The Disavowed Book 2 - In Harm's Way Read online

  Silk got to the door first and knocked. Trent thought about what his friend was going through: shock, guilt, and despair over the wasted years that stretched between the end of their last meeting and now, like a thin skein of accusation, a road of broken, forever-lost dreams. A haunting world of bone-deep regret.

  The door opened almost immediately, the occupant standing there with a look of hope on his face which fell immediately on seeing Silk. “Can I . . . can I help you?”

  The man didn’t know him.

  Trent listened as Silk explained who he was. Then the three of them were led through a short hallway and into the spartan front room. Trent didn’t say a word. He caught Radford’s look though, and wondered if Silk had noticed the same thing. Somehow, in his current state of mind, he doubted it.

  Roley, Tanya’s boyfriend, was the double to Jenny Silk.

  Uncanny, Trent thought. When he found his tongue he said, “I bet you cook up a mean jambalaya,” to the man, just to help Silk along.

  Roley’s face dropped and he looked down at his own overlarge frame. “I guess I do.”

  Silk glared at Trent, missing the point. “Not helpful.”

  Trent sighed. “Ah, sorry, Roley. It wasn’t meant as a slur.”

  Silk rounded on the boyfriend. “Tell me everything. I want it all, Roley. Your relationship. What the two of you do for a living. Friends. Enemies. New developments in your lives. Anything that seems odd. Leave nothing out.”

  Roley’s face was drawn, his eyes bright with worry. He motioned them over to a well-used leather sofa and sat himself down on the windowsill. The brightness flooding through behind him cast his form in comparative shadow giving darker meaning to his words, but Trent knew to keep his mind wide open and free from assumption. If Tanya had been abducted these hours were the most vital of her life.

  “I guess we’ve been together about eight years,” Roley began. “We both work. I’m a chef over at Mauricio’s. Tanya’s a fitness instructor.”

  Trent sighed inwardly at that last bit of information. Their pool of suspects had just increased exponentially.

  “We work hard, don’t have much time for real living except on Sundays. Our day off. We make the most of it, I guess, as most couples do. Today . . . we were—” Roley’s face crumpled. “Oh God.”

  Silk sat forward quickly. “Stick to the facts, Roley. Stick to what you know.”

  “Who are you?” Roley jabbed back quickly. “Apart from Adam Silk. Why would my girlfriend make me remember your name and number just in case anything ever happened to her? Why you, rather than the cops?”

  Trent gave Silk the chance to answer. It was clear that Roley knew nothing of Tanya’s gang days and possibly not even that she was an orphan, otherwise he would have already made some kind of connection.

  When Silk sat back, face betraying blatant distress, Trent immediately stepped in. “We’re the only people trying to help you, Roley. Now you can keep on wasting our time with worthless questions and then wait for the cops to show up in a day or two, or you can continue right now.”

  Roley squeezed his temples. “Goddamn it. I feel so helpless here. Even if I knew where she was I’m probably not fit enough to go in and save her bacon, though I’d try. It’s the chef’s life,” he tried to explain. “Life becomes just one long taster session.”

  Trent said nothing, just waited. Radford, still fancying himself as a hero, said, “We can help her. We will.”

  Roley nodded. “Okay. Like I said, Tanya runs her own business as a fitness instructor. She talks a lot about it. Most times, I just sieve that sort of stuff right on through, but lately the numbers have started to rise like some kinda super-dough. Maybe it’s the economy gettin’ better, I don’t know, but my little lady has really started to bring home the bread.” Roley coughed. “I tend to speak in food terms. Sorry, it’s a bad habit.”

  Silk looked like he’d gotten hold of himself. “Any clients she mentioned in particular?”

  Roley exhaled and threw his head back. “Goddam it, no! I can’t think of anyone she spoke about. Our lives, you might say, are pretty mundane. Normal. Tanya seems to enjoy that.”

  Trent saw Silk nod. It made sense if they’d followed the same unconscious patterns as each other even as their lives changed. Nevertheless, an abundance of information still remained untapped.

  “What about enemies, Roley?” Trent asked. “You guys make any? Even trivial stuff like a recent fender bender or complaining about next door’s cat?”

  “I get you. But nothing that I know of. Maybe you could check with the guys down at her gym too? They’d know of anything work related.”

  “We will. And also, Roley, we need to search your bedroom and the rest of this house. You okay with that?”

  “If it helps.” Roley waved it away. “Do anything you want.”

  Trent nodded, satisfied. The purpose of this visit wasn’t only to garner more information about Tanya, it was to discern if Roley might have been responsible for her disappearance, directly or not. So far, the chef was coming up roses.

  Trent took the initiative, rising to his feet. Silk followed. As they turned back toward the hallway, the phone exploded with noise. The sudden ringing made even Trent flinch. Everyone stared at the black plastic harbinger for just a moment, all trapped in the same flurry of conflict.

  Good news, bad news? Lives stood on the precipice right now, right here, and no amount of procrastination or wishful thinking was going to change the outcome.

  Roley snatched it up. “Yes? Tanya, is that you?” Showing a penchant for fast thinking he jabbed the speakerphone and then the record button.

  “Mr Rockman? Mr Roland Rockman?”

  “Yes.” Roley’s eyes were huge, full of hope. Silk visibly struggled hard to keep his face neutral.

  “You are registered as living at this address with Tanya Jassman. Is that correct? Are you related?”

  “Yes. Yes. And no, I’m her boyfriend. Is she there? Please put her on.”

  “Officers are on the way, sir, and I’m sorry to tell you like this, but Miss Jassman’s body was discovered about thirty minutes ago. Her IDs, wallet, and cellphone were all on her person.”

  Two men fell hard, straight to hell, separated by long years and wholly different events, joined by the outstanding faith, love and beauty that they knew existed in the same woman.

  Tanya Jassman. The love of both their lives. The orphan child-thief who had struggled against and overcome all adversity with a smile on her face and a goal in her heart. The struggling was now at an end.

  All that remained were the ones she had helped to make whole.

  6

  Silk lost the next half hour of his life.

  By the time Trent parked the car off street in the city of Inglewood, Los Angeles, the only thing Silk was actively aware of was the stabbing pains in his chest. But when Trent told him to stay put his mind snapped back to the present.

  “Not a chance.”

  Together, the three men abandoned the cool air-conditioned interior for the oven-hot day and joined the looky-loos gathered outside the yellow crime-scene tape. Shopfronts and low-rate office blocks loomed all around them almost as if they were securing the body from any more harm. Tanya lay halfway down a side alley, but from here Silk couldn’t make out the faces of the attending cops, never mind the scene. The whispers of the surrounding gawpers tended toward the macabre. Silk shut them out.

  As they watched someone cut the flashing light on top of the nearby ambulance, Silk said, “We need to get closer.”

  Trent pursed his lips. “Cops are good,” he said. “Don’t underestimate them.”

  “I know that, but this is personal. I can’t wait around for Doug to finesse the crime report. Tanya . . . had my back.” Silk’s face was hard. “And even now I’m gonna have hers.”

  “Wait.” Trent began pressing buttons on his cellphone. “Let me try something,”

  Radford popped his head around Trent’s shoulder. “Callin
g your girlfriend?”

  Trent pushed him away. “Start taking pictures of the crowd, Dan. Do something useful.”

  Silk listened as Trent talked. From his answers it seemed that Agent Collins had lost none of her provocative fire. Trent was getting nowhere, and at an alarming rate.

  “It would be a favor,” Trent said quietly, clearly trying to stay calm, “for one of our own. This woman deserves the best.”

  After a moment’s silence Trent almost cringed. “Yes, yes, I know the cops are good at what they do. But sometimes . . . sometimes you take a breath and go the extra mile.”

  Another minute then Trent ended the call. He turned to Silk. “She’s not convinced we can help and I don’t really blame her. Thinks we’ll muddy the scene and antagonize the cops. But she did say she’d try.”

  Silk looked away. “I’m not trying on this one, Aaron. I’m all in.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “A finesse that gets us right to the scene.”

  “We’re already exposed,” Trent pointed out. “The cops will have our pictures as part of their close crowd surveillance. Collins knows too. It’s a mistake.”

  “I have to see her.”

  Silk gritted his teeth to keep a surge of emotion away from his face. How else could he get closure? “I should have stayed closer. I could have—”

  “Death waits on the landing when you visit the bathroom in the middle of the night,” Trent said simply. “You can never tell when it’s coming for you.”

  “I can’t help it. I can’t believe she’s gone. She was the best of all of us.”

  Silk’s mind flashed back to that one other. The girl before Tanya. The nameless girl who had vanished from the orphanage one day, leaving a hollow gap inside him for the rest of his life. “She was the best of us,” he repeated in a whisper.

  “Alright.” Trent turned around and sized up their surroundings. “I’ll risk this for you, Adam. Where the hell did Radford get to?”

  Silk spied him talking to a pretty reporter. “Where’d you think?”

  “I’m sure he’s just fishing.”

  “Nothing changes.”

  “No. I mean—”

  At that moment Silk saw an approaching hurricane. Surprise lit his face. “Oh no.”

  Trent whirled. “What?”

  There was no time. In seconds a huge figure had stormed up to them, a lumbering mountain dressed in a cop’s uniform.

  “I thought I knew you. What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Silk almost closed his eyes in despair. This case just got a lot harder. “Reggie Rosenthal,” he said. “Been a while. I knew the victim.”

  “Damn straight you knew the victim. You were part of that little bitch’s gang.”

  Silk felt his entire body stiffen, from his toes to his suddenly clenched fists. “What did you say?”

  “You think I’d forget?” Rosenthal’s face was red, his eyes huge. “Eh? The five little pricks who ruined my career? Ya think?”

  “You ruined your own career by being a fat pig and a lazy, quarrelsome slob.”

  Rosenthal’s face deepened. “What?”

  Trent leaned in to Silk. “Stay calm. What the hell’s going on here?”

  Silk tried hard to keep the snarl off his face. “This is the cop who used to go after the gang. Trying to hang ‘em high from the big boss all the way down to the young kids. Put many a fourteen year old in juvie but never had the spine to go for the big dogs, the men.”

  “Fuck you, Silk.”

  “Reggie,” Silk said. “Reggie the Rhino we used to call him.”

  The cop’s jowls juddered as fury filled his body. The two men were an inch apart, separated only by their awareness of the crowd. Trent tried to step in again but neither man even recognized his presence.

  “Silk, I’ve never seen you lose control before. Do not make this the first time. She’s right there.”

  Silk heard the words and knew what Trent was trying to do. Drawing his attention to Tanya and her memory in order to diffuse his anger. But Rosenthal deserved what he was about to get. The man had preyed on kids to advance his career; kids who walked the streets rather than stay home to be abused, kids who ran away from domestic violence, kids who were kicked out onto the street. This piece of shit had always needed a hard lesson in real life.

  “Funny how fate put you right here, right now,” Silk hissed. “When I’m lookin’ for a fat, sloppy punching bag.”

  “Fate ain’t got nothing to do with it. This is your old haunt. I still run this place, and I ain’t forgotten about you.”

  Silk hadn’t realized this was his old rat run. The place had changed dramatically since ’93. “Reggie—you haven’t entered my thoughts once. Not in twenty years.”

  “Funny how she died right here,” the cop whispered. “Left to bleed out with her throat cut. Up close and personal, it was. You have anything to do with that?”

  Silk’s arm flashed. Trent caught it in a vice grip before it connected with the cop’s temple. Both movements happened so fast the cop barely registered what had taken place.

  “Did you—”

  “Rosenthal!” A cry went up from behind the tape. “Where the hell you get to? Got some investigating to do over here.”

  The cop smirked and pulled away. “As if I give a shit,” were his parting words as he maneuvered his body around like a Mack truck and clumped back to the scene.

  Silk was left shaking with fury, the beating of his heart so loud it blocked out all other sounds. He’d lost it. Lost control. If it hadn’t been for Trent . . .

  The love of his life was dead in an alley, throat cut. Up close and personal. Silk assumed the cops had received a call from the FBI by now, or the Edge might well have found themselves being questioned.

  “No chance of a finesse now,” he muttered.

  In the wake of Rosenthal’s departure a vast amount of light returned. Silk glanced up at the sun, letting its warmth bathe him. When he glanced back down another cop stood before him.

  “Listen,” she said. “Rosenthal’s an old ass. A pig. Don’t let him get to you. I’m his partner and I promise you we’ll investigate Miss Jassman’s murder to the letter of the law.”

  Silk stared. Rosenthal’s partner was pretty much his direct opposite: a slightly built, attractive female, probably in her late twenties. The smile on her face and brightness in her eyes told Silk that she hadn’t been pounding the LA streets for long.

  “How on earth did you end up as that bastard’s partner?”

  Before she could answer, and again demonstrating his uncanny knack for the close proximity of beauty, Radford was suddenly at Silk’s shoulder. “I feel better already,” he said, “in these capable hands.”

  The cop ignored him, staring steadily at Silk. “Detective Brewster,” she said. “Susie Brewster. If you need to talk or pass on information contact me alone. Okay?”

  “If it helps,” Trent spoke up, “you might talk to Agent Claire Collins of the FBI. I’m pretty sure she’d vouch for all of us.” His face said that he wasn’t sure at all.

  “I’ll do that. Again, I must apologize for my partner. He has a condition.”

  Silk guessed she had used that line many times before. He felt bad for her. “Condition?”

  “Yeah. He found out at an early age that the chip on his shoulder could never be removed.”

  They all laughed. Silk decided to take advantage of the moment. “Is there anything you can tell us about the crime scene? Anything at all? We’ll get a look at the scene-of-crime report eventually anyway.”

  Brewster studied him, the deep dark eyes fairly twinkling. “I know who you are.” She said. “All of you. I was standing next to the guy who took the FBI call. I remember the news stories, the non-trial of Blanka Davic, the murder of that girl’s family, and the overriding factor that the information was as scantily delivered as a Sunset Stripper. You guys got the raw deal.”

  Silk shrugged. “But we’re still al
ive.”

  Brewster glanced involuntarily over her shoulder, back toward the alley. “Yeah, I guess. Look, there is one thing we’re not releasing to the press. So keep it under wraps.” She leaned forward. “If it comes out I’ll know it’s from you guys, and then . . .”

  She left it hanging. Silk didn’t actually feel threatened by her warning. It was more that he didn’t want to betray her trust. “You can tell us anything.”

  Susie Brewster smirked. “I doubt that. But listen, we did find something on the vic’s body. On her forehead.” She glanced apologetically at Silk before continuing. “A small depression. As if something had been pressed into her skin and held there for a while.”

  7

  The cops hadn’t arrived at Roley’s place yet. Trent felt for Tanya Jassman’s boyfriend; the couple did seem to have been making a good go of it, trying to make a difference in their own little lot of the world, but then the big boots of fate had tramped on through, wrecking their lives and dreams.

  Trent listened as Silk reassured Roley, promising him they would find the person responsible. He allowed his thoughts to wander for a moment. Today was Sunday and yesterday should have been the day he saw Mikey. Trent’s son was eight, living with his mother Victoria, and used by the woman as a convenient pawn for manipulating her ex-husband. Lately, she had been swapping their ‘day’ around more often than not.

  Above all, Trent hated seeing the effect it had on their son. He had changed from a bright and bubbly boy to one who was becoming withdrawn, rarely smiled, and seemed to carry the weight of his parents’ troubles on his shoulders. Trent had originally joined the CIA to help people, to make sure the underdog had a little help in overcoming the big boastful bully, and had achieved successes of over a 90 percent average.

  But he couldn’t help his own son.

  The torment twisted at him, ate at him. If he lost Mikey he feared the boy would become lost himself, and never recover. Not physically, but mentally and emotionally. What kind of man would he become under the tutelage of Victoria Trent?