Page 100 of Under Cover
“Wait—is he headed toward the front?He’s headed toward the cat!”
And with that, Crosby grabbed the knife he’d kept under the mattress and went hauling down the hallway in a sort of shamble, whispering, “Go out the side and get him while I go get the cat—wait until you hear me at the door.”
And before Garcia could say, “That is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Crosby was rummaging through the cupboard for tuna while Garcia had no choice but to crouch by the window that overlooked the area over the garbage cans on the side of the house. Carefully he peered outside, toward the front, where their intruder seemed to be heading, and for a moment, he had misgivings. What if it was the cat’s owner or their next-door neighbor who’d heard the cat too? What if there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the cat, the ninja guy, and the automatic weapon sticking out of the guy’s pants—
Yeah, no.
Very carefully, Garcia unclipped the old-fashioned windowsill and raised the sash, knowing that he’d spent all last summer making sure the operation would be smooth and soundless for those days when he could catch a breeze.
He watched their intruder edge near the front porch, back to the house itself, working to a place he could turn and look, probably scoping out his chance for an entrance.
To Garcia, what happened next sounded like Crosby was shouting, booming across the whole neighborhood to scare children and small wildlife for a mile around, but it must not have been that loud because their intruder simply gasped and pressed back harder against the outside of the house, as though trying to make himself smaller.
“Sampson,” Crosby crooned, and Garcia could hear the screen door open. He used that opportunity to shimmy down the side of the house and land silently in his bare feet on the short strip of grass and pebbles that made up the walkway between the house and the fence next door.
“Kitty,” Crosby continued. “C’mon, man, we missed you. Brought your favorite. Yeah, that’s it, you big squishy asshole. Come get tuna. Definitely tuna. You can eat that shit for days. C’mon in, big guy, you and me got some bonding to do.”
Bonding? What, they owned that enormous fucking cat now?
Garcia shook his head and continued to advance on their intruder, who was so engrossed in what Crosby was doing that he didn’t hear Garcia coming until Garcia was close enough to grab the gun hanging out the back of his pants and hold his own gun to his temple.
“Don’t move,” he said very softly, “and I won’t have to kill you.”
Garcia was expecting the elbow to the face, so he ducked it, rolling, both guns in hand. He bounced to his feet, ready to crash into the guy and take him out, but Crosby was leaning over the rail, knife to the guy’s throat, a hand holding his head back.
“Pidgeon,” Crosby said pleasantly. “How you doin’? Where’s Kinsey tonight? I thought you two would be joined at the groin.” He punctuated that last with a little jerk of the knife, and Garcia noticed a trickle of blood down Pidgeon Smalls’s neck. Now that his eyes had adjusted and he wasn’t fighting the guy, Garcia could recognize one of the faces on the “known associates” board in the office.
“Not sayin’ nothin’, faggot,” Pidgeon snarled. He was a crookedly built, ugly little man with hunched shoulders and a face that looked like it had been built from scowls and mean laughter. Crosby jerked the hand with the knife again, and Pidgeon let out a whimper.
Garcia remembered the conversation with Harman about how Junior might have gotten infected, and he had a sudden sick sensation in his gut.
Crosbywouldkill this man if Garcia didn’t stop him. Crosby had been forced to watch this guy and his buddies violate that poor kid who’d saved his life. Crosby wouldn’t hesitate to saw the hunting knife in his hand right through Pidgeon Smalls’s neck.
“You better say something,” Crosby purred, “or pretty soon you won’t be able to.”
“All right! All right!” Pidgeon whined, and to Garcia’s relief, he saw Crosby’s grip on his head loosen just a tad. “Kinsey was at the docks tonight. There were four of us. Two of ’em disappeared. Kinsey was pissed.” His eyes darted right. “We had a line on a car, right? McEnany gave us some trackers, and one of ’em was here. We thought, you know—find that car, find the guys who fucked our guys up.”
Crosby met Garcia’s eyes and frowned, and Garcia had a sudden insight.
“Department issue,” he said, and Crosby nodded, both of them refraining from glancing at the department-issue vehicle Denison had left in the driveway. Garcia’s heart started beating in retroactive panic for Natalia and her family. God, talk about instincts that were right on point!
“So much to unpack there,” Crosby muttered. “We’re gonna need to cuff this guy and call it in.”
“Bullshit,” Pidgeon muttered. “You’re a corrupt piece of shit, Ricky, you know that? You sit in Jimmy’s front room and play video games with all that meth lying around and you’re gonna callmein?”
The laugh that shook Crosby’s shoulders wasn’t entirely sane, and Garcia really didn’t like how close that knife was.
“Easy,Ricky,” he said. With a few deft movements, he situated the guns, slinging the automatic over his head by the strap and aiming his personal piece, a Berretta 9mm, under Pidgeon’s chin. “Go get the cuffs and call it in. If you hear a shot, come out with some cleaner and a scrub brush for the brains.”
He watched the struggle, watched Crosby’s shoulders rise and fall with a few controlled breaths, watched his death grip on the knife ease up enough to pull the weapon slowly out of the cave made by Garcia’s gun and Pidgeon’s neck and chin.
“Yeah,” Crosby said gruffly, his body shuddering as he let go of his rage. “We probably shouldn’t kill him. We’ve got some information to get.”
He moved quickly then, while Garcia frog-marched Pidgeon forward, gun to his back, across the porch and into the front room. Crosby met him with cuffs, and while Garcia took care of frisking and restraining, Crosby set up one of the kitchen stools in the center of the entryway, leaving Pidgeon sitting in the middle of a cleared space. With a furious glare at Pidgeon, Crosby handed Garcia ankle cuffs.
“Wow,” Garcia said, because Pidgeon was short enough that his legs dangled. Nevertheless, he cuffed Pidgeon’s ankles around the stool legs, leaving him helpless to so much as run.
“We can’t kill him,” Crosby ground out. “We need his information. So he can’t try to escape.”
