Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood Read online

  “What can you tell us about the water main contract?” Darger asked.

  “$20 million, I think the contract was for?”

  “That’s right.”

  A gray cat slithered out from beneath the shade of a nearby deck and wound around Gary’s legs.

  “Dan was in way over his head with that. The scale of the project was well beyond our capacity. They weren’t equipped for it, not while I was there. I doubt they could fulfill that contract, and my guess is that they never intended to. The plan was never to build. It was to get the cash, dick around, file for bankruptcy, gut the business once and for all. The gangsters would take their cut and then some, probably run up massive debts on Dan’s soon-to-be ruined-anyway credit in the process.”

  “A bust out.”

  Gary leaned down to scratch the top of the cat’s head. “Right.”

  “Did he owe them? Gambling debt or something?”

  He squinted.

  “He was never a gambler that I knew. But that would make more sense than, well, getting mixed up in it for no reason.”

  “Are you familiar with anyone called The Polack or The Big Polack? A really big guy?”

  “Nah. That doesn’t ring any bells. Sorry.”

  Luck gave Darger a look, one that indicated he was ready to go. She nodded once, and they thanked Gary Howard for his time.

  They followed the winding stone path back around to the front of the house and had almost reached the car when Gary called out for them to wait.

  “Look, if you want to get an idea of the kind of people we’re talking about, check out Constantine’s.”

  “What’s that?” Darger asked.

  “A dirtbag bar in Hamtramck. My brother bought it about five years back. I… if I really knew what was good for me, I’d stop talking now. But fuck it. He was my brother, goddamn it.”

  He stepped a little closer so he could lower his voice.

  “That’s how all of this got started. Constantine’s became popular among connected guys. Sort of a meeting place, I guess. Dan was proud of it. He thought it was cool, I guess, like something on The Sopranos, you know? He started getting mixed up with it from there. Anyway, I’m sure some of those guys are over there right now. They always are.”

  Chapter 10

  Darger shielded her eyes from the sun flickering in between the trees as they sped back toward the city. The strobe effect felt like someone stabbing her in the face.

  “You OK?” Luck asked.

  “Yeah, I just have a headache.”

  “You want something for it? I think there’s Tylenol in the glovebox.”

  It was tempting, but she knew that Tylenol on its own never made any difference.

  “No thanks. I’ll tough it out.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “So what do you think?”

  “About?”

  “The brother thinking there was a bust-out coming? Maybe they wanted Dan Howard to do something he wasn’t willing to do. He finally puts his foot down and gets two bullets in the head for his trouble.”

  “Or he wants more,” she said. “Tries to use what he knows as leverage. Threatens to go to the authorities.”

  Luck nodded, then added, “Should have listened to his brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  The steady bump and hum of the tires on the highway seemed to lull them both into silence, and it wasn’t until the city skyline was visible on the horizon that Luck spoke up again.

  “I gotta say, it’s all pretty disappointing.”

  “What is?”

  “How crooked everything is,” he said, gesturing at the cluster of skyscrapers through the distant haze. “Here we have this city that’s been struggling for decades now, and it finally seems like maybe people are starting to figure it out. How to turn things around, or at least to make the best of what they’ve got. And the politicians have all this positive stuff to say about the great things they’re going to do. How they care so much for the city and the people in it. And then they turn around and sell everyone out. For what? A bigger house? A nicer car?”

  “You forgot about the helicopter,” Darger joked.

  Luck’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles standing out white.

  “Nobody gives a crap about right and wrong anymore. As long as someone’s waving some green in their face, they don’t care. More money. More power.”

  “We care,” she said, dead serious now.

  Luck’s eyes swiveled over to meet hers.

  “You and me and the bureau. I mean, that’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it?”

  His gaze fell back on the road.

  “Yeah. I guess so. But sometimes it seems like it’s not enough.”

  Darger watched a crumbling factory pass by, thinking that Luck was right. It wasn’t ever enough. But someone had to try.

  * * *

  Hamtramck had an old, turn-of-the-century feel, with a narrow two-lane main street lined with trees and businesses. Less of the buildings seemed abandoned here, though they still passed a few places with empty windows. There was one large building that took up almost a whole block, devoid of signage. But the windows were intact and Darger could make out splotches of darker gray paint where graffiti had been covered over. Someone was at least making an attempt to keep it looking presentable.

  "We should stop at one of the bakeries on the way out. Best pączki you've ever tasted.”

  It occurred to her then that they were talking like old friends now. Somewhere over the course of the day, the tension seemed to have dissipated. She thought it had something to do with the work, with feeling like they were making some progress, no matter how little.

  “It’ll automatically be the best since I’ve never had a…” she paused, trying to mimic his pronunciation of the foreign word, “…poonch-kee?”

  The corners of Luck’s mouth curled up in amusement.

  “It’s a Polish donut. You didn’t eat pączki on Fat Tuesday growing up?”

  “I’m not Catholic.”

  “Neither am I. But everybody ate pączki on Fat Tuesday when I was a kid.”

  They rolled by a group of kids on bikes, consulting their phones near a park. At one of the traffic lights, two women in hijabs crossed the street in front of them.

  “Big Bengali and Yemeni populations in Hamtramck. If you're here at the right time of day, you can actually hear the call to prayer being broadcast from some of the mosques. I guess some people complain about the noise, but I’ve heard it. I think it’s kinda cool. This is the most diverse city in Michigan. On one street you can find a Polish sausage place, a Yemeni grocery, and a Coney Island. Where else can you get that but still have it feel like kind of a small town?”

  “What’s this Coney Island thing? I’ve seen like five since I’ve got here, but I’ve never heard of it before. Is it a chain?”

  “No. It’s a type of Greek restaurant that serves a particular kind of hot dog,” Luck explained, his hands gesticulating with excitement while he spoke. “You got your natural casing wiener, right? Next goes the Coney sauce — that’s where everyone does it a little different. Some places just use chili, but a real Coney dog is not a chili dog, let me tell you. Others make their sauce kinda tangy like sloppy joes. My personal favorite, and what I think is probably most authentic, is almost like a gravy. Not a lot of tomato flavor, but you really get the Greek spices coming through. On top you got onions and yellow mustard. Sometimes a little sprinkle of cheddar.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I can honestly say I’ve never heard anyone wax poetic about hot dogs like that. I didn’t know you were so into wieners.”

  “There’s nothing like a Coney dog,” Luck said and rapped his knuckles against the steering wheel.

  “OK, but you still didn’t answer my question. A Coney Island is a place that serves a Coney dog?”

  “Correct.”

  “And even though they’re all called Coney Island, and they all serve the same thing, i
t’s not a chain?”

  “Correct.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I don’t make the rules. It’s an old school thing, I guess.”

  They stopped at a red light and Luck gestured through the windshield ahead.

  “I think that’s it up there.”

  Constantine's was in a squat brick building nestled between a check cashing place offering "FREE MONEY ORDERS — PLAY LOTTERY HERE!!" and a beauty supply store with rows of wigs displayed in the front window.

  The windows of the bar were tinted black and further blocked out with posters for Miller High Life and Redd’s Apple Ale. An old English “D” that Darger recognized as the logo for the Detroit Tigers was pasted over the door.

  Cars lined both sides of the street, and there was an open spot right in front of the bar. Luck slowed and turned on his blinker, staking his claim on the parking space.

  “Wait,” Darger said. “We should drive around back.”

  “You want me to pass up a primo parking spot right next to the front door? The back lot is full. I saw it when we drove by.”

  “Drive through the lot anyway. And slowly.”

  Luck obeyed, taking the next turn.

  Run-of-the-mill sedans, minivans, and pick-up trucks took up most of the lot. But closest to a rear door marked “Employees Only,” things were different. Nudged up to the back door of the bar sat a cluster of higher-end vehicles: a BMW, an Audi, and a couple of Lincoln Continentals. They were luxury brands that just didn’t jive with the clientele you’d expect from a dive bar like Constantine’s.

  Darger pointed out the enclosed walkway that connected the second story of the bar to the building across the alley, probably where the original business owner lived back when the neighborhood was built.

  “How much do you want to bet the Partnership has a nice little VIP area back there?” she said. “But we shouldn’t hang around long. Don’t want to be spotted.”

  Luck nodded.

  “I’ll call Price, see what he wants us to do.”

  Luck pulled out of the lot and parked on the side street while he made the call. Darger kept watching the back of the bar for a while, half-hoping she might see something useful, though she knew the odds were low. Luck relayed the plan once he’d hung up.

  “Price is setting up a surveillance detail for tonight. For now, the assignment is only to watch and log plates. See what kind of fish we catch in the net. As for us specifically, he said we should get some rest and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.”

  Darger held up her phone with a spot highlighted on the map.

  “What do you say we make one last stop before we call it a day?

  Chapter 11

  Dominik Jaworski sat in his car. Waited. Watched the apartment above on the second floor. Surveyed the complex parking lot out of the corner of his eye.

  Night was creeping in, and everything was still. For now.

  He shifted his huge frame in the seat. Rolled his neck from shoulder to shoulder, some gristly cartilage sound popping near the base of his skull.

  He was about to kill a man. Fire two rounds into his brain at point-blank range.

  Crack his skull open. Turn his lights out for good.

  Jaworski didn’t know what the guy did to deserve this fate. Didn’t want to know. He knew that the people who paid him wanted this man dead and gone. And that was enough.

  For now, though, he sat. Waited. Waited for the target to get home.

  Black gloves stretched over his fingers — the leather so thin it was like a membrane. Like another layer of skin.

  He could feel the textured grip of the gun through the material, the cool of the metal seeping straight through to his palm.

  He snaked a hand inside the flap of his jacket to touch the gun often. Licked his lips as he did it. Fingers brushing the leather holster. The web of flesh between his thumb and index finger finding the craggy grip.

  A thoughtless gesture, touching it. Reassurance, maybe. Some affirmation that so long as the weapon was there — within his grip — he had control of this situation. Of any situation.

  Headlights flashed over the asphalt as a car twisted into the lot. He squinted into the glare to discern the make and model, his chest and shoulders expanding in anticipation.

  A Prius. His posture deflated a little. Not the guy.

  The target drove a low end 2015 Audi sedan. Vegas yellow.

  Jaworski had the license plate number jotted in the mini-spiral notebook in his inside jacket pocket. He had it memorized as well, but the adrenaline of impending violence can blur a man’s memory. Better to write it down. Check it twice. Burn the small sheet of paper once it was done.

  The mark’s name was William Cutter, the co-owner of a regional chain of do-it-yourself car-wash joints. Jaworski had been given a photo to match the name. He noted the dimple in his chin. The way his nose jutted to the right from being broken. Hair and eye color — white and gray, respectively.

  He probably didn’t need all of these details. Not this time. But he liked to stick to his routine.

  It had been near dusk when he’d parked. Now the darker shades of night were falling.

  One puny bulb flickered yellow over the slab of asphalt. Not enough to really combat the falling darkness.

  He glanced into the rearview. Saw the dark shape of himself there, a featureless shadow in the low light of the parking lot.

  He always felt utterly alone in those moments of anticipation before a kill. Isolated in his own head. The only person on the planet truly awake. Truly alive.

  And usually he worked alone, but not today. The client wanted the others there, wanted it done in a group. It wasn’t what he preferred, but so be it.

  Three members of the Rocco Battaglia crew waited in the car with him. Brutal killers all of them.

  Rocco’s crew boasted an unparalleled reputation for savagery. They were feared beyond any other crew in the Detroit area. Infamous to a mythical, almost religious degree. A whole pack of serial killers, some folks called them. And they were proud of such talk. Pleased to create such terror in their enemies, in the public at large.

  And even within the ranks of Rocco’s crew, these men in the car with Jaworski represented the worst of the worst.

  Even among killers, some men were to be feared.

  “Motherfucker’s late,” Marasco said from the back seat. The words hissed out through clenched teeth.

  Tony Marasco was probably Jaworski’s least favorite member of Rocco’s crew. The guy never had anything of interest to say, but he didn’t let that get in the way of running his mouth.

  “Piece of shit was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”

  No one responded. They were all aware of what time Cutter should have been home. What was there to say?

  Marasco sighed at the lack of conversation, and Jaworski watched him out of the side of his eye, willing him to stay quiet and knowing he wouldn’t oblige.

  Marasco was a loud mouth, perpetually clad in a leather sports jacket. Wiry. Fidgety. Obnoxious. Compulsively smoking Winstons so his fingers and teeth sported yellow nicotine splotches.

  He’d earned his infamy during a spat with an Irish crew, an issue at the Detroit harbor. A Battaglia-connected shipping company was getting ripped off, boatloads of electronics boosted, entire wooden pallets of goods cleared from the docks.

  Marasco set up a meeting with the offending party — associates of the Fitzpatrick family. He tried to reason with them, and when that didn’t work, he slit some throats. Left the dismembered bodies right there on the docks to send a message.

  Jaworski was less impressed than most. To him, Marasco’s attitude trumped all else. He was the type who couldn’t sit in a room by himself without getting into a fight. And his hostility seemed infectious to Jaworski. A paranoia and general anxiety somehow transmittable via the air.

  Even now Marasco squirmed in the back seat. Restless. Unable to keep still.

&
nbsp; “Shit-heel should have been here by now. All I’m sayin’.”

  “He’ll get here when he gets here,” Carlo said from the seat next to him. Irritation sharpened his voice into something piercing. “You got something more important to do?”

  Jaworski held his breath a beat as he waited for the response.

  Marasco grumbled a few syllables and went back to staring out the window. Decided to let it go. Always a good choice when you’ve irritated a 300-pound psychopath.

  Carlo glared at Marasco for the length of a few breaths and then turned to his window as well. Jaworski was half surprised the big guy didn’t shoehorn in a football analogy here.

  Sixteen years on, Big Joe Carlo still blabbed about his feats as a junior college All-American defensive tackle almost daily. He’d starred at some tiny school in Kansas that played for the JUCO national championship his sophomore year. They got stuffed by a Mississippi school full of Florida State and Auburn rejects. Trounced by four touchdowns. ESPN played the highlights of them getting stomped on Sportscenter every hour, all night long. It was the only time he’d made national TV as well as the abrupt end of his football career.

  Carlo flunked out of school the semester after football was over, ultimately lacking the grades to get a scholarship offer after his two years in Kansas. He was a little on the short side at 5’9”, in any case. So he came back to Detroit and got involved in the family business.

  His playing days might be long over now, but he was still a walking tree trunk of a man. Not too many people in life made Jaworski feel small in any way, but Carlo’s shoulders were almost twice as wide as those of the 6’6”, 240-pound hitman in the driver’s seat.

  Jaworski’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror to confirm this fact.

  Carlo’s hulking figure filled half the back seat, the yellow light glinting in the rear windshield to light his round head from the back. He was a big slab of muscle wrapped in a layer of smooth fat and mostly hairless flesh. In a strange way, he looked like a baby, Jaworski thought, his skin folding funny at his wrists like a newborn. A gigantic, serial killing baby.

  Based on reputation and street rumors, he and Jaworski may be duking it out for the prestigious title of most prolific Detroit hitman. Nobody was sure how many kills Big Joe had under his belt, not even the man himself, but it had to be over a hundred.