rang, waking me up for good, things quickly became murkier.
“I don’t like this, Jack,” said Del Rio by way of hello. “I’ve been up half the night because I feel like we’re being set up to take a fall somehow.”
“They’re granting us blanket immunity in advance. I’m supposed to see a copy of the document by nine.”
“What do they expect us to do that they can’t?”
“I’m not sure they know,” I admitted. “Whatever it takes to get No Prisoners behind bars.”
“They should be forming a task force or something. Put a hundred men on it. Bring in Cal Justice investigators. Bring in the FBI.”
“City, county, and state are all cash strapped. I guess they see Private as the cheaper alternative. And they don’t want to cede authority to the bureau.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“I don’t either, but I gave my word, said we’d do it.”
Silence.
Another call came in. Mo-bot. I told Del Rio I’d call him the minute I heard anything from Chief Fescoe, hit ACCEPT, said, “Maureen.”
“Cynthia Maines just showed up in our lobby,” Mo-bot said. “She’s demanding to know why we’ve been calling her cell phone nonstop and screwing up the first vacation she’s had with her boyfriend in almost a year.”