Redemption Alley

Carp cupped his coffee in both palms, studying Theron. His gaze flicked to me, and he let out a loose, gusty sigh. The waitress came back, stepping into our armed truce with a bored “whaddalya have?”

I asked for orange juice and two orders of bacon, extra-crispy. Theron politely declined.

The place was deserted except for the bar, where a blue haze of cigarette smoke whirled slowly. A few anonymous male shapes sat in the cloudbank, and the waitress became a ghost among them as she headed for the kitchen. I touched the fork laid at my place—cheap metal, poorly stamped. “So why don’t you want anyone seeing you with me? Afraid people might start to talk?” I meant it as light banter, but Carp’s face immediately set itself hard like he’d sucked on a lemon.

He reached under the table. Theron stiffened, an infinitely small movement, and I wanted to roll my eyes. Carp’s hand came up holding nothing but his badge, which he flipped open and set on the table between us.

“I’m Internal Affairs.” He said it baldly, like it was a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe it was. “I had a hell of a time getting away this morning, but I had to talk to you. What were you doing at the Kutchner widow’s place, Jill?”

I studied him for a few moments. Internal Affairs? No wonder you’re paranoid. Still, Carp was a good cop with a finely-tuned sense of the weird; he knew when to call me in and get out of my way.

He also taunted Saul mercilessly and came off as a cracker asshole sometimes. Nobody’s perfect.

“Marv was Monty’s partner back in the day, and the suicide didn’t look right. So Monty asked me to poke.” I rubbed the fork’s surface, wishing it was a knifehilt. But Carp was already jumpy. “I have to say, it’s looking less and less like suicide and more like someone’s hiding something.”

“Only a few million dollars and thirty dead people at last count.” Carp leaned back against creaking vinyl. “Kutchner was dirty, Kismet. As dirty as they come.”

Huh? I replayed the three sentences inside my head. Yes, Carper had just said what I thought he’d said. “But Monty—”

He dropped another bomb. “Montaigne’s under review. I don’t like it any more than you do. Do you think he’s involved?”

Monty? Hell, no. “Why would he ask me to take a look at it?” I picked up the fork, tapped it on the tabletop. “Would there be any reason for someone to try to kill me because I’m poking around in this?”

Theron shifted uneasily, staring off into the distance. He looked bored.

Carp shrugged. “Let me put it this way, I wish I was wearing some fucking Kevlar assplugs. This is big, Kiss.”

The waitress returned with a stack of pancakes and eggs for Carp, filled his coffee cup, and plunked down my orange juice. “Be a sec on the bacon,” she a

Yeah, thanks. I got that. “Are you going to take it from the top, or are you going to be all cryptic? This isn’t the only iron I have in the fire.”

“Actually, I was going to ask you to help me.” He stared at his plate like it contained a pile of snot. I got the idea maybe Carp had lost his appetite. “Since you’re already involved, might as well.”

I so do not have time for this. But I heard the creak of a nylon rope rubbing against a ceiling beam, and saw a mask of bruising on a dead man’s terrified face. “What are we dealing with? Use small words, and speed it up.”

He stuck his fork into the pile of eggs, worked it back and forth. “You remember a barrio case, about three years ago? Two illegal immigrants found in a cheap-ass room, kidneys gone, blood on the walls?”

A quick fishing trip through Memory Lane produced zilch. “Nope. Unless something my-style hinky was involved, I don’t.”

“I remember,” Theron said quietly. “The Herald did a long series on organ thievery. An all-time high nationwide, they said. Whole underground economy.”

Cold fingers walked up my spine again. The last huge paranormal incident in the city had touched on black-market organ trade, but only briefly. By the time I’d unraveled it, everyone was already dead, the organs were sold—and I’d almost become a host for a Chaldean Elder God.

I still have nightmares from that. Just like the hundreds of other cases I have nightmares about. At least if I’m dreaming about it I know it’s over and done with. “Sullivan and the Badger were on that, weren’t they?”

“They got yanked. Sullivan thinks someone high-up is involved, since there were more deaths than could be accounted for even with whatever happened with those hooker murders you were chasing.” Carp had turned milk-pale. Those homicide sites had probably figured in a few of his nightmares too. “But still, they were pulled off it and the files were put in a deep freeze. We think whoever’s profiting mostly strips wetbacks of their kidneys, because they’re a transient population.”

I nodded. Illegal immigrants are victims in more ways than one. Coming to look for the American dream, they usually end up raped one way or another. If they’re lucky, they get more of a wage than they would back home while it happens.

If they’re unlucky, they become just another statistic. Or not even that.

I blew out a long frustrated breath. “Okay. So what does this have to do with—”

“I think there’s cops finding illegals for stripping, and cleaning up after it happens, a real body farm. It’s a safe bet the cash is laundered, but I don’t know how. I don’t think Marv Kutchner ate his Glock. He was in too deep and making too much money. That shitty little suburban house was small potatoes. He had plans to retire to a nice tropical paradise.”

“Who doesn’t?” I was only half sarcastic. And another question arrived, flirting at the corner of my consciousness. I never found out who they were selling the organs to. I assumed it was out of town, since I didn’t find anything here afterward and—

There I was, caught assuming. There was always a market for organs. I hadn’t thought the Sorrows would foul their own nest, but I’d been kept ru

If they can pay.

The waitress came and plunked down my bacon, or some charred sticks that resembled something that might have been bacon in the distant past. “Anything else?”

“No thanks,” Theron said promptly, and we waited until she disappeared into the smoke-filled bar.

I wondered if she smoked—I didn’t think she’d need to, breathing that fug all day. So this could have been going on for longer. Or it could be the tail-end of the Sorrows’ operation. Too many variables. “So if it wasn’t suicide, why did Kutchner die?”

“Jacinta Kutchner was an accountant. Her office was tossed as well as her bedroom. We think she had a set of cooked and uncooked books, either in the office or in the safe in her closet. Yesterday a blue bit it—”

“Officer Winchell,” I supplied helpfully. “Was he implicated too?”

A vintage Carper shrug, his shoulder holster peeping out. He didn’t look surprised at my supplying the name. “Only up to his eyeballs. Would it surprise you to know Winchell and Kutchner’s grieving widow were having an affair?”

Huh. That puts a new shine on things. I picked up a slice of charcoaled bacon. “You do such fine police work, Carp. What do you need me for?”

“The trail dead-ends with Marv’s retirement fund disappearing. All half-a-million of it. I think the widow was about to blow the whistle on the whole dirty deal, or she double-crossed someone and hid the money. Maybe she even loved her husband, I don’t know. But without her and without the books—and without Marv and Winchell—we have exactly what we started out with. Dead wetbacks and a whole lot of nothing.”